Thursday 2 July 2015, 8pm
First show at OTO in two years for young man and old time folk musician, Frank Fairfield, who plays fiddle, guitar and banjo while singing and hollering. His spellbinding live shows channel the spirit of another era - combining his own songs and those drawn from his vast and diverse archive of tunes collected from around the world. For this show, Frank will be playing two sets.
Frank Fairfield is a sensation, even if he is not letting off fire crackers or constantly uploading to YouTube. He is a banjo picker. A fiddle hummer. A song singer. The music he plays, creates, and performs is the music that carried all of us, from all over the world, to the place (wherever that place may be) we are now. He plays the American landscape, the one he himself sees and experiences. He goes about it with the only tools necessary, as any good craftsman would. A man not competing with time, only living in his own.
From California, USA, Frank sings tunes he has worked hard to collect from around the world as well as his own well-dusted ditties. His eclectic sets feature soaring hillbilly ballads, arcane rambling songs and murder ballads delivered in a reedy tenor with that irresistible American Primitive quality. He cut his teeth as a street performer in LA and has the raw intensity and quick-fingered technique to make your hairs stand on end. Loved by many he has toured with Cass McCombs, Fleet Foxes Charlie Parr and released on his own Pawn imprint plus Jack White's Third Man records and Tompkins Square. His latest touring adventures have seen him storming OFF Festival in Poland with fiddling accomplice Zak Sokolow, as well as embarking on a string of UK dates with Richard Dawson.
