Bringing  Americana, Bluegrass, and other kinds of Twang to Shrewsbury, UK                                                                                              Welcome! Details of upcoming shows are below. See details of past events here, or contact us here, or make friends with the facebook page.

All shows take place in the gorgeous Ballroom  at the Lion Hotel, Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury, SY1 1UY

Tickets now available for
Shrewsbury The Lion Hotel Ballroom
from www.WeGotTickets.com

Will Kaufman is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Central Lancashire, England. He has given his Woody Guthrie presentations at such major events as the Glastonbury Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, the Chester Literature Festival, the Big Session, the Whitby Folk Festival and the Piacenza Literature and Blues Festival in Italy. He has also performed at countless European and American universities, trades clubs, folk clubs and union halls.

Will Kaufman's WOODY GUTHRIE: HARD TIMES AND HARD TRAVELIN' is a captivating "live documentary" that sets the songs of Woody Guthrie in the context of the American 1930s - the Dust Bowl, the Depression, the New Deal and the state of popular music itself. Such hard-hitting Guthrie songs as "Vigilante Man", "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "I Ain't Got No Home" are brought into conversation with other relevant songs - from Joe Hill's "The Preacher and the Slave" to "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". Altogether the show highlights the blending of music and radical politics that marks Guthrie's most powerful work.

Thursday 14th June

Prof. Will Kaufman presents:

Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin'

"witty, provocative and moving"

Plus support from the New Twang Trio          

Tickets £8 (£4 for under 16s) from;

WeGotTickets (use banner above) or 

Pengwern Books, Market Hall, Shrewsbury

 
"No one can understand the American people without listening to Woody Guthrie. Will Kaufman's doing important work here."  Tom Paxton

"I thank Will Kaufman for introducing a new generation of Europeans to 'the other America'. It's a wonderful job he's doing." Pete Seeger

 

About New Twang Promotions

It all sorta started several decades ago with the purchase of 'Almost Blue' by Elvis Costello. Over the years the attachment to the twang-beat ebbed and flowed. There were good times with Lyle Lovett and Iris DeMent. Discovering Jerry Garcia's Old-Timey side was a revelation. But there are distractions a-plenty, and then the alt. country scene singularly failed to stop Dubbya, so it didn't always feel just right....

But now, older but not much wiser, the yearning is strong: for authentic acoustic adventures, for high-lonesome songs, for blazin' pickin' and strummin' and bowin'; for music with a flavour of the strong stuff that, with all the contradictions, the other side of the atlantic seems to keep on providin'.  

So here we are. A newcomer to the scene with the serious intention to provide, for those with the inclination, some memorable adventures in the New Twang.