Steve Pilgrim will perform at The Green Room in Stockton on Friday 23rd July. The former Stands drummer and singer-songwriter will bring his live show to one of the town’s most secluded venues, with over 15 years of touring experience and four solo studio albums in his repertoire.
Hailing from Liverpool, The Stands were part of a city scene which represented a bubbling-under outpost of the Noughties British indie explosion, headlined by figurehead acts The Zutons and The Stands’ sometime collaborators, The Coral.
Feeling their way towards a sound and identity across two albums, Pilgrim had already departed for pastures new shortly prior to the band splitting in 2005. Frontman Howie Payne also launched a solo career which continues today, laying down significant heritage for the band.
As with all acts who hammer a dent, however sizeable, into the contours of a scene, the band and the albums left behind are part of a period ripe for repeat re-evaluations as the sands of time continue to flick into the future. Legacies are constantly redrawn and measured by the followers converted at the thousands of gigs like that scheduled for The Green Room in July, and Pilgrim’s sound across his solo venture is suitably hard-won and traditionally rooted for a musician on the British singer-songwriter circuit.
That sound and direction is planted firmly in the folk/pop mother lode of the 1960s, the very same cornerstone which powered Britpop and any movement involving young British people wielding guitars either side of it.
Pilgrim’s origins and connections fling further back than that for example, with The Stands having previously supported Paul Weller during their tenure, which would pay later dividends. Although, this isn’t to say Pilgrim’s work doesn’t feature surprises, such as his collaborations with Japanese folk experimenter, Akeboshi.
Pilgrim subsequently paid many a due and burnished his credentials considerably by drumming for the supremely decorated John Power (and Cast) and for Weller extensively on tour during the last decade, as well as on most of Weller’s albums of the period. His role in Weller’s project has grown increasingly central as he has flourished as a solo artist, Pilgrim’s most recent album being his fourth, 2017’s ‘Morning Skies’.
This all adds up to nights on tours like this upcoming date, where the artists who populate the country’s touring scene aren’t cogs in a wheel, they are superstars, however briefly, when they step into their own room.
Tickets, priced at £8.50 in advance, are available from ticketweb.uk.
