Presented by: The Incubator Creative Hub
Cult calypso-blues outfit Tom Rodwell & Storehouse tour New Zealand this March – April in support of their Wood & Waste LP. This event at The Jam Factory is a special solo mid afternoon show.
Roots guitar music is rarely as evocative as on Tom Rodwell’s Wood & Waste, an album that moves easily between raw pre-rock structures and darkly sensual grooves, just as his on-stage group Storehouse speaks a secret language of rhythm & blues – vivid, propulsive and uncommon.
Although the LP charted on US radio (notching up 7 months of rotation), gained international media coverage and secured distribution with the legendary Cargo Records UK, Wood & Waste flew mostly under the radar in New Zealand, launching just as Omicron washed ashore.
The Listener’s Graham Reid was one who did take note, naming it one of his top albums of the year. “The subtle and supple shapeshifting Wood & Waste reveals depths and delights at every turn,” he wrote.
Consequently, a much-anticipated 14-date NZ concert series over late summer seeks to redress the balance, trafficking rolling and tumbling treatments of Wood & Waste material, alongside new tunes from recent tape studio sessions, stretches of improvisation and sacrilegious dives into a greasy barrel of calypso and gospel obscurities.
Uniquely Wood & Waste was tracked and mixed in the vintage style with no computers (or click-track) at all, entirely on analogue tape at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios, with mastering and vinyl lacquer-cutting by legendary LA engineer Kevin Gray. This painstaking and exceedingly rare all-analogue approach ensured the album has been picked up by audiophile specialists such as Groovy Wax (London) and Elusive Disc (US).
Rodwell & Storehouse have toured internationally since 2003, with club dates and festival appearances in the US, Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, plus numerous high-profile supports for the likes of Trinity Roots, CW Stoneking, Otis Taylor, Derek Trucks and John Butler Trio.
“You won’t find a more individual, eclectic, rhythmically compelling approach to this music, anywhere.” – Nick Bollinger, Radio NZ.
“Rodwell manages to eschew the cliches that beset blues music. By turns wild, angry, hypnotic and sensual, it’s as uncompromising as it is funky and some of the best live music I’ve seen.” – Blues in London.
“Beautiful tunes, beautiful grooves – you don’t hear that anymore, man!” Derek Trucks (The Allman Brothers).
