Portsmouth via the Appalachians, Americana band Hometown Show launch new album at The Wedgewood Rooms

Ten years since forming, and six years since their debut album, the five-piece will be releasing The Old Golden River.

Started by Matthew Harrison as a solo project, he soon gathered like-minded musicians around him and it became a fully-fledged band.

While the line-up has changed over the years, Matthew’s pleased with the musicians in the band right now.

‘Josh (Hibberd, bass) has been in it pretty much from the get-go, Trevor (Thwaites, harmonica) has been there since the first album, Megan Linford (vocals) was in the band before when she was a lot younger, and then she obviously went off and did a lot of her solo stuff and now she's rejoined us.

‘Then Euan (McLachlan) is our most recent member, he’s our electric lead guitarist.’

The album saw them calling on a few other musicians from the local scene.

‘We've got lots of guests coming along and playing on the record as well, so we’ve got Chris Ricketts, who's playing a mandocello and vocals, Tom Bryan has come along and done some guest harmonica as well.

‘It's like a big family affair with people coming on and guesting. It's a really interesting mix because we get to expand the line-up on the album, which is nice.’

Matthew is the main songwriter, but he worked closely with Josh and then the rest of the band to pull them together.

‘The way I write the songs is always just myself and an acoustic guitar. I record those as Voice Notes on my phone, so god knows how many of those I've got!

‘We ended up going through a lot of those, me and Josh, and picking out the best ones, or picking out parts of different songs that could work as an amalgamation of other bits of songs.

‘And then we've come together as a band to work on them. Some of these songs we’ve been playing for a little while others we've held back for a bit trying to practice them and finesse them.’

The album was recorded at Quay West in Gosport and Mayfield Studio in Drayton, with the band aiming to capture the sound of their live shows.

‘We recorded a lot of the elements live. Like my guitar and vocals, I've just gone in and recorded them live rather than recording them separately, so it almost feels like a live performance recording. It's been a lot of fun – tiring – but a lot of fun.’

And helping the scene with helped them in the early days is important to the band – they put out an open call on social media for a support act. They will be joined on the bill by their friend Chris Ricketts, and Ella R, making her Wedge debut.

‘It's a really important thing for us to do, especially when there's so many great up-and-coming artists in and around the Portsmouth area.

‘It's nice to be able to give a platform to other people.

‘I played my play my first show at The Wedge when I was like 15 or 16 years old.

‘It was just me and an acoustic guitar dumped in between a couple of metal bands, which was a scary prospect,’ he laughs at the memory, ‘but I got given the opportunity to play The Wedge and now I can't say how many times I've played there, and headlined there in various different bands and formats.

‘I've been there to watch some of my favourite acts as well, and it is one of the best venues on the south coast, so, to be able to offer that opportunity out to someone else is really lovely.’

Since Matthew started Hometown Show, he’s noticed a marked shift in the UK public’s perceptions of the genre.

‘I worked out in America a lot, and I worked in Disney for a little bit in Florida. I lived on Disney property and there were lots of different people from around the world, from Germany and Canada, China and all over the place.

‘And it was actually a bunch of Canadian people that introduced me to country music and obviously being out there in Orlando I got to hear a lot country music, and then I started touring and visiting friends out there and playing the music.

‘I was picking up all these traditional country songs and folk songs and learning those.

‘I played with banjo players who made illegal moonshine in their kitchen, I shot guns out in the backwoods of Kentucky and got that real country experience, and I brought it back to the south coast, to Portsmouth.

‘At that time, country music, people knew it as like Shania Twain, so it was quite hard for us starting out. We were getting a lot of Mumford and Sons comparisons even though we don’t sound much like them!’

He recalls some early sets were a bit hairy, but a few judicious Johnny Cash and Elvis covers helped give their audiences something to grab on to.

‘We did a lot of sets at the Drift Bar (in Southsea) back in the day and we weren’t always sure we weren’t going to get booted out the door,’ he laughs at the memory.

‘But we actually found that a lot of these places, people were so receptive to the music and now country music is massive.

It’s so mainstream now, it's out there on Radio1 and Radio2.

‘And Country2Country music festival at the O2 – it's enormous.

‘We’ve been fortunate enough to play there twice. We did autograph signings at the merch stand, and we were getting stopped to sign people’s programmes.

‘It shows the progression of just how big country music has become - we were this small band from Portsmouth who just enjoyed playing country music, whether other people wanted to hear it or not. And then we’re playing at Country2Country.

We've had a lot of great opportunities. This year, we got booked by Frank's Red Hot and French's Mustard to play their fourth of July party in London which was really cool – they had all these cheerleaders and chicken wing eating competitions.

‘We’ve been really fortunate to play some really cool shows over the last 10 years and support some great artists who have gone on to do amazing things.’

Matthew does also play as a solo artist, and he’s recent’y revived that side of his music under the name Somewhere In The Wildwood.

‘I try to keep the two as separate entities.

‘I love country music it because it tells a story through song in a way unlike any other genre of music.

‘But this new solo material is me putting myself out there as raw and as honestly as possible, and it's that kind of folk singer-songwriter vibe, whereas Hometown Show is more knee-slapping, toe-tapping, upbeat country music.

I think there's a different experience at each show, Somewhere In The Wildwood is a very intimate experience where it's just myself playing songs on acoustic guitar and banjo, so it's a lot more chilled.

‘They’re very different, but I love playing both. It gives me that opportunity to express myself in two very different ways which I love.’

HOMETOWN SHOW

The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea

Monday, December 30

wedgewood-rooms.co.uk