The Recession Sessions #4: Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Helpless

One of my all-time favourite songs.
I once told a guy that if he learned to play this song I would fall at his feet.
About a month later he showed up at a party having learned the entire song and played it to me.
What else could I do?

Sadie's Favourite Albums #6: RIO by Duran Duran

Sadie's Favourite Albums #6: RIO by Duran Duran

OK, OK... I know... but I'm gonna be honest here.
What can i say? I was young and had probably been overexposed to too much deep & meaningful hippy music. This was something new and exciting and very of the moment. They were cute with great suits and surrounded by gorgeous women on yachts!! Plus they were a much cooler alternative to Wham!

I still maintain these are great great pop songs... OK, the lyrics are dubious, but the melodies are simplisticly beautiful, there is some interesting production over a great beat. and this in my opinion makes for a great pop record, if pop is what your after.. And it was.

I'll still dance to this album any day of the week.

Video is here.

Sadie's Favourite Albums #5: WILDFLOWERS by Judy Collins

Sadie's Favourite Albums #5: WILDFLOWERS by Judy Collins

Judy Collins' album WILDFLOWERS came into my life around the age of 14. Again i can't remember quite how or who it came from - a friend of my parents or maybe my brother - but suddenly it was there... The beauty and elegance of her voice, the sheer force of it! To be able to combine such fragility and power and pain and comfort in one voice was to me both inspiring and incredible.

I had just started to get seriously into my singing and playing and the songs were like food to me. Every one a little art house film in my head. 'Michael From Mountains' and the Sisters Of Mercy - I could see them all so clearly!

The reason for this, i think, is Judy's rare ability to let the songs sing through her. The respect and attention she gives to every word and the way the instruments on the album are so brilliantly arranged around her voice in order to support that, is what makes it a classic album.

Earlier this year i had the privilege of opening for Judy at The Jazz Café in London. For me it was like a fairy tale dream come true - to get to share the stage with someone you had sat in your bedroom and listened endlessly to as a teenager!!

And may i say that when I met her she was just as elegant and gracious as i had expected her to be.

Sadie Jemmett Live: Monkey Chews - Thurs 29th Oct 8pm

View Monkey Chews in a larger map

Monkey Chews: 2 Queens Crescent, London NW5 4EP

Tel: 0207 482 4981

Thursday 29th October at 8pm

Chalk Farm (0.2 miles), Kentish Town West (0.3 miles), Belsize Park (0.5 miles)

Kentish Town West (0.3 miles), Gospel Oak (0.6 miles), Kentish Town (0.7 miles)

Sadie Jemmett live: The Portobello Acoustic Sessions - 22 Oct 09

Sadie Jemmett live - 22 October 2009

Portobello Acoustic Sessions [MySpace|Facebook] take place in The Lounge upstairs at The Metropolitan and are completely free. Come and join us for dinner, (food served until 10.30pm), or just come and have a drink, sit back, relax and enjoy some of the best music London has to offer.

The Lounge doors open at 7.30pm, however the Metropolitan downstairs is open for food and drink all day long. With four brilliant and inspiring artists at every Portobello Acoustic Session..why would you want to be anywhere else?

Address
Portobello Acoustic Sessions take place at

The Lounge @ The Metropolitan, 60 Great Western Road, W11 1AB

just a very wee walk from Portobello Road

Tube
We are situated right next door to Westbourne Park Tube Station (Hammersmith & City Line), which is two stops from Paddington

Buses
The bus stop is right on our doorstep, so hop on the 31, 28 or the 328 for an easy no-fuss journey

Parking
There's plenty and most of it is free after 6.30pm. However, please remember that we are in the congestion charge zone, so watch those clocks as we don't want you to get stung

About
Portobello Acoustic Sessions at the Metropolitan are dedicated to bringing you the very best in singer and songwriter talent and has become a hub of exciting new music and brightest emerging stars. The experience is one that's truly special and one that you won’t forget. The beautiful Lounge upstairs at the Met is complete with gorgeous wooden floors and furniture, large windows with velvet drapes and an open fire..it also has a spectacular decked roof terrace overlooking the pretty streets of Notting Hill. The Met is one of the most twinkly and intimate acoustic places to play in London. With its beautiful sound and atmosphere, it is a true gem in one of London’s most urban and vibrant locations.

