Live Music at The Kettering Arts Centre this Saturday 25th November with ‘The Voice 2014’ runner-up Sally Barker supported by Chris Conway & Dan Britton (Govannen)
Live Music With Sally Barker – Chris Conway & Dan Britton!
Saturday 25th November 2017
Tickets £9 or £10 on the night
Doors open 7pm – 7:30pm start
Sally Barker has been around for decades but her voice just gets better with age. Whether she is singing to seven million on the final of TV’s ‘The Voice’ or to 7 people in a local folk club Sally is the consummate professional. She has the ability to lift the words off the page as if you were hearing them for the first time. Sally began writing songs and performing at the age of 10, influenced by the likes of John
Martyn, Janis Ian, Steelye Span, Bonnie Raitt and Pentangle. By her late teens Sally was performing folk and blues in pubs and folk clubs in the Midlands with bass player Chris Watson. Later the duo went on to support Steeleye Span, Gordon Giltrap and Roy Harper.
Chris moved to London and Sally entered and won the 1986 Kendal Songsearch Competition with ‘Hunting the Buffalo’. Newly solo, Sally got to be the support to acts such as Richard Thompson, Taj Mahal, Richard Digance and Fairport Convention.
Solo record deals with Joe Boyd’s Hannibal label and the Hamburg based Hypertension Music followed. It was around this time that Sally began the all-female folk group ‘The Poozies’ with Karen Tweed, Patsy Seddon and Mary Macmaster.
In the early 90’s Sally opened for both Bob Dylan and Robert Plant in Germany and toured consistently in Europe during this time, both solo and with the Poozies, releasing albums along the way. By the mid ’90s Sally had left the Poozies and had two small children with the idea of concentrating on solo work. Future plans, however, were shattered when her husband Chris was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2003. Sally’s 2003 album ‘Maid in England’, which had been six years in the making (interrupted by 2 pregnancies and her husband’s illness), was muted by the death of her husband and she lost the desire to perform her own songs. As a young widow Sally turned her attention to bringing up her two sons while also studying for a
degree in Music Technology. She took to performing Joni’s songs in the duo ‘Joni Mitchell 
Project’ with piano and dulcimer player Glenn Hughes. Gradually, Sally began to perform her own songs again and in 2006 rejoined the Poozies.
By now teenagers, it was her sons Dillon and Ben who persuaded her to enter ‘The Voice UK’. She was Tom Jones’ finalist on the BBC TV programme in 2014, reducing Sir Tom, and viewers alike, to tears with her flawless performances. Sally subsequently turned down a large advance and the opportunity to record a covers album for Universal, choosing to finish the Poozies’ album ‘Into the Well’ and work on songs for her new album, ‘Ghost Girl’ whilst continuing to tour both solo and with the Poozies.
Tickets for this and other events are available from Waterstones, High Street, Kettering. By post including an SAE to Jaime Ferreira at Flat 1, 15 Havelock St, Kettering NN16 9PZ (cheques made payable to “PCC of St Andrew’s Kettering”). Tickets are now also available from Petite Pantry at The Yards, 10 Market Street, NN16 0AH Kettering, United Kingdom
You may also buy tickets by emailing office@ketteringartscentre.com or online at We Got Tickets (subject to a booking fee) or call 07759765824 if you prefer to pay by card. All major credit cards accepted (subject to a booking fee).
