SEAN McCONNELL ANNOUNCES UK & EUROPEAN HEADLINE SHOWS IN
FEBRUARY 2020
LONDON, UK – (5th Nov 2019) – Massachusetts-born, Nashville-based
singer/songwriter Sean McConnell, who has appeared in the
UK no less than three times during 2019 - opening shows with Ashley
Monroe, a performance at The Long Road festival and a recent run of
dates with Ashley McBryde - has announced his first
headline tour outside the USA in February 2020. With thirteen dates across the
UK & Europe including a London show at St Pancras Old Church, he will be
showcasing new material along with songs from his critically acclaimed 'Secondhand Smoke' album, released earlier this
year.
Along with being a highly respected performer within the
Americana and folk scenes, McConnell's music is uniquely positioned to be
familiar to country fans, having written songs for some of the genre's biggest
names, credited with some of the most significant hits of the last twelve
months; including Little Big Town's 'The Daughters'
and Brett Young's 'Mercy'.
Check out the new live video of album favourite ‘Shaky
Bridges’ featuring the McCrary Sisters, filmed at his Nashville
album launch earlier in the year:
Tickets went on sale November 8th 2019 at
10am GMT. Full dates below:
UK & European Dates
Fri 7th February 2020 - The Crofters Rights, Bristol (Website; Facebook ,117-119 Stokes Croft BS1 3RW)
Sun 9th February 2020
- The Limelight 2, Belfast (7, Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, BT2
8HD)
Tues 11th February
2020 - Whelan’s, Dublin, IE (25 Wexford Street Dublin 2)
Weds 12th February
2020 - The
Castle Hotel, Manchester (66 Oldham Street, Manchester M4 1LE) Ticketweb
Thurs 13th February
2020 - St Pancras Old Church, London (Pancras Road, Kings Cross, NW1 1UL) Ticketweb
Sat 15th February 2020
- Paradiso-Noord, Amsterdam, NL - (Tuinzaal)
Sun 16th February
2020 - Musik & Frieden, Berlin, DE
Mon 17th February 2020
– Nochtwache, Hamburg, DE
19th February 2020 –
Kulturkvarteret, Kristianstad, SE
20th February 2020
– Twang, Stockholm, SE
21st February 2020
– Tryckhallen, Falkenberg, SE
22nd February 2020
– Krosset, Oslo, NOR
CONNECT with Sean McConnell:
ABOUT
SEAN McCONNELL + ‘SECONDHAND SMOKE’:
As instant gratification becomes the norm and certainty is worn as armour, Sean McConnell is choosing patience and ambiguity––especially when it comes to himself. “I think embracing the blurry lines is a sign of getting older and just having more life experience,” he says. “It can be healthy to break your own boxes.”
As instant gratification becomes the norm and certainty is worn as armour, Sean McConnell is choosing patience and ambiguity––especially when it comes to himself. “I think embracing the blurry lines is a sign of getting older and just having more life experience,” he says. “It can be healthy to break your own boxes.”
Sean is
home in Nashville, reflecting on the path he’s taken to recording Secondhand
Smoke, his 13th album. A cohesive collection of modern folk music,
Secondhand Smoke asks provocative questions about how we become who we are,
what and whom we love, and the growth, pain, and freedom that come with
accepting that some answers might elude us forever.
“The
older I get, the more I find that is what it’s all about––that there is no way
to answer it all,” Sean says. “Being comfortable with mystery is a positive
thing in all aspects of our lives. I definitely explore that in these songs.”
A
grassroots following now hundreds of thousands deep has turned to Sean for that
kind of musical exploration for almost 20 years. Tim McGraw, Martina McBride,
Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts, Meat Loaf, Jake Owen, Brothers Osborne, Christina
Aguilera, Buddy Miller and more have all recorded his songs––a dizzying
list that spans not just styles, but generations. Success shows no sign of
slowing: Sean earned his first no.1 single on country charts in early
2018 with breakout artist Brett Young’s delivery of “Mercy,”
which the two co-wrote. As a performer, Sean packs listening rooms and quiets
unruly bar crowds. His sound––a warm tenor painting vivid stories over acoustic
guitar often cushioned by keys or other strings––has prompted a diverse range
of music scenes from the storied Boston folk community to Texas’s defiantly
self-sovereign camp to warmly claim Sean as one of their own.
“My
payoff is just making the music,” Sean says, then smiles. “Everything else is
bonus.”
