petergabriel.com

Concert goers at tonight's Dortmund show will be the first to get their hands on our new DVD. Anna Gabriel's film follows the 'Growing Up Live' tour from rehearsal to the last show. Both NTSC and PAL discs are available exclusively at the tour merchandise stalls and at http://www.womadshop.com.

Peter has selected two very different acts to support him on tour - each reflecting his own musical tastes.

Inspired by the unique song-writing talents of a new band from Liverpool Peter did not hesitate to pursue Sizer Barker and sign the band to his new record label imprint Pre Records. Daby Toure, who will perform solo, is one of a new generation of young talented African artists who draw on traditional roots transforming them with European-influenced pop sounds.

Sizer Barker

Liverpool, late spring, 1996. Carl Brown is walking through a cemetery with a friend, a dog and a headful of songs when his attention is caught by a headstone bearing an unusual name: 'William Sizer Barker.' Flash forward a week and Brown is sitting in his car when a large truck passes by. On its side, the name of the haulage company: 'William Barker.' He takes it as a sign. One day he will form a band. And Sizer Barker will be its name.

Sizer Barker - intriguingly strange yet reassuringly familiar. Rather like the music on Hotel Juicy Parlour, a debut album that has been gestating within Brown since that overcast day in the graveyard.

So how did we get here? After school Carl Brown starts learning the ropes in a Liverpool recording studio. He wants to be an engineer but his official job title is Tea Boy. He makes tea for a local producer, Ken Nelson, who will go on to work on the debuts of Badly Drawn Boy and Coldplay.
Eventually Brown gets to twiddle some knobs himself. One of his first jobs is on a demo for an unknown local singer-songwriter called David Gray. He starts to wonder what life is like on the other side of the control room window and sings backing vocals for the Lightning Seeds and Terry Hall. Soon after, he picks up a guitar and starts writing songs, inspired by his love of Seventies singer-songwriters in general and Joni Mitchell in particular. He sends a tape to Nanci Griffith and she sends back a Christmas card from America, saying how much she enjoyed it. Encouragement is found in strange places.
Then Brown gets a call from another local band he'd once engineered. They're riding high in the charts with a song called Female Of The Species and they want him to step in for their sick guitarist on a US tour. Suddenly he's in LA, about to become a pop star. He parties like it's 1999. Because it is.
But just as he's about to make his live debut with Space, the singer loses his voice and the tour is cancelled. Brown's dreams of stardom are shattered. For now. But he's been near enough to smell it. Back in Liverpool he forms a band called Fuzzy Logic and gets a publishing deal for his songs. Once again, stardom beckons. But the publisher only wants him to write line-dancing tunes.
Despondent but on a creative high, Brown house-sits for a musician friend who's gone travelling in India and discovers his collection of unusual instruments. In a flurry of activity, he starts writing songs and lyrics, inspired by life, love and random words and phrases from magazines. He records a home-made demo under the name The Modernaires.
Then Brown calls up Space's manager. He loves the songs, offers him a deal and sends him into the studio with whizz-kid producer Markus Dravs (Eno, Bjork). Brown decides on a new name - Sizer Barker. In December 2000 the spectral ballad Day By Day is released on his manager's own Hug label. It instantly becomes single of the week on Radio 1. The critics love it too: "Strange and wonderful," says the NME. "Floaty, gorgeous and Scouse," offers Melody Maker. "A wonderful, idiosyncratic thing," declares the Guardian. Then... nothing.
A follow-up single, Something In The Park, is due to be released on 14 September 2001. It's pulled. Suddenly no one wants to put out a song about being afraid in Manhattan.
Sizer Barker shrink from a quintet to a quartet and dwindle to a trio. There's Brown plus Tim Bruzon, who started out playing church organ before the divergent influences of AC/DC and Autechre led him towards the twin epiphanies of guitars and distortion, and Maria Hughes, a bass guitarist in love with Blondie and The Beatles.
They go back into the studio and come out with an album that defies categories. It's got the pop sensibility that seems inbred for Liverpudlians ever since the Four became Fab; heart-melting melodies and catchy choruses are all over it. But there's a darker undercurrent at work. Pretty songs implode into weird electronic fragments and sudden squalls of rock guitar, subterranean horns emerge from nowhere and then, just as swiftly, disappear. Found sounds drift in and out of the ether: distorted telephone messages from friends declaring that 'Something very strange is going on.' Indeed it is. Unusual instruments abound: a zither here, a harmonium there; recorders and accordions floating in and out of the mix.
But they don't have a deal until Dravs, now working with Peter Gabriel, plays him the unreleased songs by the unsigned band. Peter Gabriel tells Brown how much he likes the album and offers to release it on his label.

So here we are. Eight years on from that day in Smithdown Cemetery. Five years after Sizer Barker were formed. Three-and-a-half years after their debut single. It's been a while. But the best things come to those who wait.

The new album "Hotel Juicy Parlour" will be released on Pre Records in July 2004. Distributed by Virgin/EMI. (website coming soon at http://www.prerecords.co.uk/sizerbarker)

Sizer Barker Tour Band
CARL BROWN (Vocals, guitar),TIM BRUZON (Guitar),MARIA HUGHES (Bass),DAVID O'DOWDA (Keyboards), KARL PENNEY (Drums)

Daby Toure

Daby Toure, or just 'Daby' as he's known in the world of music, grew up in southern Mauritania, an arid land where the sands of the Sahara mingle with the grasses and stunted trees of the sahel, and where the Arabic and Moorish cultures of North Africa blend into the many distinct cultures of black west Africa. Like all young Africans, Daby soaked up the melodies and rhythms of his Soninke people without thought or effort. But from an early age, after falling in love with bands like The Police and Michael Jackson, he knew that he wanted to create his own music and move beyond the cosy limits of his people's musical traditions.

