Music: Martin Stephenson and The Daintees

Building bridges between love and hate

Martin Stephenson and the Daintees are a British rock/folk/pop band combining elements of rockabilly, show tunes, rootsy pop, straight-ahead rock and punk. The band is fronted by songwriter/guitarist Martin Stephenson, signing with Kitchenware Records and releasing their first single in 1982.

Their best-selling and most acclaimed album Boat To Bolivia was released in 1986 and was produced by a young Gil Norton, who shortly after went on to produce The Pixies. This tour will see the band play that album in its entirety along with a selection of songs form their back catalogue, including tracks from Gladsome, Humour & Blue from 1988, Salutation Road from 1990 and The Boy’s Heart from 1992. “Simon Moran, who works for SJM national promotions company, at the end of last year he walked into one of my gigs and I hadn’t seen him for 20 years and he wanted to promote a tour with The Daintees.”

Although the Daintees split in 1992, they reformed in 2000 and have been playing the odd gig ever since, while Martin Stephenson has forged a career as a solo artist, releasing numerous albums and developing a love for folk roots music. For the most part a self-contained and independent musician with his own label, Stephenson has made a series of mail-order only acoustic projects. “It’s been a strange trip – I’ve converted my ambition to a more spiritual range.” he says from his base in the Highlands off Scotland where he has been for 17 years.

Upon Boat To Bolivia’s release the NME said it, ‘builds bridges between love and hate, between cradle and grave, between folk and pop, between the past and present’. Stephenson added, “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing – I kinda got a job as the songwriter, and they said ‘you gotta do it’, so I started writing about my family, and things that were happening to us at the time.” But he wasn’t cut out for the pressures and demands of the mainstream industry: “You might think this is nuts, but we would have all these meetings, we would have stuff in NME, the single was creeping up the charts, and at these meetings there would be panic if the single started going down… we weren’t really into promoting ourselves but what we were into was playing live.”

St George’s Church, Saturday 14 April, 7pm, £19.50