Music: The Home Show
The Home Show is an act in words and music, evoking the dream and reality of what it means to be at home.
Jennifer and folk singer Ross Wilson met with surprise in 2009 and are at the beginning of a literary and musical collaboration, creating a show that makes the most of what Ross and Jennifer, in their different ways, have to offer. Watch as it flowers and bears fruit. Ross’s songs are based on the concepts underlying Jennifer’s writing, so to begin with they plan a live show combining existing songs with readings from The O of Home. The show will be punctuated by recordings of answers from people in the street/members of the audience, to the questions “What does the word home mean to you? Where is home?”
These shows begin in earnest at Eastside Bookshop on the 4th Feb 2010, with following dates around the UK.
Ross Wilson
Ross, a seminal member of The Electroacoustic Club in London, grew up in Edinburgh and was raised by his maternal grandmother. Following her death, the last tie to the place that he’d years before fallen out of love with was undone. In the summer of 2002 Ross moved to Bethnal Green in London’s east end, and a year later formed the band Blue Rose Code.
After considerable success - opening for Lou Rhodes at the Jazz Cafe in Camden and for John Renbourn at the Edinburgh Fringe, supporting Viking Moses at the ICA as part of Nick Luscome’s Roots & Shoots series, opening for Drever, McCusker and Woomble at the Union Chapel in Islington and supporting James Yorkston at Celtic Connections – Ross was scouted by emerging Electro/Folk label Ho Hum Records. In 2009, to good reviews, HHR released a 7” for BRC, which was also remixed by James Yuill, then followed dates around the UK.
With BRC at the peak of its powers Ross decided that it wasn’t right. Removing himself to the Isle of Lewis, he holed up in an old shepherd’s croft. In front of the fire and with the whisper of the gulf stream, Ross composed a body of new songs, lamenting the absence and aching that he’d begun to feel.
The body of songs is called ‘Ghosts Of Leith’. It is an open letter to the lost concept of home.