At 34
years-old, Sean has the catalog of artists twice his age. He released his first
album at just 15, and until his acclaimed eponymous record in 2015, he did it
all independently. “Bootstrapping your own career, you get to build at an
organic pace that allows you to grow with your music,” he says. “It teaches you
how most musicians do it. Overnight success is not the rule––it’s the
exception. Most of us are doing it the other way.”
Sean’s
first lessons in bootstrapping came from watching his parents, two professional
musicians in Massachusetts. “I remember being obsessed with the smallest
things, like the gig bag my dad would put all his gear in––his cables, his
capos, and his strings,” Sean says. “Everything about music appealed to me.
From an early age, I was just taken with it.” He picked up guitar and began
writing about 10––around the same time his family moved from Massachusetts to
Georgia. He still remembers the first song he wrote. “It was called ‘Paper
People,’” he says, with a laugh. “I wrote it when we moved. It was about
dealing with those feelings of leaving family and meeting all these people I
didn’t know.” Typical 10-year-old song fodder.
SECONDHAND
SMOKE is a stunning portrait of that Argus-eyed little boy, all grown
up and grappling with what that entails. Recorded and produced by Sean over two
months in his home studio, the album is a bona fide musical rarity: a 13-song
set given time to marinate in its artist’s often isolated care. Excluding
strings and synths, Sean played the instruments on the record. He co-wrote
three songs and wrote the rest alone. The result is an intimate look not just
at a moment in Sean’s life, but at unhurried creativity’s potential. “It was an
amazingly intoxicating experience,” Sean says of the process. “This time
around, there was no clock. I could create when the inspiration hit––it could
be two or three in the morning. It felt amazing. Total creative freedom. No
middle man, no reason for me not to see every thought through to completion.”
Brooding
track “I Could Have been an Angel” sets the album’s tone: a
reimagined 40 days shared by Jesus and the devil, wherein Satan wistfully
points to his own promising beginning, shattered. The two set a pattern that is
played out between humans next. The song is achingly sad, punctuated by
mournful strings and carried by Sean’s sublime vocals. “That image in the first
verse with Jesus and the devil flows into this bigger picture of how any of us
could be anybody else, and how our circumstances dictate who we are and why,”
Sean says.
Sean has
a way of taking familiar stories––often with biblical roots––and revealing what
they say about all of us now. In Sean’s hands, tales that once felt specific,
or even narrow and unapproachably religious, unfold into universal longing and
exchanges that feel like they were pulled yesterday from our own backyards.
Clean and snarling electric guitar kicks off “Rest My Head,” as
Sean explores compromise to haunting effect. He starts with Judas then turns
relentlessly inward. “These are stories that people are familiar with, and they
steer the ship in a certain direction, then leave you off at this ocean of
possibilities that we didn’t plan on the story taking us to,” Sean says.
With its
easy intelligence, lyrical cadence, and clear vocals dotted by “woo-oohs,” “Here
We Go” demands comparisons to Paul Simon. “Wrong Side of Town”
occupies the same rarified air. Over moody keys, Sean describes unfulfilled
hopes born in a place defined by rust. “Greetings from Niagara Falls”
explores how lonely following a dream can be. Standout “Shaky Bridges”
pokes holes in the illusion of perfection and black-and-white choices.
Gospel-tinged harmony singers back Sean’s honeyed delivery to create a
goosebumps-inducing message that comforts even as it undermines what we think
we know.
Distorted
and brimming with desperation, “Say Goodbye” picks up on subtle
changes that could foreshadow a relationship’s end. Featuring elaborate imagery,
“The Devil’s Ball” reaches for love after rejection. Sweeping “I
Don’t Want to Know” pleads for more of the same, whether it’s real or
not, while empathetic “Another Song about a Broken Heart” recalls
an ill-fated affair.
Imbued
with grace that winsome strings help convey, “Everything That’s Good”
is a stunning love song, written for Sean’s daughter. He calls it out as a
favourite, along with the album’s title track. Cigarettes lit during rides in a
smoky sedan bring a relationship between father and son to life. The song is
personal, painful, beautiful, and forgiving.
“Music is
a nuanced and multilevel experience,” Sean says. “Fewer and fewer people are
taking the time to sit down and really listen to a song. I hope people give
this record that space, and then just go on that journey––whatever that journey
is, because it’s going to be different for everybody. I think that’s what music
does best.”
