Homespun

Featuring Dave Rotheray (Beautiful South) and Sam Brown

ALBUM - 28TH JULY [changed from 21st]

Homespun came about when, in 2002, The Beautiful South took a year off from touring and recording. Songwriter and guitarist Dave Rotheray stayed at home in Hull and put his time to good use, embarking on a musical diary of his year. This project was a purely recreational venture, recorded at home with a few close musical friends, and done without any intention of commercial release. The intended light-hearted diary quickly developed into something more personal. A collection of songs emerged that were less reflections on the year and more a series of musical tributes, apologies, good-byes and thankyous to close friends and family.

It became clear that these songs required a singer who could do them justice, and the notion began to develop that this project, embarked upon purely for its own sake, could turn into an album.

After a few false starts with various singers, Dave's collaborator Tony Robinson (piano) proposed calling premiere British songstress Sam Brown to tackle the tunes. Best known for her classic single 'Stop', and possessed of a voice capable of breaking your heart and super-gluing it back together all at the same time, Sam was the perfect choice. Dave called her and a week later Sam took time out from her schedule with Jools Holland's band, drove up to Hull, and one afternoon and a few Bloody Marys later Homespun was born.

This album enjoys the best elements of The Beautiful South's unpretentious, observational pithiness that is familiar from hits like 'Rotterdam' and 'Perfect Ten'. But, with this new, intimate songwriting angle, this group of musicians and above all with Sam Brown, Rotheray has found his writer's voice. It's a little bit country, it's a little bit folk, it's a little bit pop - it's got tablespoonfuls of soul. In short Homespun is a gem.

[David Pittman Publicity and Richard Chamberlain]

Mojo magazine review of Homespun:

Beautiful South writer-guitarist Dave Rotheray in striking collaboration with singer Sam Brown

Mooching around Hull, his band on sabbatical, Dave Rotheray couldn't stop writing. Out tumbled these strange, twisty-melodied songs musing on identity, relationships and the ineffable separateness of human souls. Then, taking a dim view of his own voice, he contacted Sam Brown; ex-pop star, heart-lifting Jools Holland big band belter, dark introvert on her later solos. She sings as if his words had read her mind, it's that convincing. Amid carefully quiet acoustic guitars, unostentatious piano, fiddle or maybe trombone, she faces the enigma that "your" life is "an illustrated mystery ghost-written by yourself" (Your Radio), that when she called the police to find out where "you" had gone, the detective "dusted for your fingerprints and said you hadn't been around for years" (Footsteps). An album perched poignantly on the cusp of simplicity and sophistication.