The Fleece is our home turf , but BristolBands sometimes has exciting events coming up at different venues so watch this space!
We're being approached by bands on tour, some big names and some not so well-known, plus we have found some acts from across the UK, from Europe and the USA who we think are absolutely amazing, but perhaps suit a smaller, more intimate setting, or possibly a club venue to best show off their brilliance.
You can get tickets for many of our paying nights from Bristol Ticket Shop, or online from See, WeGotTickets, and Gigantic . We're offering etickets online cheaper than the door prices. Buy your eticket online up to 6pm on the nght of the gig, then just turn up with your confirmation number and ID, and we'll check you on our list.
For our gigs at The FLEECE, including our legendary SHOWCASE Nights, go to our FLEECE page for details
THOMAS TRUAX (Post Punk / Showtunes / Alternative) London / New York
New York City's Thomas Truax (pronounced troo-aks) is a left field troubadour and inventor/player of strange self-made instruments like his now legendary 'Hornicator' and a motorized mechanical drum machine called 'Sister Spinster'. He employs these and other contraptions as well as traditional instruments in exceptionally crafted, witty and often touching songs. Splendid magazine recently called him "one of the five or ten best singer/songwriters in the world that you've never heard of...an exceptional talent, unique and resistant to comparison, yet fairly accessible even to casual listeners."
Thomas has toured nearly constantly for the past seven years, mostly as a headliner but also doing large scale support tours with the Dresden Dolls and Duke Special amongst others. He's played Glastonbury, the Edinburgh Fringe festival, at Lincoln Center in New York and appeared on MTV.
Thomas's 'Hornicator' is constructed on the shell of an old gramophone horn. It resembles something that might have been dreamt up by Dr. Seuss. He taps out rhythm loops recording them live into his looping machine,then adds layers of plucked strings, springs and noisemakers, building a backdrop of hypnotic sounds on top of which he delivers striking stories about clones and prostitutes.
Born an illigitimate son of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, as a young man Thomas attempted to build a synthesizer out of an old radio. He put on magic shows and made stop-motion animated films with a Super 8 camera. He has done mandatory day-job time as an animator on MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch and Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken. Time travelling with the Toby Tyler Circus inspired him towards a career in show business. His acclaimed rock noir trio Like Wow toured and released several CDs, but Thomas grew frustrated with a seemingly endless line of drummers with expensive appetites often resulting in stomach aches before gigs, forcing their cancellations. He finally decided to build his own motorized mechanical drummer and 'go solo'.
'Sister Spinster' is a variable speed, proudly pre-digital 'Flintstones-era drum machine' that features spoked wheels and percussive parts which can be readjusted between songs to create different rhythms. Newer instruments include 'The Stringaling' which features a vaguely bongo-like drum at the top of a length of clothes' drier tubing to which is attached a variety of musical devices with pull-strings,and the 'Backbeater', a rhythm wheel made to be worn on the back, which Thomas promises will eventually also double as a mechanism for flight.
He has no engineering background and while constructing these inventions has repeatedly subjected himself to inadvertent electrical shocks which he claims have stimulated his creativity and expanded his vocal range.
A stubborn DIY enthusiast, Truax self-released his debut full-length solo CD 'Full Moon Over Wowtown' on his own label in late 2003. It was quickly snatched up by London-based Breakin' Beats for release in the UK and Europe, who also released his second album 'Audio Addiction' (2005). Truax's third album 'Why Dogs Howl at the Moon' (SL Records, 2007) and his fourth, 'Songs From The Films Of David Lynch '(SL/Psycho Teddy records 2009), is his first all-covers album.
His 5th Album Sonic Dreamer was released in 2010 to rave reviews. A three-song 'Singles Club' cd has also been released internationally on the Italian label Homesleep, and a 7" vinyl single, 'Have We Been Left Behind'(2006), was released by Akoustik Anarkhy records of Manchester.
Truax has been featured in two feature-length films: 'Instrumental', from director Gabe Shalom (US, 2005) documenting the lives of for artists who make their own instruments, and Adam Clitheroe 'One Man In The Band' (UK, 2008).
