Nick Harper & The Wilderness Kids
After leaving a streak of rip-roaring, celebratory shows in 2016, road-testing his back catalogue of 12 albums, Nick Harper & The Wilderness Kids (aka Port Erin) are back with a new album Lies! Lies! Lies! and UK tour for 2017.
Amidst a backdrop of flags being changed and mottos applied, ‘’350 million reasons why, written on the side of the bus’’, sees Nick and The Kids nailing their colours to the mast and ready to roll.
The album was recorded in Studio La Fabrique, France (Radiohead- Moon Shaped Pool, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds-Push the Sky Away) with the legendary producer Tchad Blake (The Black Keys, Pearl Jam, T-Bone, Peter Gabriel). Blake brings his masterful touch to the unceasingly creative cauldron of Nick, his songs and now, his band.
‘The Wilderness Kids’ met up with the renowned solo acoustic singer-songwriter at a record store day event, where they jammed on some of Nick’s tracks from his ‘Best of’ triple LP set ‘The Wilderness Years’. Nick immediately realised the potential, promptly picked up a baritone electric guitar and the pace hasn’t let up since. The exciting energy and chemistry between the 4 has had Nick’s fans in rapture and the combination of the much-loved songwriter added to the zest present in this new gang, made capturing the zeitgeist in the words and music of the new album inevitable. Lies! Lies! Lies! is an intelligent, yet exuberant album rooted very much in the now.
Fans can grab first copies of the upcoming album at the gigs on CD or LP from November 24th, in the commercial hubris of Black Friday. Initial pressings can be snatched up on the Lies! Lies! Lies! tour with a general UK release on December 1st.
Line Up
"My musical discovery of 2016" - Tom Robinson, BBC Radio 6 Music
From sell-out tours to a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Festival run via numerous radio and TV appearances to a vinyl box-set of his career retrospective - and now on to a winter tour with a band for the first time in 10 years - 2016 has been a high point for Nick Harper. He enters his third decade as a performer with a vitality that could put younger musicians to shame.
Here is an artist worth far more than the sum of his parts. His impeccable musical pedigree means nothing without the skills to back it up and skills Nick has, in his virtuoso guitar playing, song-writing and signature vocal acrobatics. Over a solo career of 9 studio albums, 2 EPs and 2 live albums - as well as the recent vinyl career retrospective - the quality of his musical output has only improved. It is no surprise that artists and producers as diverse as Squeeze, Lana Del Rey, Newton Faulkner, Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), The Levellers, Jakko Jakszyk (Level 42, King Crimson) and legendary producer Tchad Blake have collaborated with him. This is not a man easily pigeonholed into existing musical genres; Nick is very much blazing his own trail.
Nick’s full range can be heard in his last two solo albums. He moved from 2013’s ‘Riven’, an epic and lush 75-minute recording split into light and dark halves - celebrating family while railing at the state of the modern world - to 2014’s ’Nix’, an unadulterated recording made in just nine days - 9 songs with acoustic guitar and vocals, which pleased longtime fans with its evocation of his live performances.
In addition to recording and touring with a vengeance, Nick is also known for devoting his energy to fundraising projects, particularly organising Wiltshire’s Avebury Rocks festival for the Prospect Hospice where his mother died. With the Love Hope Strength cancer charity, Nick helped set a new world record by performing at the highest gig on Earth at Everest Base Camp and trekked to Machu Picchu and Mount Kilimanjaro.
In 2017 Nick is only booking to perform at a few, select festivals in the UK. There is no UK solo tour, but there are plans afoot, many irons in the fire… watch this space… But whatever path he takes, rest assured that Nick Harper is, and will remain a musical force to be reckoned with.
Nick Harper Live Nick playing 'Purple Rain' at Henry Tudor House 2016 Listen to the full back catalogue here on Bandcamp: https://nickharper.bandcamp.com "Betjemen with a guitar... Dylan for the iPod generation." Guitarist Magazine
