My second new album of 2021 ‘A Northern Coastal Town’ will go live on all streaming platforms from Monday August 2nd, and I’d dearly love you to hear it.

Comprising 9 new songs, the album features my long-term collaborator Rebekah Findlay on 7, including two stunning vocals. I am used to Rebekah’s magic dust being sprinkled on my songs after seven years of working together, but here she takes those songs to entirely new levels and the results are stunning.

‘A Northern Coastal Town’ is part of my ‘People’s History’ series which includes the two ‘Potter’s Field’ albums, ‘No Pasaran’, ‘Never Be Defeated’ and ‘Headscarves & Hurricanes’, albums in which I try to tell the stories of major events as they unfolded through the eyes of those who were there. With these songs we’re taking you back to the nights of May 7/8/9 1941 and the worst nights of The Blitz in Hull.

It’s part social history and part family history. My Great Aunt Ida was killed when a parachute mine dropped on 83 Albany Street killing her, her mother-in-law Ada, and her youngest daughter Sylvia. Her eldest daughter, Gwendoline, had stayed home that night and survived. I’ve coupled their stories with those of Albert and Esther Baker, a husband a wife working for the fire service during the air raids, and between the two parallel narratives I’ve attempted to paint a picture of real lives witnessing catastrophic events, and their impact. In this way I hope I’ve told a true story which is often forgotten, that of ordinary people dealing with death and mass destruction on the Home Front.

I could not have written these songs without two books: Nick Cooper’s ‘City On Fire’ and Esther Baker’s ‘A City In Flames’ written with the help of her son Howard. Both of these I highly recommend, and they helped me fill in the blanks in my knowledge of events and gave me the confidence to start writing knowing I was armed with all I’d need to close my eyes and step into the past once more.

You can stream the album already at:

https://joesolomusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-northern-coastal-town-hull-in-the-blitz

And you can also advance order the limited edition CD while you’re there. Discs will be dispatched in mid-August.

Please take a little time to hit the link and have a listen. It’s worth it.

Thank you
Joe