Sadie's Favourite Albums #5: JOAN ARMATRADING by Joan Armatrading

Sadie's Favourite Albums #5: JOAN ARMATRADING by Joan Armatrading

This album appeared in my tape player around the age of 15... God knows how!?

It was a copy someone had made for me (probably my friend Tash) on an old TDK tape that kept breaking and I had to keep fixing with sellotape. I had pretty good editing skills for a 15 yr old girl!

it was the heady days of teenagedom. The hormones were seriously kicking in and i was falling in and out of love on a weekly basis, sitting around in my little bedroom smoking rollies and dreaming about boys when i should of been revising.

Joan Armatrading's songs were a kind of lighthouse in those rough hormonal seas... whether you were drowning in the depths of despair or riding high on the heady waves of first love, the songs worked either way - guiding you back to shore, bringing you home.

Last year i was very fortunate to be invited on to Dave Fanning's classic album show on Ireland's RTE, where musicians talk about albums that have had a seminal influence on themselves and their work. I chose this album because it is genius.... and so is she.

Sadie's Favourite Albums #4: ASTRAL WEEKS by Van Morrison

Sadie's Favourite Albums #4: ASTRAL WEEKS by Van Morrison

I cant really remember when this album hit my consciousness... it is so deeply embedded in my psyche and my musical history it almost feels like its always been there... like i came out of the womb humming it.

My first memory about it is being told by someone that the whole album was recorded in one night in New York... that Van just gathered up a load of jazz musicians and played each song one after the other, keeping the tapes rolling. I was very impressed with this story and fantasised elaborate scenarios in my mind about how i could of been involved in the session...

... backing vocalist?

... girlfriend?

... coffee maker?

... then a time later i heard that it took one week, which was a bit disappointing but probably much more realistic... does anyone know?

I also remember knowing the first few times i heard it that its sound was completely unique, something no-one had ever done before. No-one told me this. I just knew it, even with my limited knowledge of music.

It is one of those albums that hits upon such a rare and new recipe of sounds and rhythms that it pretty much defines a new genre of music - somewhere between jazz , folk, Irish trad and 60's psychedelic.

It is a trip, a journey, a train you ride, swept along on its ever changing rhythm with Van's Buddha-like stream of consciousness lullabying in your ears .... between the viaducts of your dreams.

Sadie's Favourite Albums #3: FISHERMAN'S BLUES by The Waterboys

Sadie's Favourite Albums #3: FISHERMAN'S BLUES by The Waterboys

This Album (and song) exploded into my young life in only the way a bunch of raggle-taggle cute Anglo-Irish boy musicians can... completely and utterly and wildly. I was all consumed with it and listened to nothing else for months. It was early spring. I had just met a guy who lived in a little cottage in County Claire and who had invited me to come and stay anytime i wanted to get out of England (which was pretty much all the time then).

Earlier in the year my dad had died and with him being an atheist, we had not known what to do with his ashes, so... as he had loved Ireland so much, i decided to take the man from Claire up on his offer, put them in my rucksack and scatter them into the Irish Sea (off the edge of a P&O ferry!). This proved to be harder than i thought, what with the wind and all!

I continued my journey, hitching my way through rural Ireland to County Claire, getting lifts in trucks and tractors from friendly farmers, with my guitar on my back and the sun on my face and The Waterboys on my clapped out old Sony Walkman... the passion and warmth of their music lifted my spirits and soon had me dreaming of new adventures...

Listening back to the album now, I can see that a lot of the songs are about moving on and saying farewell to things and people that you love... that sweet melancholy, and i realise now that it was the perfect album with which to say goodbye to my Dad.

The Recession Sessions #3: Joan Armatrading - Willow

My friend Kate sent me the lyrics to this song when i was feeling a bit overwhelmed. The least i could do was cover it. It's one of the most heartfelt songs ever written, and an instant antidote.

Sadie's Favourite Albums #2: DESIRE by Bob Dylan

Sadie's Favourite Albums #2: DESIRE by Bob Dylan

Around about the same age (11), on visits home to see my father in Cambridge, i used to go with my older brother to a second hand vinyl shop called Andy's Records. This was a deeply cool place where my brother would hunt out his picture disk punk singles. The Dickies, Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks in hot neon pink and acid green like rare precious stones that i was barely allowed to listen to let alone touch.

It was not a place to be seen with your slightly chubby younger sister asking for 'Hi Fidelity' by The Kids from Fame (they didn't have it).

