The Four Fathers Release New Album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on CD and as a Download
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I’m delighted to announce the release, on Bandcamp, of ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, the new album by The Four Fathers, marking ten years of our existence as a south London-based band playing mostly original folky, rocky, reggae-inflected protest music.
The album, our third, and a belated follow-up to our second album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’, released in November 2017, was recorded, sporadically, over the last six years, in sessions in July 2018, December 2019, July 2022 and January 2024, with the great Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, best-known as a member of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance in the 1970s and ‘80s, who also plays electric piano and accordion on three of the songs. Do check out Charlie’s work if you don’t know it, as he is currently involved in two very worthwhile musical projects — the Equators, an epic collective of talented players of African-tinged jazz and r’n’b, and a revival of Slim Chance, mostly featuring musicians who played with Ronnie in the band’s bucolic heyday, following Ronnie’s exodus from the excess of the Faces.
The long genesis of the album was caused by personnel changes, the huge disruption of Covid in 2021 and 2022, and the difficulty of getting everyone together to rehearse, and, most specifically, to work on arrangements of the songs in the gaps between work commitments and, more recently, the kinds of family illnesses that begin to afflict those of us in our 50s and 60s with ageing parents.
The Four Fathers Release New Song, ‘Warriors’, About Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, To Coincide With Julian’s Last UK Appeal Against Extradition to the US
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Yesterday, The Four Fathers released ‘Warriors’, my song about Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, which we released to coincide with the first of two days of hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, marking Julian’s last UK appeal against his extradition to the US. If extradited, he will face espionage charges relating to the classified US files, leaked by the US whistleblower Chelsea Manning, which were released in 2010 and 2011, in conjunction with some of the world’s most prominent newspapers.
It’s available below via Bandcamp, where you can listen to it for free, and buy it as a download if you like it.
I worked with Julian and WikiLeaks as a media partner on the release of classified military files from Guantánamo in 2011, which were hugely important, as they revealed the shocking extent to which the US’s so-called “intelligence” was based on statements made by profoundly unreliable witnesses — prisoners subjected to torture and other forms of abuse, or bribed with better living conditions.
Check Out The Four Fathers’ Video Trilogy from Our Pre-Covid Charlie Hart Sessions
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Since the coronavirus hit, my band The Four Fathers have, like most musicians, been unable to do much at all. Initially isolated from each other — and with our bassist Paul having moved to San Francisco — we didn’t get together until June, when we played a few songs for my friend Neil Goodwin’s Virtual Stonehenge Free Festival, available on YouTube here.
Paul then returned from San Francisco, which was good news for us, and we’ve rehearsed a few times since, but, unsurprisingly, we haven’t played any gigs, although we did manage to release three new studio recordings, which we recorded in December with the great Charlie Hart, who, in a 50-year career, has played in Kilburn and the High Roads with Ian Dury, and in Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance, has produced music for the legendary Congolese singer Samba Mapangala, and currently plays in a revived Slim Chance and in his own band The Equators, an extraordinary world-jazz-blues group of extremely talented musicians.
The recordings were of three new songs that I wrote in 2018/19, all available on Bandcamp, where they can be purchased as downloads: The Wheel of Life, a meditation on mortality and living in the moment, This Time We Win, an eco-anthem inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, on which Charlie plays Wurlitzer piano, and Affordable, a punky blast of rock and roll about lying politicians and the housing crisis.
We also followed up the release of the new recordings with experimental videos using found footage that were made by our drummer Bren Horstead.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
