Michael Weston King shares new video for "The Golden Hour"

"The Golden Hour" is taken from Michael Weston King's new album Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore out now via CRS. 

Read more about MWK and "The Golden Hour" on the Americana UK site right here and catch him on tour!

Michael Weston King previews new album with "La Bamba In The Rain"

Borne of grief, Michael Weston King's forthcoming album Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore is due early next year. Listen to the first track.

LINKS

Michael Weston King site: https://michaelwestonking.com/

Americana UK Michael Weston King - "La Bamba In The Rain"

Happy Birthday Michael Weston King!

Raising a glass to Michael Weston King with My Darling Clementine's update of "Stranger In The House" followed by Elvis Costello's performance with George Jones. 

Michael Weston King salutes Jackie Leven with "The Final Reel"

"The Final Reel" appears on the Jackie Leven tribute album The Wanderer and Michael Weston King's album The Struggle. 

Michael Weston King shares "Sugar" from new solo album The Struggle

Watch the video for "Sugar" – making use of Chris Blum's Levi's ad – off Michael Weston King's album The Struggle out April 1st. 

For more info about Michael Weston King's upcoming My Darling Clementine dates check out the MDC site.

Michael Weston King releasing new album The Struggle

Michael Weston King is joined by Steve Nieve & Jeb Loy Nichols on his new album, The Struggle, out April 1st via Cherry Red. 

Here's the scoop...

A musical departure for Michael Weston King from his My Darling Clementine day job of the past decade, The Struggle is a pure singer/songwriter album, rooted in the late ‘60s / early ‘70s and inspired by artists and writers such as Mickey Newbury, Jesse Winchester, John Prine, Bobby Charles, Jim Ford and early Van Morrison.

Michael Weston King is one of Britain’s most prolific troubadours within the world of Americana/country, both as a solo artist and with country duo My Darling Clementine. Back in the day, he was the leader of Alt country band The Good Sons; his songs have been covered by the likes of American folk icons Carolyn Hester and Townes Van Zandt.

Recorded Spring 2021 in a remote studio in mid Wales, this self-produced recording of new original compositions (including two co-writes with old friends Peter Case and much missed friend and collaborator Jackie Leven) was very much a collaboration with wunderkind engineer/musician Clovis Phillips. Mixing took place at Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield with Michael’s long-time collaborator/ producer Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker).

Guests on this new album include Steve Nieve (keyboardist, Elvis Costello & The Attractions), Jeb Loy Nichols and British jazz trombonist Barnaby Dickinson, along with Michael’s wife and musical partner Lou Dalgleish, and their woodwind-playing daughter Mabel Dalgleish-King.

Michael will be touring the UK, Europe and the US with My Darling Clementine from February 2022. Each show will encompass a short solo set, during which Michael will perform songs solely from ‘The Struggle’. He will also be playing a few selected solo shows in 2022 accompanied by Clovis Phillips, his collaborator on the new album.

You can pre-order Michael Weston King's forthcoming album The Struggle via Cherry Red Records right here. Check out Michael Weston King's song "The Final Reel" recorded for the Jackie Leven tribute album The Wanderer. 

Watch My Darling Clementine's video for "The Crooked Line"

Check out the version of Elvis Costello's "The Crooked Line" by My Darling Clementine bolstered by Farfisa fiend Steve Nieve. 

 

Quarantunes: Michael Weston King

Michael Weston King performs his song "Riding The Range" in honour of the late great Townes Van Zandt. 

Writes Michael...

This years Townes Van Zandt International Festival was cancelled for the obvious reason but organiser Andrea Parodi has been asking previous performers to film a Townes song so as to bring the festival online. Some really fine interpretations have been posted over the past few weeks. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Steve Forbert, James McMurtry, Malcolm Holcombe, Gurf Morlix, Andrew Hardin, Andrea himself and many more from Europe and the US. If you dig Townes, check them out. Andrea asked if I’d play my song “Riding The Range” and tell the story behind it and how it came about that Townes sang on it and then later cut his own version. So, here It is, just after Jono Mansons fine reading of one of my favourite yet more obscure TVZ songs, ‘Harms Swifts Way’. Enjoy. M x

My Darling Clementine @ Mohawk Place (Buffalo), Monday

It might be time for a road trip since My Darling Clementine isn't playing Toronto on this tour.

See My Darling Clementine @ The Dakota tonight

My Darling Clementine's How Do You Plead? album will be issued by Redeye on Sept. 4

 
LINKS
site http://www.mydarlingclementinemusic.co.uk/
FB page
Daytrotter session

How many music execs does it take to hear a hit?

