Diverse Vinyl

Diverse Vinyl is the UK's largest independent retailer of brand new LP's.

Here are some of their releases and news updates, but don't forget to visit their web site at click here to view the full range and more importantly visit them at the show!

Simone Felice

This is a bit of an exclusive for Diverse Records. Simone got in touch with us and told us that he'd recorded a solo album. He'd re-recorded a host of The Duke & The King and Felice Brothers songs with just him, a microphone and an acoustic guitar. It was going to coincide with his solo tour of the UK and be sold on merch stands. Then came the bombshell, 'do you want to release it on vinyl?'.

Of course, we said yes. It sounds amazing. For those of you that like a back story, Simone was rushed into hospital a couple of months ago, a post appeared on his website saying...

'We must tell you all, with a heaviness we cannot convey of the news that our dearest brother Simone Felice was rushed late last night to Albany Medical Center. Simone has been scheduled for emergency open-heart surgery as a result of Aortic Stenosis.'

Obviously this was shocking news to his band, to his fans and to me and Paul. Luckily he pulled through and is keen to get back on the road. This album was recorded during his recovery and is Simone at his raw and emotional best.

Here's Simone's post-op message to his fans:

'I'm alive. Got my breast-bone sawed in two and my lungs collapsed and the main valve of my heart replaced by a carbon device that ticks like a pocket watch to the beat of my blood for the rest of my days, but I'm alive. Strange days indeed. What a wild thing to learn from the doctor: that for years you've been existing off 1/8th of the blood and oxygen your body and brain need, that he's baffled your still alive, that you would've surely died within the next year. Before I could say 'It's the day of the big surprise' I was under the knife. I want everybody who prayed for me or sent me their warm thoughts, to know that your goodness did not fall on deaf ears, I'm convinced that in some way I must have received every last one, and that all the love I've been shown in this hard time has indeed helped me make it through and to heal up so well and quickly.'

Joan Baez

For the past nearly 50 years, as a singer, musician, social activist, and goodwill ambassador, Joan Baez has kept her pact with the spirit of her voice.

Throughout her career, she has followed a pattern of mutual mentoring, begun when she first met Bob Dylan. She continues the pattern with striking results on recent tours that have included onstage collaborations with a range of talented young writers and performers, including Dar Williams, Eliza Carthy, and Josh Ritter among others. And it was on this superb album, originally from 1997 where some of those friendships were set in stone, as Joan tackles a variety of expertly penned and arranged tracks by the likes of Dar Williams, Sinead Lohan, Richard Shindell, Betty Elders, and Mark Addison.

We're absolutely delighted to announce "Gone From Danger" as release number 22 on Diverse Records. A single 180g LP in a gatefold sleeve is due in June.

"The ability to serve as a lightning rod for artists whose talent complements - that is, completes, amplifies - your own unique abilities, that is a rare quality, indeed. It is a quality that came to Joan Baez very early in her career, and there are indications that it even preceded her career (her professional career). As early as her coffee house days in 1958 and '59, learning her craft from friends, fellow travellers, old and new recordings, Joan's instincts sharpened. She learned to draw from those sources who could heighten her artistry, and to introduce her audiences to music and musicians who appealed to her, and whom she felt assured would appeal to those audiences as well.

Gone From Danger is a reminder of the complex musical roads that Joan Baez has travelled these past two decades or so, and the marvellously talented artists that she has mentored along the way, who have travelled on her "bus" and then driven off to find their own pathways. As Joan's friend Dar wrote, "She turned round the corner with music around her. She gave me the language that keeps me alive ..." - Arthur Levy, January 2009

Church Prophet

At last we can announce the first release of 2010 on Diverse Records will be the latest album by Chuch Prophet. "Let Freedom Ring" is the ninth solo LP by the former Green On Red guitarist, who it would seem, has built up an incredibly loyal band of followers since going solo in 1990.

Prophet started his wild ride back in 1984, when Green on Red, the seminal purveyors of American Rock-Roots, plucked him out of Berkeley, CA and threw him in the van for an eight-year ride, and the recording of as many albums. Since then Prophet has recorded nine amazing solo albums and toured and recorded with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, Cake, and Jonathan Richman, not to mention production credits for Warren Zevon, Alejandro Escovedo and Kelly Willis. Ryan Adams, Solomon Burke and Heart have recorded his songs, along with a host of others. Prophet has never been one to rest on his laurels and ride it out. For his ninth solo album "Let Freedom Ring", Chuck reached out to some musicians and talked them into going down to Mexico City, The Biggest City in the World (pop. 25 million). Recorded at Estudio 19, a state-of-the-art studio (well, circa 1958 state-of-the-art anyway) with Greg Leisz (Beck, Wilco, Emmylou Harris) co-producing. Within three days of arriving swine flu broke out and the indignity of having to wear blue surgical masks just to fit in.

Over the course of the next eight days, the band set about recording Let Freedom Ring!, enduring a poorly timed blackout, shakedowns by the Policia, and a 6.4 earthquake mid-take - Mexico City might only be 4 hours away by plane but it might as well have been on the other side of the moon. But whilst mayhem ensued, the band buckled down to the task in hand, all set up together in a tight little bamboo lined room with the amps cranked. Chuck played his Fender Squire, Kelly Stoltz on backing vocals, Rusty Miller (Jason Lyte's band) played bass while Drummer Ernest "Boom" Carter turned his sticks into kindling. Carter played on Springsteen's "Born To Run" - he promptly quit the E Street Band after they spent 6 months recording it. The results can be heard from the Clash inspired opener to the power pop of Let Freedom Ring' and the Eddie Cochran infused 'Good Time Crowd'.

"Let Freedom Ring" will be mastered at Abbey Road studios from the original 24bit master files, and is likely to be released in late May.

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