CYRANO & CHRIS PARRIS with Kay Hazel & Dolly Mae
Cyrano + Chris Parris + Kay Hazel + Dolly Mae
This year we celebrate our 30th anniversary. We intend to bring artists in from all over the world throughout 2023. Some old, some new.
What we do also want to showcase the artists from the area as well and bringing you a picture of new artists as well as veterans of the local scene. We wouldn't be here 30 years if it wasn't for the wonderful people that perform at our venue.
Let's celebrate!
CYRANO
Cyrano are a rock four piece comprised of Joe Ackerley, Tim Hubbard, Matt Wilson and Karl Barton. Veterans of the Tunbridge Wells music scene, they have built a large underground following around London and Kent. Their influences range from Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Jimi Hendrix, Radiohead, Crowded House and The Beatles.
CHRIS PARRIS
Chris Parris is a singer-songwriter originating from here in Tunbridge Wells and in recent years the music has evolved and flourished into a universal, unifying sound, expressing the depths of living emotion and communicating concepts of love, compassion, ancient spiritual teachings and the mysteries of creation.
His debut album is due to be released in the coming months and has been a pivotal aspect of the healing process. Bringing together influences and sounds from around the world the album features several incredible magicians of music playing congas, shakers and other various percussion instruments along with African bass, guitars, vocals and keyboards that orchestrate and arrange the songs beautifully, Chris sings and plays acoustic and twelve string acoustic in various tunings, most notably variations of open D tuning as well as playing the Sitar from India. Since recording the initial song takes for the album in early 2020, Chris has been able to write a second album which is just as exciting & progressive and will be recorded soon. We live in an era of great change and the music is an expression, a manifestation, and a demonstration of the human potential to overcome and achieve anything. This is order out of chaos, darkness into light – and if we listen very carefully, we can hear rainbows raining stardust for we are made of light and we come from the stars.
KAY HAZEL
Kay Hazel is an independent alternative pop solo artist based in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Taking influences from artists such as The Cure, Kate Bush, Alex G and FKA twigs. Essentially a maker of sad bops that adores using both traditional and synthetic instruments to tell stories.
DOLLY MAE
Line Up
REVIEW FROM BLAM MAGAZINE: 'Enter CYRANO, and despite the respectably sized crowd, the quality gap compared to certain Stable acts that draw bigger ones, yawns open like a bottomless chasm.
With minimal fuss, Cyrano just get on with it as 'Gathering the Dust" takes over and makes them sound heartbreakingly huge. Imagine Thirteen Senses writing with Embrace while Clearlake look on, crying into their beer. When Joe Ackerley's vocals aren't doing the high wire act, he roars with a fractured anguished dignity, somewhere between Thom Yorke and Chris Martin, but there's no girly piano in Cyrano's set up. Their mood develops from chiming guitars that in the space of a few drawn out chords can make you drop to your knees and be thankful that the world is so goddamn beautiful; soaring, swooping melodies, teetering on the brink between joyful abandonment and despair, pour from their amps, crash and ebb around your brain and trickle down your spine like cold sweat.
The newer material, such as "Signs" and "Discontinued" echo the Coldplay and Pearl Jam comparisons made frequently with this band, but intrinsically, they only share the same sense of power and ethereal sensuality, as the ideas are theirs alone. There's absolutely no filler with this band. Each song is a perfectly crafted, impossibly sexy work of art in itself, honed and perfected over time. Their tunes build, grow, expand and explore, going exactly where you want them to and leaving you breathless with anticipation for the next one. "Surely", you say to yourself, "It can't get much better than this." Then it does.
Quite simply, Cyrano are just stunning.'