In 1989 Daby's father Hamidou Toure, a doctor and amateur musician, was called to Paris to join Toure Kunda, a seminal group in the history of world music and the African scene in Paris. Hamidou sold his house to pay for his son's ticket. The young Daby was intoxicated by the musical riches he found in the French capital, especially the leftfield jazz scene, and he soon became involved in several groups, eventually teaming up with his cousin Omar to form Toure Toure. Despite objections from his father, who feared the hardships that a musical career might heap on his son, Daby relentlessly pursued the grail of a new Afro-centric pop sound. After disbanding Toure Toure, Daby locked himself away for several years to work on his first solo album 'Diam', collaborating with electronic musician and digital wizard Cyrille Dufay. Daby may be proud of his African roots but he values creative freedom above all else, and shuns any obligation to be more 'African' than his heart and soul tell him to be. 'Diam' is a superbly-crafted contemporary pop record, that blend the sounds of Africa, Paris and international pop in equal measure. After being touted to almost every single record label in France, 'Diam' eventually found its way to the offices of Real World Records, who are releasing it worldwide.

The new album 'Diam' will be released on Real World Records, distributed by Virgin/EMI
www.realworldrecords.com/dabytoure

It has just been confirmed that Peter Gabriel is to play at WOMAD Sicily on Sunday July 4th.

Tickets are not yet on sale but will be available online within the next few weeks from www.ticketone.com.

Information is available from the Taoarte office: tel +39 0942 21142

We have just heard that some outposts of Virgin Records have re-released the Burn You Up single.

Engelspost who remixed "Darkness" on the single will also be releasing a version on vinyl in the near future.

The tour office have found a few more VIP tickets that had fallen down the cracks, so be sure to keep checking availability...

Tina has been sifting through your competition entries and has fresh news and results.....

We've had our noses pressed to the grindstone completing "Growing Up On Tour: a Family Portrait" the DVD of Anna Gabriel's film following the tour of 2002/3. The DVD will be available in NTSC and PAL exclusively from tour venues and womadshop.com .....more information coming soon

We have been looking at the response to our special Dortmund ticket offer, and although some people are upset at the late nature of the offer, the balance of feedback was pretty even. We have decided to go ahead and make a similar offer for the other venues on the 'Still growing Up Tour'. We will be adding limited numbers of these tickets to womadshop.com in the next day or so - I'll let you know when they are available.

Finally we have a new poll for you to contribute to. We have been asked by Peter to get your feedback on some new tour T-Shirt designs. So click on the polls link on the bottom menu and get voting!

9:00 - 10:30 PM
Radio 3 awards for World Music
Mary Ann Kennedy and Benjamin Zephaniah introduce highlights from the awards ceremony at the prestigious Usher Hall in Edinburgh. Sevarra won the Asia category at this event.

10:30 - 11:30 PM
Peter Gabriel: Growing Up
Recorded live at the Fila Forum in Milan in May 2003, Peter Gabriel performs a selection of favourite songs including Sledgehammer, Red Rain, Solsbury Hill, In Your Eyes, Secret World, The Barry Williams Show, Father Son and Sky Blue in a musical tour-de-force.

In an exciting evening of “firsts”, The Newport International Film Festival will kick-off the 2004 season with Peter Gabriel, performing his first ever solo performance at Gray Craig, a breathtaking private estate outside famed Newport, Rhode Island.

Peter’s daughter Anna will debut her first film at the event. “Growing Up, on Tour” provides a daughter’s perspective on a behind the scenes look at her father’s career and preparation for his next tour.

In addition to the exclusive concert and screening, guests will be invited to enjoy a cocktail reception and private dinner at the estate. Proceeds from the evening will benefit the Newport International Film Festival and Witness

Where: Private estate Gray Craig, located outside of Newport, RI.

When: Friday, March 5, 2004, 5:30 PM

Ticket Price: $500.00 / Person

To purchase tickets, please contact the Newport International Film Festival office at 401/846-9100.

Just confirmed another German show in
Karlesruhe. Full show in the round on 23rd May. Details to follow .

Peter is to headline The Rock in Lisbon Festival on May 29th.

Tina has a fantastic new prize to offer in her new competition.

More information on Peter's newly launched MUDDA - Magnificent Union of Digitaly Downloading Artists can now be found at the link below.

"Four years ago I co-founded (and am now a shareholder in) a digital downloading service with Charles Grimsdale, called OD2. I got involved because I thought there were interesting opportunities and I wanted to have access to digital delivery both for my work and for all the artists on Real World Records

Although OD2’s initial focus was the Independents, we are now Europe’s number one digital distributor for music working with all five majors and are about to launch in Australia and Asia this year.

We are determined that we should try and take advantage of this situation and help transform the music business in such a way that artists are on level terms with record companies, receive fair payments and have new opportunities to be their own retailer when they choose.

I have been developing ideas with Brian Eno for an alliance of artists to ensure that artists’ interests are treated fairly, as this new business model takes shape. This dream for MUDDA can only become a reality with enough endorsement and involvement of other artists." Peter Gabriel

More information on MUDDA will be coming soon.