This mournful acoustic blues track takes you on a journey of adventure and loss and sees Wearn tapping into his blues roots with a slow poignant shuffle.

The track also features the talents of longtime collaborator Olly Parry on fiddle as well as Duncan Wilcox (of The Jake Leg Jug Band) on double bass, lending the song a depression-era feel reminiscent of bands like the Mississippi Sheiks.

An accompanying video of Pete & Olly performing the song, shot at a secret live session amongst the antiquities at Stafford’s Foregate Street Vintage Emporium will go live on YouTube concurrently.

Factory Floor will be available to stream and download on all major platforms from Friday 17th February.

Blues, Ballads & Barnstormers

Factory Floor

Running For The Hills

Just Another Sinner

Money Lenders In The Temple

AWARD-WINNING BLUESMAN RELEASES “HISTORIC” LP

Stafford, 18/10/17

On 6th November, the award-winning blues musician Pistol Pete Wearn releases a collection of traditional material recorded live in the prestigious location of England’s largest surviving timber-framed townhouse.

Timber Framed sees Wearn treat the word “roots” more literally than most, going back to his own in live performance and Mississippi folksong, but also playing that music in downhome, countrified fashion amidst the Jacobean splendour of Stafford’s historic Ancient High House – which was reputedly built, in 1594, entirely from local wood.

“Stafford is my hometown,” says the Midlands-based bluesman, who was last year named Moonshine Magazine’s solo blues artist of the year. “So the opportunity to record an album in its most recognisable landmark was too good to miss.”

The record sees Wearn interpret songs made famous by everyone from Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson to Hound Dog Taylor – but also softer traditionals which bring out the folkier side of this often wild slide guitarist, such as “Crawdad Hole” and “KC Railroad Blues”.

“I’ve loved this music since I was a teenager, and it seemed like the right point in my career to return to it,” Wearn explains. “There’s a lot to play with in these deceptively simple tunes, and the live environment is a great place to explore those possibilities.”

Wearn’s last studio album, 2016’s Service Station Coffee, featured a set of largely self-penned numbers, and was described by Maverick magazine as “Suberb British blues”. Timber Framed appears ahead of a second studio album slated for next year, and establishes Wearn as a unique interpreter of blues standards.

Recorded before an audience amidst exhibits of Ancient Egyptian artefacts and the museum of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, this storied album also features the mandolin and vocals of singer-songwriter Dan Hartland (“Absolutely gorgeous – what an incredible voice,” BBC Introducing). It will be led by the single, “Gonna Look Just Like A Monkey (When You Get Old)”.

“I always enjoy the element of humour in a lot of old blues songs” opines Wearn. “When I first heard this old hokum tune I rather identified with its message of encroaching hair growth and knobbly knees, and when we play it live I always enjoy watching the audience break into a smile as we reach the punchline at the end of each verse”.

Something of the atmosphere and warmth of the building in which the album was recorded finds its way into these choice cuts. In its time, Stafford's Ancient High House has played host to luminaries such as King Charles I - and has now seen the ghosts of the Mississippi bluesmen pay a haunting visit.Timber Framed offers a rootsy, even woody, reanimation of some of the best songs in the blues canon.

Timber Framed

Gonna Look Just Like A Monkey (When You Get Old)

Fare Thee Well

AWARD-WINNING BLUESMAN HEADS DOWN-COUNTRY FOR TRIO RELEASE

Pistol Pete Wearn, twice crowned Blues artist of the year by Moonshine Magazine, releases Pistol Pete Wearn and the Wildwood Flowers on 20th September 2019.

The EP takes a more Americana-focused approach than Wearn’s earlier Delta-driven work, and acts as a showcase for his mature songwriting. It is performed on traditional instruments – including fiddle and autoharp - by a trio that features Wearn himself on guitar and lead vocals.

“Coming off of my 2018 European tour,” he explains, “a new project in which I could express some more personal feelings and thoughts - away from the rawer, bluesier sound I’d been playing - made a lot of sense.”


An Adventure in Country Music

Country music is having a moment on the British music scene, recently being named as the fastest growing genre in the country. Wearn’s enthusiasm for the form goes back much further, however, and is part of his more general love of American roots music.

“Although this release is a departure for my music, the songs are also very much a progression,” Wearn says. “I love artists like Gillian Welch and Willie Watson, who take country music back to its rawer beginnings. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

The trio is completed by BBC Introducing favourite Helena Francesca on backing vocals and autoharp, and Olly Parry on fiddle. The musicians met in their native town of Stafford, where one of the leafier suburbs, Wildwood, shares its name with the titular flower in a famous song by country royalty The Carter Family.


Personal, Emotive Songcraft

The songs performed by the trio were all written by Wearn, and emphasise the personal and emotional.

On evocative opener “Young, Free and Beautiful”, Wearn sings of being happy to “sink into my middle years” alongside a loved one, as Helena Francesca’s soaring backing vocals lift the sentiment towards the redemptive. On the snarling “What Kind of Man”, meanwhile, Olly Parry’s fiddle bites and snipes at a target of Wearn’s ire: “Is it easy for a man like you to sleep at night?” he asks as Parry plays.

Melody is another focus of the songs: on “In A Cold Cold Jail”, attentive listeners will recognise in Wearn’s wry delivery an echo of Jimmy Rodgers; in “’68 Harmony”, the trio paint a shimmering and memorable picture of a storied guitar: strummed across different generations, it finds new life each time. This motif of passing down a tradition is as good a metaphor as any for the Wildwood Flowers’ fresh take on a time-honoured music.

Pistol Pete Wearn

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