Coda Music Agency

The Handsome Family

Wednesday 25 June 7.30pm £12.50

New album Last Days Of Wonder out now on Loose

Album Of The Week - 4 Stars - The Independent (Friday)

"...the Handsomes are making vintage magic in a world of their own" - 4 Stars - The Independent (Saturday)

Over the last nine years, Brett and Rennie Sparks (aka The Handsome Family) have recorded a series of albums that has established them as one of America's finest songwriting partnerships and has seen them hailed as "country music's answer to the White Stripes" and by critic Greil Marcus as "the Beatles of the folk world". Until relatively recently this married couple of eighteen years were a well kept secret - but a punishing tour schedule and word of mouth has meant sell-out concerts across the UK and Europe, extensive coverage in the national press, the patronage of Ringo Starr on USA chat shows, and high profile appearances on top rated BBC TV and radio that include The Jonathan Ross Show, Andy Kershaw's award winning world music programme for Radio 3 and Later With Jools Holland. More recently they appeared in Jim White's Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus - an award winning Deep South travelogue that found them discussing in the back of a car (as only Brett and Rennie could) the meaning of faith, and performing When That Helicopter Comes in the middle of a swamp.

In addition the band have had songs covered by everyone from Cerys Matthews (Weightless Again - Cockahoop) to Christy Moore (So Much Wine/Peace In The Valley - Burning Times) and joined the likes of Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright and Linda Thompson for Hal Willner's Came So Far For Beauty - a musical celebration of the songs of Leonard Cohen that was performed for three sell-out nights at the Sydney Opera House, Brighton, Dublin, and to over ten thousand people in NYC. Last year the Sparks appeared in I'm Your Man - a feature documentary examining the work of Cohen. They've also cropped up in several works of fiction and appeared on The Oyster Band's The Big Session live project - winner of 'best group' in Radio 2's 2005 Folk Awards.

www.handsomefamily.com
www.myspace.com/thehandsomefamily

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The MsFits

Women on the Verge of a T Junction

Thursday 18 September 7.30pm £6.00 (£5.00)

Three women, three generations, three agendas, one lapse of concentration, all it takes to reduce a grown AA man to tears! No-one's hurt but who is to blame? Not Bessie, 82, she might have trouble seeing over the steering wheel, but she drove four wheel drives over mine fields in '45! Not Liz, 53, she may be on her 5th driving test, but this time she HAS to pass! Not Ellie, 38, she may have a mobile phone stuck to her ear, but she is a Whizz at multi-tasking! Three women on a collision course that will change their lives forever... and seriously damage their rear view mirrors! When their cars collide at a T junction three very different lives get as entangled as their bumpers in another one woman tour de force from The MsFits.

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