Bush Gothic are band leader Jenny M. Thomas together with double bassist Dan Witton and drummer Chris Lewis, they are touring the UK to celebrate the release of their new album The Natural Selection Australian Songbook. All three members of the band have toured the world with a long list of internationally acclaimed music and theatre ensembles including Circus Oz and The Australian Opera but this is the first time they bring Bush Gothic to England.
Rattled by the bones of convicts and steeped in campfire smoke, Bush Gothic perform darker, stranger Australian folk. Defiantly modern, achingly old, this most daring of Australian bush bands perform songs of criminal women and desperate men from an era of transportation, adventure and gold.
The Natural Selection Australian Song Book was first conceived when the band were artists in residence at the historic Fryerstown School in Victoria, site of the 1853 gold rush.
Lurking in the goldfields and cemeteries, Jenny M. Thomas dragged out the old songbooks, ripped them apart and then lovingly put them back together, establishing herself as the anti-rebel of the Australian folk scene – a musician not needing to rebel against her own heritage.
The Natural Selection Australian Songbook tour
LONDON Fri Aug 19 Campfire Club – The Nest Collective
ASHFORD Sat Aug 20 Revelation St. Mary’s, Kent
OXFORD Sun Aug 21 The Jericho Tavern
BRISTOL Tue Aug 23 The Canteen
STROUD Thu Aug 25 The Prince Albert
CORSHAM Fri Aug 26 Pound Arts Centre, Wiltshire
LONDON Sat Aug 27 The Slaughtered Lamb, Clerkenwell
SHAMBLE FESTIVAL Sun Aug 28
SHEFFIELD Thu Sep 1 Hagglers Corner, South Yorkshire
OFF THE TRACKS Fri Sep 2, Derbyshire
FESTIVAL No. 6 Sep 3 – 4 Portmeirion Village, Wales
