2021 CMAA ‘Golden Guitar’, Australian Folk Music and Music Victoria Award winners, THE WEEPING WILLOWS (Laura Coates and Andrew Wrigglesworth) are a couple of old souls, steeped in Bluegrass tradition and draped in Gothic Americana imagery. They regale their audiences with stories of sunshine and romance, God and The Devil, murder and decay. That kind of description might make them sound like some carefully contrived concept-act but there’s something truly different about The Weeping Willows: they really mean it…
2017-2021 saw The Weeping Willows nominated for 10 x CMAA ‘Golden Guitar’ awards, 4 x Country Music Channel (CMC) awards, 2 x Australian Folk Music Awards (AFMAs), Live Act of the Year (Country) in the National Live Music Awards (NLMAs), performing at AmericanaFest (USA), Folk Alliance International (USA), Maverick Festival (UK), Port Fairy Folk Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival, Out On The Weekend and the Australian Americana Music Honours. In recent years they have supported Lukas Nelson & POTR (USA), Hayes Carll (USA), Iris DeMent (USA), Eilen Jewell (USA) and Willie Watson (USA) and completed national and international tours in support of their sophomore album, Before Darkness Comes A-Callin’, which received four-star reviews in Rolling Stone, The Australian and The Music. A Weeping Willows performance, whether live on location or caught on tape will always delight.
COPPER VIPER is an acoustic folk trio from London, comprised of prolific songwriter and guitarist Robin Joel Sangster, fiddle/mandolin player Duncan Menzies and banjo picker Dana Immanuel. Drawing inspiration from the British folk and American country/bluegrass traditions, Copper Viper’s music marries haunting melodies and intricate vocal harmonies with searing instrumental passages to create a stylistic blend that is at once familiar and unique.
The group recorded their debut album “Cut It Down, Count The Rings” at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville WA, USA with platinum-selling producer Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Brandi Carlile). Mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Gavin Lurssen (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Soundtrack, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss), the album flows smoothly between lyrical ballads and foot-stomping barn-stormers, mixing melancholy, hope, tension and joy in equal measure.
Since the release of “Cut It Down, Count The Rings” in April 2019, Copper Viper have toured extensively in the UK, Europe and Canada, performing at venues such as London’s prestigious Green Note, and the Cambridge Folk Festival where they were nominated for the Christian Raphael Prize for new artists.
“I’m thinking of the Stray Birds or the Milk Carton Kids, but British.” – Mark Radcliffe, BBC Radio 2
“What a beautiful sound… highly recommended” – Eve Blair, BBC Radio Ulster
“Mighty impressive” – Frank Hennessy, BBC Radio Wales
