Chris Wood
Wednesday 21st 7:30pm The Source Tipperary €16/14 -0504 90204 www.thesourceartscentre.ie
Thursday 22nd 7:30pmThe Linenhall Castlebar €15/12 -094 9023733
Sunday 25th 7:30pm Whelan's Dublin €15 -1890 200078
Monday 26th 7:30pm The Crane Bar Galway €15/12 -091 587419
Tuesday 27th 8pm Dolan's Upstairs Limerick €16/12 -061 314483 www.dolanspub.com
Wednesday 28th 8pm Triskel Cork €15/12 -021 427 2022
Thursday 29th 7pm Airfield House Dundrum €15/12 -01 298 4301 www.airfield.ie
Friday 30th 7:30pm Glór Ennis €15/12 -065 6843103
Saturday 31st 8pm Belmullet Arts Centre (Áras Inis Gluaire ) Mayo €10/7 -087 668 0121
"With gentle intelligence he weaves the tradition with his own modern parables and his writing shares the same timeless quality as Richard Thompson at his best".
The Observer
"A lot of wimpy garbage is being hailed as part of a brave new world for folk music - they might want to listen to this guy."
MOJO *****
"His is a world populated by glorious minor chords, life-affirming songs and stomach-churning tales of urban decay. It's a stark terrain he navigates, ….Wood's ferocious musicality is everywhere."
The Irish Times
It's easy to understand why Chris Wood has emerged as a talisman for the current revival in the fortunes of British folk music. His bold arrangements reinvigorate the old ballads and reveal a steadfast faith in the poignancy of song, and the same unaffected honesty runs through his own compositions, his innate storyteller's instinct complimented by an understated and potent musicality.
Like a Woody Guthrie or Ewan McColl, it is his ability to lucidly distil the seemingly ordinary and everyday, which sets him apart from the songwriting herd. Considering himself more messenger than sage, Wood claims "my music has at its heart that most prolific of all writers: anon", a democratic sentiment infused throughout his acclaimed 2005 release, The Lark Descending. Nominated for multiple awards at the BBC Folk Awards, this stark and unadorned solo opus has invited the warmest of receptions from an unusually wide spectrum.
The Irish Times described him as 'the renaissance man of English folk', apt for a man who started his career in the embryonic Oysterband. He has written music for the RSC and the National Theatre, collaborated with seminal artists like Martin Carthy and Andy Irvine, and now co–leads The English Acoustic Collective. A champion of folk music as social history, he's also a highly regarded pedagogue, and is often a faculty guest at the University of Limerick.
His first Irish tour will be a solo affair, all the better to fully appreciate this independent-minded artist. Chris Wood rejects the myopia of the singer/songwriter vogue, and his riposte is a persuasive argument for simplicity and sincerity, compassion and intelligence.
