Toyah, tributes and a legend this April at Artrix.
R&B legend Georgie Fame, pop icon Toyah Willcox and a great selection of tribute acts are amongst the highlights for music fans at Bromsgrove’s Artrix Arts Centre this April.
Saturday 28th April sees household name and pop icon Toyah Willcox come to Artrix with her Acoustic, Up Close & Personal Tour. This lively, entertaining and revealing show comes in the form of Toyah performing an unplugged set of her well-loved hits, alongside recalling stories from her colourful thirty-five year career.
• Continue reading at The Birmingham Press. Visit toyahwillcox.com for all confirmed 2018 dates and appearances in Toyah’s Official Gig Diary.
Toyah Willcox is one of the best-known and most versatile entertainers Birmingham has produced. Actor, TV presenter, businesswoman but most of all a singer, she is about to begin a tour which will feature her best-known work played acoustically. She told us about her upcoming Robin show.
“It’s acoustic, which is a lot of fun. I’ve been doing this show for a year now. It’s Colin Hinds from China Crisis and Chris Wong from my band, two acoustic guitars and myself. We do all the hits but I also do favourite tracks from my albums and I use film and visuals to tell behind the scenes stories, how certain images were created and how videos were made. It’s really irreverent, the whole point of the evening is fun, laughter and dance. The evening is very uplifting and what I find surprising is that the songs are more danceable in this format. It just works, the songs really shine and it’s been incredibly successful.”
You certainly seem very enthusiastic about it. Will this be something you do more of?
“It’s a regular thing because it’s very much in demand. A lot of people don’t want to go to rock clubs to hear an electric band so this show can go to other venues such as arts centres where the clientele are happy to sit and listen to someone talking about their life. But we’ve found that the show still maintains the energy and if anything it’s more intense because it goes from story to song and back again and it sounds very melodic, with a lot of light and shade. It takes me by surprise because when we started I honestly thought we’d do two shows and never do it again but I’m getting a standing ovation every ten minutes. People really get it.”
• Continue reading at The Birmingham Press.
Hazel O’Connor recalls the famous Rainbow Theatre gig with The Stranglers from 1980 in a new interview at The Birmingham Press.
You’re touring with Hugh Cornwell now; he’s seen as a distinguished elder statesman of the music business which is a long way removed from the time you played a gig for him when he was in prison for drug possession.
“That was a night. The Stranglers were due to play the Rainbow but with Hugh in prison a few of us replaced him as singer, or rather tried to, because Hugh’s irreplaceable. Myself an Toyah did couple of songs, that was when I did Hanging Around for the first time. We were singing backing vocals on Peaches with Ian Dury singing. Toyah was dancing round the stage as she always does while Ian was scrabbling around on the floor trying to pick his hat up which she’d knocked off. Robert Smith was playing guitar as well, in his pre-make up days. I wish someone could find footage of it.
“It wasn’t so good for Hugh though – he was in prison for something he might not have been charged for now. The authorities were making an example of someone famous.”
• Continue reading at The Birmingham Press.
