Member Since: 9/6/2004
Band Website: thewoodsmen.co.uk
Band Members: Anthony Banks, guitars, singing
Duncan DeMorgan, bass guitar, singing
Zachary McKraken, drums, percussionSupporting Cast:
Banks, mandolin, guitars
Giles Drayton, lap steel, guitars
Greggo Samsa, trumpet
J. C. Abraham, alto sax
Influences: The Pogues, Nick Cave, The Sonics, The Make Up, Stiff Little Fingers, Sonic Youth, The Saints, Billy Childish, Tom Waits, Low, Dirty Three, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Holly Golightly, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Calexico, Neko Case, The Wicker Man Soundtrack, Dr. John, Edith Piaf, Pentangle, Led Zep, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Nick Drake, Thin Lizzy, Swans, Martin Carthy, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Jolie Holland, The Dubliners, The Clash, Patti Smith, Gene Vincent, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell,.
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Sounds Like: fucked-up-folk-rockabilly-psycho-sea-shanties........
"Country Noir music....They out-jive Vincent Vincent and his villains with
their rollicking garage hillbilly blues" - NME
"Four tracks from the gypsy-punk preacher-men, starting with 'The Grave',
which imagines being buried alive with one's mobile phone by one's side, as
Tom Waits and The Pogues lead the frenzied wake. 'Down By The Riverside' and 'Green Eyes' recall the unhinged abandon of early Gallon Drunk, while 'The Lucky Few', by contrast is a stripped down country ballad. The Woodsmen go deeper into their musical forest with every confident step." - The Fly"....Another bunch of country rebels next, in the form of The Woodsmen, who
adopt a rather darker and dirtier take on the form, drawing from The Pogues
and Nick Cave. You can imagine them playing in the no-hope bars that John E
Vistic [previous review] wouldn't drink in, but for all their raucousness,
there's some formidable playing on show here. With mandolin, Sergio Leone
backing vocals and trumpets, its some punkabilly party" - Stool Pigeon"Compared by others to the Pogues, The Bad Seeds, and The Clash, The
Woodsmen remind me of Les Negresses Vertes in the way they take rocknroll,
punk, jazz, Irish, English and European traditional music and run with it,
careering madly into anything in their way...they reach for the moon and
grab it, leaving lipstick traces across its craters" - The Fly"Look who i've just found lurking in the woods after dark...Brighton's
newest strange children The Woodsmen.... Their first offering - 'Only Man In
Heaven Wearing Black' sounds like Nick Cave challenging The Pogues to a
knife-fight at a barn-dance, and is creepy enough to unnerve a carny.The
music rests its sweaty head at a grubby halfway-house somewhere between folk and rockabilly, but pitch-black rock 'n' roll blood still bubbles in their
veins..." - Diskant.net"Imagine if hell was like Earth, split up into an assortment of different
countries, and when you died you’d end up in your homelands designated area, well this is hell in Ireland, as thousands of people burn slowly and
painfully on a spit the Woodsmen play on, their impressive AC/DC doing
jig-music sounding a death toll throughout the land, under each sliding
fiddle is the scream of a thousand children melting and every horn
per-rump-a-pump-pump cues with the yelling of men who strayed being
stretched apart by giant cats claws… a riotous, righteous mess - just how we
like it!!" - Subba-Cultcha.com"The Woodsmen are what might happen if you put Clinic, the Pogues, and Gogol Bordello into a blender. Perhaps a scary proposition in theory, the result is actually quite pleasant. "Heaven Wearing Black" showcases the rollicking instrumentation and rough vocals of the Pogues, with hints of those crazy Bordellans and the equally nutty Clinic (though no evidence has emerged of any surgical masks being worn by the Woodsmen)" - Looserecord.com"...the superior debauched shantying of The Woodsmen. They have the lot,
really; violins, saxophones, a hugely charismatic front person, a hairy
bassist and a gamut of great songs. Pitched between Gallon Drunk, The Pogues
and a touch of The Specials. Yep!..." - Six.By Seven Forum""...The Woodsmen are a growling mess of rockabilly, country and folk;
imagine if The Bad Seeds if they had been brought up in a cellar and never
seen natural light..." - Brighton Source Magazine"A bizarre blend of Flogging Molly-style Irish folk and ska punk. Violins,
saxophones and bass guitars flying about all over the place like a bar
brawl, and drums clashing like the sound of broken glass on a drunkard’s
head. Music to drink whiskey to." - New-Noise.net"They deal in whiskey soaked rebel rousing folk fired up rock n roll.. comes accross as the bastard son of some demented meeting between Shane MacGowan and Nick Cave in a very dark alley.
one of most satisfying and unholy rackets I have heard in a long long time.
Essential stuff" - LostMusic.co.uk"It’s Old Street on a Friday
night, and the band that I have come out to see, largely on the back of an
incredible demo, are best described as garage folk (you’ll all be saying
that one soon…I don’t think) with a dollop of the Birthday Party on the
side. Then The Woodsmen take the stage. They are virtually all dressed in black and when they start to play the crowd go fucking apeshit. From here on in it’s a masterclass in showmanship as well as musicianship. The Woodsmen are the perfect example of a band that could sell records by the skip load in the right hands, and I can’t help feeling it’s only a matter of time until a canny record company picks them up. " - NewNoise.net
Type of Label: Indie