Listen Up - The Lost Trades
A look at some of the emerging artists of the acoustic roots & folk circuit
This month we focus on The Lost Trades who are a trio of Wiltshire based singer songwriters (Jamie R Hawkins, Phil Cooper and Tamsin Quin) who, brought together by a mutual love of folk and roots music, have joined forces for a three part harmony, modern folk adventure. Performing both collectively and individually penned songs, The Lost Trades tell carefully crafted stories using an array of stringed instruments and light percussion, all lovingly stitched together with soaring vocal harmonies.
How would you describe your music?
The biggest thing that stands out about our sound is our love of three part close harmony, but with three songwriters in the band, there's a lot of variation in how the songs are crafted, and there's no lead vocalist, every voice has equal importance. We have a mutual love of the Laurel Canyon style American folk-pop thing, so there's a Crosby Stills and Nash, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac (Buckingham/Nicks) vibe going on. It's a little unusual in a three part harmony group to have a two male, one female set up, so I guess we play on that quite a bit too.
What has been your highlight so far?
Well, our timing has been spectacularly bad so far! We played our first gig just before the UK went into total lockdown, which meant the remaining dates on that first tour were all cancelled! We have managed to do a handful of live shows since restrictions were lifted, but that debut show remains the highlight so far, just because it was the result of months of hard work making sure we were ready and polished. The atmosphere in the room was electric, the audience were clearly just as excited about this new chapter as we were.
What plans regarding recordings, video, tours etc do you have for the future?
It's obviously difficult to make plans at the moment, but we're making good progress recording our debut album, which should be out early next year. Performing live is our absolute favourite thing, though so naturally we can't wait until we can rearrange our cancelled tour, possibly adding a few more dates in as well. We'll be jumping on that as soon as we possibly can. We've also been promised slots at all the festivals that got cancelled this year. In the meantime we're picking up the odd gig where we can, as well as doing the odd live stream. The best way to keep up to date is follow us on all the social media places (@thelosttrades)
Is there anything else you would like to say or any message to our readers?
It would be remiss not to mention that we've got music and merchandise at thelosttrades.bandcamp.com and our first single (an arrangement of the traditional spiritual Down To The River) is on Spotify. Away from self promotion, we'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that has continued to support grassroots music during an incredibly difficult time. Whether it's watching a live stream, sharing things on social media, buying merch or getting to a socially distanced show - we appreciate your efforts! The same goes for those who work behind the scenes in the music industry, promoters, venues, sound engineers and so on, who are making compromises left right and centre to keep the music alive.
For more details:
www.thelosttrades.com
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Fatea Showcase Sessions
The Fatea Showcase Sessions are a series of downloads featuring acts that we've really enjoyed and think that more people should get the chance to hear.
Pirate is the current session and features 16 fantastic artists check out the website to find out more about them and download your copy
www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk for all the artist information.