We first came across Julian Gaskell as Leigh Delamere and the Gordanos when looking for a band to fill in after a cancellation at one of our Blue Moon festivals. Instead of Leigh Delamere, we got Julian Gaskell and his Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Julian has since played a few Sunset Sessions and after last year, returns again with Cally Gibson.
A few quotes that describe Julian Gaskell a lot more eloquently than I could.
“a Kernewek Tom Waits, a berserk klezmer band, Joe Strummer gone Weimar jazz or Kurt Weill punching The Pogues” West Briton
“Julian Gaskell howls and hollers as if Tom Waits came from a Roma family and punk had its origins in cabaret and circus” Folkworld
“He really is an original… declamatory, vulpine vocals ranting and roaring his splendidly acrid, protestful lyrics over a glorious, urgent ramshackle garage blend of Balkan-Klezmerisms and French gypsy cafebilly. The ghosts of Blyth Power and Beefheart lurk in the wings, but when you think you’ve got it all figured out he throws in a great romantic, slovenly delivered torch song like ‘Left Luggage’. Few things this exhilarating come along very often, the antidote to tweefolk.” ‘Kind Words from Home’ album review, Ian Anderson, fRoots, 2012
On his most recent album…
“This is an album you pick up for the outrageous band name, discover quickly it isn’t what you expected (what did you expect exactly?), make to turn it off and then realize you actually do like it – or at least there’s no real harm in letting it play, right? That is, until suddenly you’ve somehow listened to it a dozen times and wake up with Gaskell’s rasp bouncing around your skull at 3am and can’t really bring yourself to be upset about it.
A Shandy Ballad is self-produced and it feels like it, but I can’t stress enough how much I mean that in a good way. Gaskell rants over guitar, accordion, piano, banjo and percussion (supported also by Thomas Sharpe’s bass and Cally Gibson’s violin and viola). He rants fast, he rants slow, he rages and pleads, and his unmistakable voice is just great to listen to. It’s interesting and full of character and scratches my brain in exactly the right way. It’s all you could hope for in a project like this and I could listen to it all day…Genuinely? I adore this album. It’s the sort of unpolished and slightly unhinged raging against the machine that I love in good folk – a mix of traditional and original, stretched across genres, with a fury and earnestness that is hard to fault.” Folk London
