About this Event

Lewis Watson

With special guests Frank Hamilton and Shannon Saunders

The Boileroom

13 Stoke Fields

Guildford

GU1 4LS

01483 440022

www.theboileroom.net

Doors: 7pm

Age Restriction: 14+

Ticket Price: £7adv.

Tickets Available From: wegottickets.com, seetickets.com, The Boileroom.



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http://www.wegottickets.com/ev ent/216489



Lewis Watson



https://www.facebook.com/lewis watsonmusic?ref=ts&fref=ts



Today’s generation of aspiring young musicians often have just one choice in their pursuit of a career – to take the plunge and independently mastermind a digital cottage industry from which their songs can be discovered by a like-minded audience. That’s precisely what Oxford’s twenty-year-old singer-songwriter Lewis Watson did. After gradually building his own fan-base, his debut EP ‘It’s Got Four Sad Songs On It BTW’ topped the iTunes singer-songwriter chart on the first day of release, outselling the likes of Adele, Madonna and Ed Sheeran in the process. It’s a model that plenty of artists aspire to recreate, but few ever make any serious progress with.



“People are calling my age group the broken generation, yet we’re getting out there, doing what we want and being successful with it,” says Lewis of like-minded young singer-songwriters such as Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Ben Howard and Jake Bugg as examples. “People aren’t going to talent shows; they’re breaking the mould by writing meaningful songs and getting out there through social media. The scene is so rich with talent at the moment and to be amongst all of it is a great honour.”



With shows coming up supporting Lianne La Havas, as well as festival dates including Bestival, Live at Leeds, Great Escape and Camp Bestival, Lewis is steadily becoming the scene’s next big thing. After charting and playing gigs in both America and Australia, Lewis considers his impromptu set at Melbourne’s Federation Square - which attracted over a hundred people after being announced on Twitter just an hour before – to be a particular highlight. “This was on the other side of the world,” he trails off, still awestruck. “If this had been a ticketed gig with months of promo, how big could it get?”



Lewis’s word-of-mouth support saw his popularity continue to soar following the release of his second EP ‘Another Four Sad Songs’. After two recent sold-out headline tours, next month sees him playing more cities and bigger venues than ever before – his next London show at King’s College will be four times the size of the one he played back in October. His popularity has already spread beyond the capital with his first shows in Cardiff, Newcastle and Gloucester already all sold-out, while over 3000 people voted in a poll to add another city to the tour (Birmingham). And while the loyal support of his young, devoted fans has remained consistent, his potential is demonstrated by an increasingly diverse audience.



A comparative latecomer to music, Lewis first started playing after receiving a guitar for his sixteenth birthday. After he played a gig supporting his former music tutor Joe Porter (producer/ songwriter at tBeat Music), Porter suggested that he could produce the young musician’s first proper material. Recorded in just three days on a limited budget, the result was Lewis’s debut EP ‘It’s Got Four Sad Songs On It BTW’ which highlighted his emotive vocals across four intimate songs.



Set out as a story charting Lewis’s own experiences from a relationship breakdown to starting fresh with someone new, the increased profile that EP delivered posed an unexpected problem as his personal songs were now being delivered to an online following of thousands. “I’d never want to write a song that wasn’t really personal to me, but at the same time it can’t be too personal,” he notes. “It’s like telling 55,000 people a secret that I didn’t want to tell anyone.”



Following the EP’s initial success, Lewis signed a deal with Warner Bros. Records - the label’s long-running relationship with male solo artists as diverse as Paolo Nutini, Damien Rice and David Gray being an important factor in his decision.



His next release will be ‘The Wild’ EP which opens with ‘Into The Wild’ and demonstrates how his sound has matured from stripped-down singer-songwriter material to a full band production which neatly contrasts delicate verses with an expansive hook. “It’s about persuading a girl to get involved with you,” he says. “And it’s about understanding that it could be a big leap, but at the same time embracing the situation.” The EP also features two other new songs in the shape of ‘It Could Be Better’ (which addresses his dislike of confrontation) and ‘Little Darling’ (written in Australia during a bout of homesickness).



“I’ve tried to write songs that anyone can relate to – not necessarily the subject but at least the sentiment,” says Lewis, who currently names Biffy Clyro and 2 Door Cinema Club as two of his playlist favourites. “My songs will always mean a lot to me, but I feel that they’ve matured.”



‘The Wild’ EP is completed by his take on SBTRKT’s ‘Hold On’ which he decided to record after being impressed by their performance of the song at Latitude. “The crowd was calmer than they were during the other songs because they were concentrating on singing every word,” he recalls. “It was definitely something special. Whenever I listen to the song, I’m taken back to that moment.”



As he prepares for the release of his debut album later this year, Lewis has collaborated with a variety of songwriters and producers including Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys), Iain Archer (Jake Bugg), Kid Harpoon (Florence + The Machine) and Richard Wilkinson (Kaiser Chiefs).



Retelling almost any part of his story to date prompts Lewis to observe: “…and I never thought that could happen.” By dictating his own destiny, he’ll need to suspend his disbelief for some time to come.