Wowtown is a surreal place from which some of the characters and events in Thomas's songs originate. He's been writing The Wowtown News, an email newsletter that he sends to a long list of faithful subscribers, for over five years. His own radio serial version of The Wowtown News, broadcasts on Resonance FM in London, where Thomas is currently residing.
"Inventive and Romantic" -TimeOut
"Beguilingly Bizarre" -Uncut
"Genius." -NME
"There are a few, very few, artists so original and inspired that their creativity slops right over the edges of their music and floods the whole damned room. What Thomas Truax leaves on the floor for the waitress to mop up is a better brew than most people put right there on the table. Smart, beautiful, eccentric, exceptional -- if these are the kinds of words you attach to the music you love best, you need to drop whatever you're doing and get this album right now ." - -Jennifer Kelly, SPLENDID (Click here to read this whole review)
Jesse Budd - Vocals, guitar, lap steel, accordion, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, dobro & clarinet Joe Atkinson - Organ, piano, some guitar, accordion, backing vocals Greg Shepheard - Bass guitar & producer/ engineer of Flipron recordings Mike Chitty - Drums, percussion & backing vocals
Debut album 'Fancy Blues and Rustique Novelties' was released in 2004. This was followed by the 14-track album BISCUITS FOR CERBERUS, released on October 2nd 2006.
Unpeeled magazine called it "the album that Paul McCartney might have made if Linda had let him stay on the acid... a gorgeous gift to an undeserving nation", the celebrated music journalist Mick Mercer has urged his readers to "Immerse (themselves) in (Flipron's) world and celebrate a true national treasure."
The Mind's Construction Quarterly states that "there are few other bands profound as Flipron and none who can write about mortality so lightly and without false consciousness. Buy it!" & even mainstream music journalist Neil McCormick wrote in that august organ of the upper crust establishment The Daily Telegraph that the record was "Brilliant, but frankly unclassifiable."
Their third album 'Gravity Calling' was recorded at Chris Jagger's studio in Somerser, with former The Damned drummer, Rat Scabies producing. The album was released in 2008.
Flipron's most recent single, "The Coolest Names In Showbiz", again produced by Rat Scabies, was released in July 2010.
The band appeared at many UK festivals in 2007 and 2008, including the Leftfield and Avalon Stages at the Glastonbury Festival. In September 2010, Flipron toured the United States for the first time and return to the US in March 2011 at the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.
"It's a treat to encounter a genuinely uncategorisable group ... they plough a furrow intriguingly distant from most of the contemporary cliche zones ... hyperliterate, densely rhymed lyrics ... far richer soundscapes than those of your average group ... Flipron deliver extreme variety." Charles Shaar Murray : Observer Music Monthly
"...Tom Waits doubtless has this album on his iPod." robotfist.com
Becky Forsyth - immense guitar Emma Harper - vocals, guitar Rick Hambleton - drums Jacob Stow - bass
The band met at the hazy late night lock-ins and never-ending jam sessions at Emma's pub in west Bristol. Becky was the overwrought chef who produced some of the finest roasts Bristol's ever seen, and Rick worked in a nearby health food store. He began frequenting the establishment when he smelled some quality live music occuring.
A few years previously, Jake once stopped to help a stranger who had broken down by the roadside, this turned out to be Rick and thus began an immortal friendship. So Jake too followed his antenna to the tiny but perfectly formed oasis of pub-realness in the otherwise bland bar-land of Clifton. The band connected over that kind of late-night philosophy that assures you you're amongst your own kind and enough clear spirits to keep Monday off your mind.
Their first gig saw them booked for Glastonbury, Sunrise and Strawberry Fair festival, and they've gone on to stir the blood of festival goers and politically motivated people ever since. This year the calendar is stacking up with festivals again, beginning with an acoustic gig at the acclaimed Small World Festival in Kent, which will closely coincide with the release of their first album 'Are you the Moon?', launched at the Firestation, Bristol, on Saturday May 7th.
“A love letter tied to a brick. Textures of silk and glass, tarmac and grass, forest mossy and stick crunchy, divinely elegant and gurn-grinding munty. Landscapes with no fear in, a painting I’m hearing, discordant melodies searing and moan soaring annihilating anything and everything that smells of boring, and stamping on it with boots on really really hard…” – by Sym.