So at my brothers request, I wandered down into the bargain area in the basement where all the scratched, broken or just uncool vinyl was. I spent ages, fascinated, flicking through the graveyard of albums. Of course I hadn't heard of any of the bands, so only had the covers and prices to go by.

Suddenly one of the covers caught my eye. It was a picture of a man, wild and rugged, wrapped in furs with scarves and hats. He looked like he might be riding a horse. This man fascinated me, so I picked up the album and wandered over to the guy at the desk. As there was no price on it, the guy informed me that I could have it for 50p as there was a little chip on the edge of the record.

When I got it home and my brother finally allowed me to play it on his stereo, the thing that struck me first was the sweet and wild violin playing of Scarlet Rivera. This coupled with the beautiful, desperate almost howl-like vocals of Emmylou Harris.

She was different to Joni. More earthbound and passionate. Like nothing I had ever heard before. It seems to me now that DESIRE is the perfect name for that album. There is so much wild aching sweet bloody desire in the music and for me at that age, it was like taking a little peek into a mysterious world that I would one day enter. Love and sex and passion and loss and mystery all brought to life by the mastery of Dylan's words, stories and poems, truths and non-truths. The troubadour's world in constant motion.

There was such a sense of travel and expanse in it. I wanted to go to all the places he was singing about and be all the people in his stories. My love affair with Dylan had begun.

The chip in the record never bothered me. I just used to play it from the middle of the first song Hurricane, but it was a great moment when, years later, i first heard the opening lines: "Pistol shots ring out in a bar room night".

Of course , what other opening lines could there be to an album like that?

Sadie's Favourite Albums #1: BLUE by Joni Mitchell

Sadie's Favourite Albums #1: BLUE by Joni Mitchell

When I was 11, I went to live with a very cool familly in Hertfordshire. He made music videos and she was a kind of boho queen. They had 4 chilldren, ranging from 3 to 16, a big rambling house and lots of interesting people hanging out. It was a blessed relief compared to what had come before. In that house there was light and laughter and... there was MUSIC!

My first memory of listening to BLUE is hearing this voice coming from the sitting room together with the sound of what i now know to be a dulcimer. A beautiful high crystal clear voice, a voice that seemed to want to trancend all the pain that it was singing about, to rise above it. It called me like a siren and I followed. I sat down on the sofa and listened to the whole album, barely breathing.

I listened to the honesty of those words "I'm frightened by the devil, and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid" and I understood, even aged 11, what it must take to be able to write with such honesty.

And I knew in that moment that if that honesty existed and could be sung about, then everything was gonna be OK.

Sadie

Sadie guest appearance on Tom Bombadeal's 'Further Into The Woods'

'Further Into The Woods' is the new album by Tom Bombadeal, it continues the mythical folk-hop style Bombadeal has been mastering over the last 5 years. This album (follow up to 2007's Songs From The Wood) features an astounding 35 tracks and several other artists. Rappers Elemental, Teej, 777 are all in here contributing guest verses. Singer Sadie Jemmett sings and plays guitar as Bombadeal's good lady Goldberry. Quirky singer and guitarist Flake Brown provides some songs that help set the scene - singing about some of the characters. The Levellers' didgeridoo player Steven Boakes drops in to lay his tones on the closing 'Protestors'.

Sadie Jemmett plays Goldberry and is featured on the track, 'What Is It About The Night?'

Preview the tracks and buy the album here.

Dead Flowers - back from Down on the Farm

Check this video out -- Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers (Sticky Fingers) - Original version

A fantastic weekend of music in Norway at the down on the farm festival.... The mighty Steff from Ireland Chooglin from minnesota...the wonderfull james hand from nashville... not to mention the one and only Stan Ridgeway, and True west. and many many more.... the best moment for me was the whole lot of us jammin 'dead flowers' at the aftershow party on saturday night complete with double bass and trombones.

The Recession Sessions #2: Knowing Me Knowing You by Abba

The Recessions Sessions continue with "Knowing Me Knowing You".
Look out for a Billie Holiday number in a few weeks.
Please leave comments on YouTube here.

See you then! x

Sadie Jemmett interview with Clare Dwyer-Hogg on Robert Elms Show, BBC Radio London, 22 July 2009

Robert Elms presents London's best magazine show with eclectic music and great guests - weekdays 1200 to 1500. Press the 'play' button below to hear the interview.

