Danny and The Champions of The World

Danny & The Champions Of The World
ʻStreets Of Our Timeʼ

Loose Music
Catalogue: VJCD190

Release date: January 18th 2010

Danny George Wilsonʼs ninth album as a recording artist, and his second fronting his loose and wonderful country/soul/folk collective Danny & The Champions, opens with the aching, contemplative ʻHenry The Vanʼ, a tenderly-delivered lament for a busted tourbus that muses upon both the romance of the road, and the hard-won wisdoms you learn from occasional detours to the kerbside.

Although one of his best, ʻHenry The Vanʼ is by no means the first ʻroad songʼ Danny has penned. The boy knows a thing or two about traveling, having emigrated from Australia to the UK with his family when he was barely out of nappies. And he knows a thing or two about ʻthe roadʼ, too, having spent over a decade as a full-time touring and recording singer/songwriter/musician. He sings songs drawn from his life, with an unerring honesty and truthfulness that means theyʼre your songs too, burning with a hopeful passion you can warm yourself by when everything seems cold.

You could call Danny one of musicʼs ʻlifersʼ. When he was ten years old, his dad snuck Danny and older brother Julian into their first rockʼnʼroll concert, a show by New Jersey rockʼnʼroll legends and buddies-of-Springsteen, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes. Seven years later, with Southside Johnny again touring the UK, Danny and Julian popped down, uninvited, to the Bayswater hotel where he was staying, with a sheaf of self-penned songs they thought he might want to perform. They didnʼt make a sale, but they did get to hang with Johnny and his band for a night.

By then, Danny and Julian were already playing in their first group, Soul Green, marrying the fury of hardcore punk with the melancholia of early Uncle Tupelo. Rehearsing with schoolmate Ed Balch on bass, out in the South London suburb of Sutton where they lived, they had moxie in abundance, but couldnʼt hold it together long enough to make it into the recording studio. No, the Wilson brothers didnʼt make their debut on vinyl until the Autumn of 1997, with the release of ʻTell It Like It Isʼ, the first single released by their new group Grand Drive. Although they took their name from a non-descript stretch of tarmac that linked Sutton with another nearby suburb, Raynes Park, there was nothing parochial or prosaic about Grand Drive. ʻTell It Like It Isʼ left behind their frayed punk-rock influences, instead drawing upon the warm emotiveness of deep soul, the melodic ache of country music, and a gift for choruses that left a lump in the throat, and glowing embers in the heart.

As they began, so Grand Drive continued. More singles followed: the hopeful country-rock of ʻOn A Good Dayʼ, Dannyʼs vulnerable vocal rendered heroic by the swell of brother Julianʼs Hammond organ; the hushed, elegiac campfire song of ʻWrong Notesʼ, a testimony to unlikely dreams, and the doomed romantics who cling to them. These tracks were collected together for their first full length, 1999ʼs excellent Road Music, on Loose Records.

Their debut album proper, True Love & High Adventure, followed a year later, weaving together swooning strings, bittersweet carnival sounds, deft touches of psychedelia and moments of profound but understated poignancy, to deliver a true masterpiece that belied its shoestring budget. Three more albums followed – 2002ʼs See The Morning In, 2004ʼs The Lights In This Town Are Too Many To Count, and 2007ʼs Everyone – building a songbook swollen with sweet wisdom; and while these songs mightʼve sounded like they rolled along with the tumbleweed or washed up on the shores of the Mississippi, the Wilson brothers sang from their own hearts, penning their tunes in a flat above a Barclays Bank in South-West London.

Along the way, Danny recorded a batch of songs onto the laptop of old friend Simon Alpin of labelmates Willard Grant Conspiracy. Released as his first solo album, 2005ʼs The Famous Mad Mile, they eulogised a stretch of tarmac in Surrey beloved by boy racers with all the romance of Bruce Springsteen rhapsodising his New Jersey youth. “When I was a teenager, weʼd ride around in our older friendsʼ cars, drinking tins of Royal Dutch lager and blasting Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies out the window,” he laughs. “Lots of head-banging. Very Wayneʼs World."

