Folk Bands and Artists
Joe Wilkes
London
Coventry was a miserable place back then but you’ve got to come from somewhere even if that place is a ghost town. With little prospect of gainful employment at home Joe Wilkes descended on the London music scene with little to lose, guitar in hand.
Unemployed and left to his own devices Wilkes put together a series of guitar combos and went on busking expeditions to continental Europe.
His anarcho-acoustic band had a residency at Soho’s 12 bar club that after a time became alcohol fueled free-form rehearsals with an often confused paying audience. Joe eventually jumped ship to Paris to get away from it all where he started work with arranger Antoine Reininger who he would later work on three albums with.
Back in his adopted South London home Wilkes recorded his debut album Spotlight (2006). The next year was spent building up a following and reputation as a writer of snappy modern folk songs coupled with some intense finger-picking. Folk juggernauts Bert Jansch and Davy graham became fans and shared the occasional bill together on what was then a bourgeoning acoustic revival. In between tours Joe has been a regular at legendary Easy Come acoustic club currently located in Peckham, a sort of petri dish for the current crop of South London bands.
Here On This Frontline (2009) saw Wilkes fine-tune a politically conscious European folk identity. Looking For The Grave of Garcia Lorca (2012) was one of the last records to be recorded in Escapade music studio, another hang out for the great and the good of South London’s music fraternity. Joe worked there on and off as musician and engineer. If the previous two records hadn’t already then this album set Wilkes apart from the rest of the acoustic artists, stealing lines from Victor Hugo, eulogising Lorca and not delivering a standard museum piece.
2013 saw Joe suffer an injury to his left hand. Unable to play guitar, Wilkes started using piano on stage and in the studio. With recovering fingers Joe did a few shows in New York in 2014 using piano on stage for the first time as well as guitar. A tour of Europe followed in the autumn.
2018 sees the long awaited release of Japanese Elvis; a collection of mainly piano songs, suicide love ballads and cryptic political forebodings.
Genre: Alt Folk,Americana,Folk / Rock
