By Dan Thompson
This month’s line-up at the winner of Britain’s best small venue award ranges from a punk legend and traditional singer-songwriter to an eccentric who creates his own noise-making machines.
After kicking off the month with a sold out performance by Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman Bob Mould on June 10, singer-songwriter and Ramsgate resident Josh Flowers is set to perform a special show at Ramsgate Music Hall (RMH) on Friday, June 17, to celebrate the launch of his upcoming album.
His debut album is called Mellow Drama. Josh’s writing concerns the strangeness of people and the beauty of everyday things, with songs that blend humour with melancholy, and the surreal with the mundane. Josh is signed to Universal Publishing and is one half of the transatlantic duo Echobaby.
On Thursday, June 23 one of rock music’s great eccentrics returns to Ramsgate for another endlessly inventive show.
Thomas Truax is known globally for his homemade, noise-making machines with fabulous names and their own strange personalities and mythologies. These bizarre creations have become his trusty bandmates and an essential part of his incredible live performance.
Think Tom Waits reincarnated in the bizarre universe of David Lynch. And you’ll still only be half-way there.
Things shift pace on Friday, June 24 with banjo-backed punk ragers Show Me The Body. Known for their blistering live shows, this is simply unmissable for any punk fan.
The Guardian said “They sit somewhere between At the Drive-In’s tight soapbox screeds and Death Grips’ loose, rangy sermons, and in a lineage of right-on, p***ed-off US punk stretching back to Fugazi”.
Eight years on from performing at RMH with his previous band Let’s Wrestle, on Saturday, June 25, Wesley Gonzalez returns with his charming and self-deprecating take on 80s synth-pop
And to end the month, splitting the difference between heavy-metal darkness and shimmering shoegaze beauty, are Philadelphia band Nothing who perform on Wednesday, June 29.
All the gigs happen at Ramsgate Music Hall, 13 Turner Street, Ramsgate, and the majority of shows start at 7.30pm. For more details and to book tickets visit www.ramsgatemusichall.com
