Red Sky July's 2025 UK Tour

Post

Subscribe

Thu 27 Feb 2025 - Thu 27 Mar 2025

New music will be showcased by folk/Americana band Red Sky July during a UK tour that concludes at Birmingham's Kitchen Garden Café on March 27, 2025. The trio - Texas guitarist Ally McErlaine, his wife Shelly Poole (of Alisha’s Attic fame) and vocalist Haley Glennie-Smith – will be playing tracks from their eagerly awaited fourth album, Misty Morning, set to be released on February 28. The new collection marks a significant evolution in the band’s sound, blending folk influences with modern instrumentation.



“Our aim was to shake up the perception of what folk music means,” explains Shelly. “We challenged the instrumentation involved in the folk and Americana genres and used a lot of delays and electronic drones to create a much more cinematic sound. We also layered up some ‘found sound’ that we recorded in Scotland, Ireland, America, Spain and everywhere else on our travels. We made synth drones out of them, which became the bedrock of the album, sound-wise.”

Shelly and Ally formed Red Sky July as a side project in 2008. The band’s first three albums were fronted by Charity Hair, whose southern states twang and fiddle playing gave the group a distinct country sound. When she left pre-pandemic to return to the States, Shelly looked up her old friend Haley Glennie-Smith and discovered that she lived close by. Haley is known for her work on soundtracks, including Stephen Woolley’s Stoned, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There and Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, and as the solo vocalist of Planet Earth in Concert.

“I hadn’t seen her in over a decade, but I still had her number and, incredibly, it still worked,” laughs Shelly. “She could have been anywhere in the world, but she was living ten minutes from us in North London. We met up the same day and she agreed to join the band. It couldn’t have been more serendipitous.”



What appeared to be easy took a tricky turn when the trio scrapped their first recordings, and then the pandemic hit.

“Actually we scrapped two albums,” says Ally. “The second was written in lockdown. I think we were trying too hard. I had been due out on Texas’ 30th-anniversary tour, but twice it was cancelled. Everything was up in the air and perhaps we felt under pressure to write.”

Third time around, things flowed. “Once we decided to have no rules and no boundaries, we found our new sound,” says Shelly. “Ally and I are so used to working to strict remits on soundtracks and adverts. We had to ditch that mentality and just go with our guts.

“What we hit on as a trio feels so special. There are bits of all our backgrounds, melded together, but with more electronics than we’ve used in the past. It’s organic and different, and it sums up our past few years. It’s been a long time coming, but worth the wait.”



The recently released single from the album is Stars Turn Cold which was the initial track and stylistic reference point for the music.

Shelly explains: “Stars Turn Cold was the first song that arrived to us for the Misty Morning album, and from this song, we wrote outwards to find brothers and sisters for her. We knew this song was the centre point for the new album, instrumentation-wise and tone-wise, and this is why the whole album exists. The song was written quickly in the lounge of our home on an acoustic guitar. I hummed the first melody that came to mind and that is where it stayed. She was an easy one.”



Red Sky July has toured extensively, including sets at Glastonbury, Isle of Wight, T in the Park and C2C: Country to Country. They have appeared as special guests of the likes of Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, 10CC, Tom Jones and Jools Holland. They are now looking forward to introducing their new material on their own headlining tour.

2025 UK tour dates

February 27: Prohibition Studios, Liverpool;
February 28: Glad Café, Glasgow;
March 8: The Folklore Rooms, Brighton;
March 19: The Greystones, Sheffield;
March 20: Alfie & Fin's, Tynemouth;
March 21: St. Nicholas Church, Beverley;
March 22: Halle St. Peter's, Manchester;
March 26: Half Moon, Putney, London;
March 27: Kitchen Garden Café, Birmingham.


%wnbirmingham
%wnliverpool
%wnglasgow
%wnsheffield
%wnmanchester
%wnlondon
#music
#arts_culture
#concerts