3300 Miles – New Jersey to Edinburgh: A TransAtlantic Songwriter’s Circle

Songwriters from Scotland (Annie Booth, Seán McLaughlin) and the United States (Andy Krikun, Dan Sheehan) exchange performances and stories of songs inspired by life in the current times in the UK and the USA.

Performed in an intimate song circle format.  Ceilidh follow upstairs in the large hall (separate admission, details here).

The Performers…

Annie Booth is an emerging Edinburgh-based singer, songwriter and instrumentalist with a fiercely emotive voice.  Her debut album An Unforgiving Light was lauded as Roddy Hart’s “Record of Note” (BBC Radio Scotland) and featured in Vic Galloway’s Best Albums of 2017.  2018 saw Booth perform at the BBC’s Quay Sessions, and appearing at festivals including XpoNorth, Celtic Connections, Tenement Trail and Kelburn’s Garden Party (The Skinny Stage).  Her 2019 EP Spectral features production from Chris McCrory (Catholic Action, Siobhan Wilson), resulting in an understated yet moving collection of melancholic tracks.   It has been championed by the likes of Roddy Hart, Nicola Meighan and Janice Forsyth, and receiving praise from the Scottish Alternative Music Awards, The Skinny and The List.

With his indie rock band Dante on hiatus, singer-songwriter, Seán R McLaughlin has kept himself busy with a new folksy sister project entitled The Wind-Up Crows. With releases coming later in the year, listeners should expect quite a departure from Dante’s last record, I Wear Your Weight with Mine (2018). Of the new material, McLaughlin states it’s still my writing so it will definitely be recognisable to those who like the Dante records, but I’m really trying to push myself into simplifying what I do with songs… stripping back the arrangements, so the that songs stand up on their own, with or without a band…”  Having worked regularly with Idlewild’s Rod Jones, and Frightened Rabbit’s Andy Monaghan, McLaughlin shows a care and attention to songwriting that has won support and critical acclaim from the likes of Clash, Artrocker Magazine, BBC 6 Music, The National, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Rapal, The Sun, The Scotsman and The Herald. 

Andy Krikun is a singer-songwriter and the founder of the Los Angeles New Wave band Andy and the Rattlesnakes.  Following the release of the band’s compilation album Last Summer to Dance in 2006, the L.A. Weekly proclaimed, “Andy Krikun’s Rattlesnakes were one of the great lost, eclectic underground rock & roll bands in the early 80s,” Their unique cover of Neil Diamond’s Solitary Man was distributed nationally, received nationwide airplay, and was chosen by the L.A. Weekly as “Single of the Month.”  Their single Patience was recorded for Elton John’s Rocket Records and televised on the USA Network’s New Wave Theatre.  Third World Wives was included on the anthology, The D.I.Y. Album: Ten of America’s Best New Bands, along with Black Flag, Red Rockers, and Dreamers.  Andy is currently completing a new album with the band’s original 1981 lineup with all new material, scheduled for release in 2020.

Dan Sheehan has toured the U.S., U.K., Ireland and Spain as a solo performer and with rock bands The Dan Sheehan Conspiracy and Banter, garnering airplay around the world and earning two awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.  His current project, Tales from Earth Incorporated is a concept album and live extravaganza about greed vs. environmental and economic justice.  Sheehan has recorded or performed with members of Morrissey, Yes, the Doors, and Pearl Jam and opened for Kila, the Meat Puppets and Courtney Love.  Often performing with a large ensemble consisting of rock band, horns, strings, and world instruments, Sheehan will be stripping things down for a solo tour of the U.K. and beyond this August.