• Interview with Robert Elms: BBC Radio London, 22 July 2009 by Sadie Jemmett

More Sadie Jemmett music on iLike

New CD album artwork

Sadie Jemmett iPhone app - available NOW.

The official Sadie Jemmett app for the iPhone or iPod Touch is

NOW AVAILABLE from the iTunes Music Store.

This app is a must-have for Sadie Jemmett fans and concert-goers.

It helps you keep up with Sadie Jemmett while you're on the go.

The rich features and unique content in this app include:
- The Blacksmith's Girl album in full streaming audio

- Bonus tracks and interviews in full streaming audio

- watch all the latest Sadie Jemmett videos
- browse photos
- read blog posts and the latest news
- find out about Sadie Jemmett performances near you
- all this content will be continuously updated in future to keep you totally up-to-date!

Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch.

Requires iPhone OS 2.2 or later.

Bombadeal (The Green Man) - featuring Sadie Jemmett

Sadie appears on two tracks, available as a free download from Tea Sea Records.
You can also listen to "Wake Up Tom" here.

Notes from Tom Caruana (Tea Sea):

Sadie Jemmett is an incredible singer songwriter. Her latest album was recorded in LA and is complete tonal perfection!!! I have been lucky enough to work with her a few times (introduced by Robin "Deepcutt" Walden). She plays Goldberry in the Bombadeal project....and has recorded 2 tracks for the album.

Tom Bombadeal was conceived in 2004 while I lived in Forest Row. I started work producing new tracks sampling folk music and rapping as the merry fellow that is Bombadeal.

The story is set in a mythical land where Bombadeal and his friends live in a woodland village. All is good for the villagers until they hear word that their village has been targeted for a violent rampage for the precious crystals that lie beneath the village.

In the run up to releasing the album I have put out 'Songs From The Wood' which is free to download!!!!
Its a collection of bits n bobs I've done since 2004.

The main album has all been made in the last 2 years and features Tom Caruana as Tom Bombadeal, Sadie Jemmett as Goldberry, Flake Brown as the Scene Setter, Longusto as Longfellow the Blacksmith, Vecks as Jack Lumber, Elemental as Papa-Quar, Dizraeli as Goo, See as Agur The Seer, Baba Brinkman, Joncept, Mole (character names unknown).

Sadie Jemmett at The Stag Acoustic Sessions: 2 Aug 2009

Starts at 7.30pm
Sadie Jemmett at 8.30pm

The Stag, 67 Fleet Road, Hampstead, London, NW3 2QU
Website: www.thestaghampstead.com
Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91857717833
Telephone 020 7722 2646


The Stag isn't just a large male deer it is also a pub in Hampstead. We do everything that tastes good and sounds good!!!!!

With a garden that is built for London's changing weather that has loads of covered cabanas each fitted with its own green friendly heaters. With palm trees for the sunny days and where else better to meet up with friends for parties or just to chill out with a cool pint or glass of wine?? If you havent seen the garden....well where have you been hiding! It has its own outside bar and BBQ where our top chef Tony Corry (previously acclaimed at the Bridge in Barnes) produces everything from a sausage bap to a lobster.Inside the pub has been well crafted to make you feel at home with lots to sip, slurp and bite into.

Here is a sample of great things we do>>>>>

Timmy Taylors Ale, Black Sheep Ale, Coopers Ale, 35 different lagers from all over the world (eg Hinano from Tahiti, Beer Lao, Little Creatures from Australia). Aspalls Cider, Ecusson French Cider, Maguires pear cider. Our well tried and tested wines and champagnes all hit the spot, we stock a large range of interesting spirits plus our team mix up a few tasty cocktails.

Our Head Chef Tony Curry and his team produce great food. With 8 variations of our amazing burgers, Steaks, Vegetarian dishes, Pork Belly, Bangers and mash, Polluck and Chips, Homemade Pies, amazing fish dishes like Swordfish, Moules Marniner, Red Snapper. We also do amazing £5.50 lunch specials and the best Sunday Lunch around (rated in the top 25 Pub Sunday Lunches in London by TimeOut) Try our free range Beef sirloin or Lamb roast from the Orkney Islands, or whole Roast free range Chicken with all the trimmings to share! We are often jam packed on sundays so ring us to book. (All of our meat, fish & vegetables are supplied by local small businesses located within 2 miles of the pub)

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