Karona Sessions are go!
Belinda O'Hooley starts the season on Monday 12 February
Happy February, everyone! What coming up in this month’s newsletter?
Belinda O’Hooley: our season opener on Monday 12 Feb
Other concerts in the next few months
Our ticket agent: Good Show
Our host venue: Dean Wood Golf Club, Up Holland, Lancashire
Our promoter gets some songwriting guidance from Boo and Reg.
Belina O’Hooley: Monday 12 February
We are absolutely thrilled to be kicking off our first full season of concerts with the superb Belinda O’Hooley. Tickets are £15 each and are selling well; this will likely sell out, so please don’t delay in grabbing your tickets.
Belinda is currently on a UK tour with her solo show, which is getting rave reviews. If you are not familiar with her work, she is one half of the hugely successful duo, O’Hooley and Tidow. They have been writing and touring for well over 10 years and achieved global fame a few years back due to their song ‘Gentleman Jack’ being used on the BBC/HBO TV series of the same name.
Here’s Belinda talking about what she will be playing on her solo tour:
"I’ll be playing piano tunes from my solo album ‘Inversions’, and singing songs from the solo album as well as the O&T back catalogue. Singing songs unaccompanied and also with accordion, telling stories of the songs and hopefully connecting with my audience.”
To give you a little flavour, here’s a video Belinda and Heidi made about the recording of ‘Inversions’:
Doors open at 7pm for a prompt 7.30pm start. Please note that there is no support on this occasion so get there early to grab the best seats! If you have any questions, please contact our promoter Ian - contact details below. This is also the very first Karona Sessions concert at our new venue, so you can also come and be part of history!
Other concerts in the next few months
On Friday 15 March, we are thrilled to be welcoming Australian singer-songwriter Liz Stringer who is on a UK solo tour. She is a superb guitarist and vocalist, and has toured as part of the great Aussie band, Midnight Oil (remember the hit ‘Beds Are Burning’?). Tickets are already selling well. The concert will be opened up by North West based singer-songwriter, Mark Dennis.
Here’s the official video of the title track from Liz’s brilliant latest album, ‘First Time Really Feeling’.
Sunday 7 April sees one of the UK’s finest songwriters coming to Up Holland: Boo Hewerdine. Boo’s credentials would take a book to fully list, but having achieved fame in the 1980s with the cult band The Bible, he has gone on to work with and write songs for many of the music industry’s finest, including Eddi Reader, Paul Young, k.d. lang, Chris Difford of Squeeze and many, many more, in addition to his own extensive and varied back catalogue. He is also a brilliant and hilarious raconteur. He is coming to us as part of his UK Home Run solo tour. The concert will be opened by Liverpool-based singer-songwriter, Harry Tonks.
Tickets for these and all Karona Sessions concerts are £15 each and available via the links.
There are many more concerts planned as you can see below, and tickets are now available for them all. They would make the ideal birthday gift for that live music lover in your life, or just for you to come and experience world-class live music in the heart of West Lancashire.
Our ticket agent: Good Show
Following lots of research and advice from the lovely folks at the Music Venue Trust (MVT), we have teamed up with a brand new ticket agency, Good Show, who are linked with MVT. As a brand new concert series, our only funding comes from ticket sales so not only are we dependent on making sure we are building a new audience and creating a brilliant music experience for our customers - that includes audience AND artists - but we also need to be able to work with reliable partners.
Stuart and the team at Good Show have been immensely supportive to us in our early stages, which has even included at 1:1 session on how to improve our marketing. They are also unlike any other agency in that they hand back 50% of the booking fee to us, which is enormous help us in covering our venue hire and marketing costs.
As most people like to book online these days, this is a huge benefit to us. We do get the occasional request for buying tickets directly but, as a very small business, we are sure that you will appreciate booking online massively helps with our accounting and record keeping to make sure we don’t keep you hanging around when you turn up at the venue!
Our host venue: Dean Wood Golf Club
We are delighted to be working with Anne and the lovely folks at Dean Wood Golf Club for the concert series. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a member to come to the concerts! The concerts are held in the function room of the golf club, which is situated in the lovely historic village of Up Holland, Lancashire. The venue has a large car park, great access for wheelchairs and level access (great for equipment load-in too!), a bar, cloakroom and toilets all on ground floor level.
All seating is unreserved and available on a first come first served basis. All concerts start at 7.30pm prompt with doors open at 7pm. If you have accessibility needs, please contact Ian to discuss your requirements - contact details are below.
Live sound is provided by Karona Sound using top of the range Bose PA equipment.
Songwriting Workshop with Boo and Reg
Last week, our promoter Ian had the amazing experience of joining our future guests Boo Hewerdine (Sunday 7 April) and Reg Meuross (Sunday 9 June) on a songwriting workshop at the lovely centre for folk arts, Halsway Manor in Somerset. As some of you know, Ian is also a musician and producer, and is one half of acoustic duo, The Huers.
There were lots of great collaborative sessions with expert help from Boo and Reg, along with a superb ‘songwriters circle’ style concert on the Thursday evening. This was a great taste of the brilliance we have to come when they land with us on their solo tours in April and June respectively.
Photos: Katie Whitehouse.
The workshops are run by Company of Song and are well worth checking out if you are a songwriter and musician. Boo and Reg are planning to do another one in January 2025, so stay tuned to their website linked above for more details if you are interested.
And finally…
Don’t forget that you can hear about the backstory of several of our 2024 artists via the critically-acclaimed audio podcast series, Half Hour Mentor. Boo Hewerdine, Iona Lane, Reg Meuross, Charlie Dore and Katie Spencer have all appeared on the podcast, talking to Ian about how they turned professional, and also share lots of songwriting and performance tips. Here’s a link to the series on Spotify (it’s on all major streaming platforms):
Well, that’s it for now. Thanks again for your support and reading this far. Do share the newsletter with anyone whom you feel would be interested in coming to the concerts, and let us know if there are any features you like us to cover in future issues. We hope to see you at Dean Wood Golf Club at the Belinda O’Hooley concert a week on Monday 12th!
Yours in music
Team Karona Sessions
Website: www.karonasound.co.uk/sessions
Email: ian@karonasound.co.uk
Phone: 07759 219270