My Darling Clementine's Michael Weston King and Lou Dagleish

While those in charge of struggling record labels like to blame their financial woes on illegal downloading, the real reason many are facing difficult times has more to do with a fundamental lack of vision and what people in the music business call "ears."

It's difficult for well-compensated executives to admit this but the majority of those who have signing authority simply wouldn't know a great recording if they heard it. And even if someone still working for the label did, they're now too scared to pull the trigger for fear of their capital investment wouldn't be instantaneously profitable.

Take for example the illuminating case of My Darling Clementine, the inspired male/female country duet project of UK singer/songwriter Michael Weston King and his wife Lou Dagleish. Their impressive debut disc How Do You Plead? (Drumfire) has received rave reviews across the board from venerable print publications and music blogs alike and continues to get the sort of BBC support that's very unusual for something with a twang. Yet so far, King still hasn't been able to curry any label interest in a North American deal. Everyone he's corresponded with has apparently shrugged off the offer of a finished album that's already been critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. "Thanks, but no thanks."

That might be understandable if Americana mainstays like say Bloodshot, New West, Lost Highway, Sugar Hill or Rounder already had their own top-selling male/female duet acts that could write, record and perform their own material but the fact is, they don't. Moreover, even if you put aside that radical duets concept, the sophisticated level of compositions, arrangements and musicianship on How Do You Plead? puts My Darling Clementine's debut ahead of 90% of those labels output over the past decade.

It makes you wonder what other great Americana talents U.S. major indies have foolishly slept on – well, apart from The Walkabouts, Dylan LeBlanc, The Rizdales, Caitlin Rose, The Pining, Alela Diane, Scotty Campbell, etc.

Michael Weston King revives the protest song

Between the ongoing wars, various acts of genocide and terrorism, grand-scale corruption and mismanagement within government and major financial institutions apart from the unprecedented man-made environmental disasters, it would appear there's no shortage of songwriting fodder for any  protest singers seeking to rally the masses with an truth-telling broadside or two.
Yet throughout the Katrina disaster, the global economic meltdown, the horrendous BP oil spill and the recent G8/G20 debacle, the most active finger-pointing participants in the topical song tradition of the past few decades have remained strangely silent. 
But then, who really needs a running commentary from the sorely out-of-touch old guard who've found it's much more lucrative to shill for multi-national corporations than to chill with the great unwashed.  As any historically-sussed singer/songwriter will tell you, there's already so many insightful protest tunes composed ages ago – a surprising number still have deep resonance today – that there's no need to wait around for inspiration to have the relevant songs necessary to galvanize the populace. All it takes is a little digging.

That's exactly what  UK songsmith Michael Weston King has done for his fab new album I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (Valve Records) that presents his timely reactivation of some oddly prescient songs written some 40 years ago alongside a few new brilliant compositions inspired by the  tunes he discovered while researching the project.
Perhaps the best of King's finds is the utterly magnificent Sounds Of Our Time by the late great Jim Ford best known for penning Aretha Franklin's Niki Hoeky, Bobby Womack's I'd Be Ahead (If I Could Quit While I'm Behind) and Harry Hippie and very likely Bobbie Gentry's Ode To Billie Joe for which Ford was never properly credited.


Sounds Of Our Time by Jim Ford


The song Sounds Of Our Time (co-written with Womack who sings backing vocals on Ford's soulful original version) remained unissued and unheard at the time, hidden on a one of many tapes Ford kept in a plastic bag collecting dust in his California home until Germany's Bear Family label put it out in 2007 as part of the Sounds Of Our TIme CD compiling Ford's classic Harlan County album from 1969 along with singles tracks and previously unreleased tracks. King's poignant rendition of Ford's lost anthem, with Jeb Loy Nichols ably substituting for Womack on the backing vocals, is among the album's highlights but he also delivers  rousing takes of Is There Anybody Here? and Cops Of The World by Phil Ochs but his own tunes In Time and Hey Ma, I'm Coming Home and In Spain The Dogs Are Too Tired To Bite You stand up well against updates of better known tunes by Roosevelt Sykes and ex-protest singer turned BMO pitch man Bob Dylan.
Since the releases of Germany's Valve Records aren't well distributed outside of Europe, it may be just as difficult to find a copy of King's I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier as his previous release for the label, Crawling Through The USA but hopefully he'll have a few copies of the new disc with him at the Dakota Tavern where the engaging showman be making a rare Toronto appearance playing an early show Wednesday (September 1) at 7 pm sharp. Who knows, maybe Bruce Cockburn will drop by and take some notes.


Hey Ma, I'm Coming Home by Michael Weston King



I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier



LINKS
Michael Weston King site http://www.michaelwestonking.com/
myspace http://www.myspace.com/michaelwestonking