Touring the album, Danny performed a set at the 2007 Truck Festival, held at Hill Farm in Steventon. During the weekend, he recorded a track at the studio based on the farm, backed by a loose aggregation of members of Oxfordʼs Goldrush (whose Bennett brothers run the Truck Festival) and other musician friends. “We recorded one tune,” he smiles, “but it sounded so good we decided we had to make an album.” Cut at the Hill Farm studio, that album, the very wonderful Danny And The Champions Of The World, was released in 2008. Immediately, Danny And The Champions began playing live, setting up a monthly residency at Brixtonʼs The Windmill for their Still Believe club-nights, an ongoing series of joyously messy evenings featuring performances and DJ sets from a hand-picked list of friends and kindred spirits, with Danny playing the headlines a lot, backed by his ever-changing group of Champions.

“Itʼs not a band, as such,” explains Danny, “itʼs more like an open invitation to a group of friends. All sorts of people come and go, thereʼs no rules to it, I just tell them when the dates are, and sometimes twenty of them turn up to play, and sometimes just two. Iʼm completely bored of watching over-rehearsed bands just promoting their albums. We never rehearse, thereʼs a lot of spontaneity to it. And sometimes our shows arenʼt great but the idea is, through spontaneity and friendship and brotherhood, it could be the best night in the world. I donʼt want to be in a band, I donʼt want to rehearse… My only interest is in songs and parties.” This same sense of freedom pervades Streets Of Our Time, again recorded at Hill Farm, with a rotating cast of many talented musicians and friends, in a blitzing four day burst. The spirited, pedal steel-scored Appalachian folk of ʻWandle Swanʼ – referencing the river that runs through South London – offers one highlight, while some searing Clarence Clemons-esque sax adds a perfect touch to ʻFollow The Riverʼ, an endearingly optimistic rocker thatʼs easily worthy of the E Street Band. ʻThe People Here (Shine A Light)ʼ, meanwhile, boasts a gospel-tinged chorus that could rouse the dead, while the sun-drenched West Coast harmonies of ʻBluebirdʼ lilt like Crosby Stills & Nash in their prime.

“I want our shows to be fun, but the songs are as sacred to me as ever,” Danny offers of his songwriting process. “Ed used to tell me that I wrote songs that had people crying on the dancefloor; theyʼre bittersweet, they have an uplifting sadness.” And so it is, with Streets Of Our Time, and its tales of brothers in arms, of everyday struggle, of enduring friendship, of how love can still make it all worthwhile, sung with a grace and tenderness that brings these stories home.

Heartfelt, timeless and uplifting, itʼs without a doubt the work of a champion.

Danny & The Champions of the World would be Cornwall bound for the Port Eliot Festival in July.

Lots of information on the festival website at; www.porteliotfestival.com

"a dusty, wistful sepia-toned postcard from an imagined past, it slots right in between peak Kerouac, Pat Garrett-era Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young" **** MOJO

"Danny Wilson is turning into one of those artists whose work he has venerated - Ryan Adams, Mark Olson, Bruce Springsteen even" ****
THE TIMES

"it would seem fair if Paulo Nutini now held the door open for Danny & The Champions Of The World" ****
THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

"footloose folk music big on soul - a bit special" ****
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

"a timeless collection of songs steeped in soulful nostalgia" ****
THE SUN

"fragile and rootsy with real depth of feeling"
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

"the real thing - they are the champions" ****
Q MAGAZINE

"lovely, improbably elegiac stuff" ****
UNCUT MAGAZINE

"a great unsung country hero"
THE MIRROR

"A rousing, hypnotic affair"
BIG ISSUE

"country-hued, clankety banjo and lilting lapsteel catchiness"
THE GUARDIAN

"Danny shows passion for the trail and the road is wide open"
INDEPENDENT INFORMATION

"a joy for fans of bittersweet, deftly underplayed, but hugely heartfelt countrified soul pop-cum-Americana"
TIME OUT

"tremendously human... an uplifting uproar"
WORD MAGAZINE