Last night was the very first 'official' gig by the Nashville Liverpool Underground Medicine Show and after last seeing them sing in Cathy and Kevin's back yard in Austin, Texas it was a bit surreal seeing them sing again in Leo's Bar on Neville Street in Southport whilst a bunch of ladies on holiday from Blackpool danced and clapped along! The story of this lot started when Liverpool singer Mike Badger was singing on the same bill in Austin as Nashville singers Matt Gardner and Emily Grace. Mike got the Nashville pair up to sing with him during his set before going on to hang out with them and talking about getting them over for a UK tour and, lo and behold, four months later on and they're all playing together on a string of dates across the country. Check them out here or, if you're in Liverpool today, head down to Static Gallery on Roscoe Lane where they'll be playing the 4th July party that's happening this afternoon and then later on follow them down to the brilliant Company Store at The Zanzibar where you'll also get to see Sixteen Tonnes, John Fairhurst and The Baudelaire Brothers. Radio Merseyside's Spencer Leigh was also at the gig last night and after seeing them play has last minute asked them to be on his show this evening, 'On The Beat' which is broadcast from 6.30. And if you can't make it tonight then go to their My Space site and see the other dates between now and their last gig in the UK which is again at Static on July 17th!
This is the last of my recent Liverpool photos from the redeveloped Pier Head though I will be back down there for an event early next week so we'll see what that brings. But for now it's back to crowded venues and running around photographing bands as tonight is the first event for this year's Summer Pops.
Debbie Lezemore is a Liverpool based hair and make up artist, and a bloody good one at that, who I've worked with over the last few years on all kinds of work including editorial and campaign shoots. She's also finally got around to putting her work online and has her own site which can viewed by clicking here!
The collaborations below are from shoots with Rare fashion, Ethel Austin and Living Edge Magazine.
Walking With Dinosaurs is a multi million pound spectacular featuring life size dinosaurs that will be arriving at the Echo Arena in Liverpool this August. The show, which is being shown in the UK for the first time, has been rehearsing at the Echo Arena before heading off on tour and this morning I got to check out some of the 'live' dinosaurs as they roamed around the venue scaring journasilts and t.v. people.
Saturday's much talked about collaboration between OMD and The Liverpool Phil was amazing for all kinds of reasons but the best of it was that all of the songs had been reworked by different orchestral arrangers and it was far removed from being just an orchestra backing a band and making them sound bigger. The night started off with a performance of The Energy Suite by the orchestra without OMD and this was accompanied by the film that was shown alongside it when it was part of the Ding>>Dong exhibition at FACT in 2008. Energy Suite itself is a collaboration between the band, film maker Hambi Haralambous and designer Peter Saville.
Here's a very quick photo from last night's OMD gig at the Phil with the full orchestra. This was taken during the last song of the main set with the band playing Enola Gay. The night was incredible and it was amazing to see people up on their feet in The Phil and dancing to an orchestra! I'll be posting more photos over the next day or so!
I only got to catch one act down at Africa Oye yesterday and that was Daby Touré, who is also on this afternoon along with another four artists, as I had to get back to town to photograph OMD performing with The Phil which for the record was the best thing I've seen in a long time! I'll try and post a quick photo of that this morning but there's a lot to edit so they'll be going up in the week as well.
For those of you looking for something to do in Liverpool tonight then you might want to consider Antiplano at NOVAS with the Idjut Boys and Kelvin Andrews. I did some photographs at the venue and it's amazing aside from the fact that all those playing are class acts! This is Kelvin playing years ago (he hasn't really changed though) at Golden in Manchester! There's also a pre club party at Peacock on Seel Street.
This is Broken Records who played Barfly last Saturday along with Sparrow and The Workshop.
And today I'm off to check out OMD in rehearsals with The Phil before going to Africa Oye for a bit and then heading back into town for OMD's show tonight with the full orchestra! Think this could be something special!
I've said it loads before but I'll say it again and that's that Sparrow & The Workshop are one of my new favourite bands and this is them live at the Barfly last Saturday where they were supporting Broken Records. Barfly has recently been taken over and now has new local owners so things are starting to get better there as the place was a bit of a mess to say the least. First up is a properley stocked bar with beer that actually gets refrigerated and I'm sure there's a long list of other changes though speaking from a photographic point of view I'd like to see better lighting as these were shot under the dreaded dark red glow that needs converting to mono to get anything out of it. Of course, I could use a flash but at a not overly busy and very laid back folk (ish) gig the last thing I want to do is to start blasting light about the place.
This is another photograph I took whilst down at the Pier Head the other day on the Beatles Story commission. It's incredible but Liverpool is truly starting to look like an international tourist destination which is funny because later on the same day I met a real estate agent, called Bert Javelo, who was on holiday from California and he'd apparently kissed the ground when he got off the train at Lime Street as he was so happy to be in the city!!! Thoughts of kissing the floor at Lime Street aside, we met Bert and the lady he was travelling with at the Albert Dock in the afternoon and his visit happened to coincide with one by Cythia and Julian Lennon to The Beatles Story along with the Mayor of Liverpool who not only posed with them for photographs but invited them to visit him the next day at the Town Hall. Needless to say they were very very very excited and I left as the mayor's assistant was taking their numbers and arranging a time for them to visit.