Boo Hewerdine

Boo Hewerdine is widely regarded as a songwriting legend. After fronting cult band The Bible until the mid 90’s he went on to make numerous solo albums - most recently God Bless The Pretty Things for Navigator Records. He performed songs from this on the Andrew Marr Show and Songwriter’s Circle on BBC4.

For the last 20 years he has played with, written for and produced Eddi Reader (including her seminal Burns album)

Other artists who have performed his songs include...

Kris Drever, Heidi Talbot, kd Lang, Chris Difford, Jerry Douglas, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, Duke Special and many, many others.

For his latest album, Harmonograph, Boo Hewerdine resolved to record his own versions of songs he had written for, and often with, other people. From around 400 such songs he drew up a shortlist of 140. After listening to these with the album's producer, Neil MacColl, he settled on a shorter list of around 80.

Then he more or less gave up. Each morning he would arrive at the studio and simply pick whichever song he fancied doing next. He resisted any pressure simply to stack together versions of his most successful collaborations. "It's not like a CV," he says. "It's not an attempt to go 'look what I've done'." One song seemed to lead on to the next: "There just seemed to be an atmosphere emerging". That was what he was after. The twelve songs that eventually surfaced - some well-known, like the Eddi Reader hit single Patience Of Angels, some not, and some never recorded previously - became Harmonograph.