Lachlan Bryan

Heaven's Gate are delighted to present, for the music loving community of Liverpool and Merseyside, a double bill of antipodean Americana/Country featuring the sublime talents of Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes and Imogen Clark. Our venue for the night is the lovely 81 Renshaw so come along and join us for another top class night of live music. Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes have built their reputation on storytelling. Over the past eight years they have released four records, toured Europe and the USA multiple times, shared stages with Americana and country heavyweights and picked up a string of awards, including the Golden Guitar for 'alt country album of the year' with their landmark release Black Coffee. But they've never told stories like the ones on new record 'Some Girls (Quite) Like Country Music'. By far the band's most 'adult' work, 'Some Girls' is a country record, but draws as heavily upon the influence of Leonard Cohen and Billy Bragg as it does Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt. Lachlan, at the piano for much of the album, noticed the shift in his own approach as well as that of his collaborators. We're all feeling the weight of being grown-ups now, he explains, and it feels natural to write about grown-up things. The subject matter changed, and it happened without us even noticing it at first. Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes have achieved a different sort of musical perfection the kind that puts the listener in an emotional space from the first to the last bar. 'Some Girls (Quite) Like Country Music' is a ragged, poetic, alt-country gem. There's a song about a cemetery, a trailer-trash midlife crisis, a forty-year romance, a promiscuous girlfriend, a city we like, a pre-apocalyptic cautionary tale and a missing person's report, just to name a few. If our albums are our children, this one's the one that took up smoking at seven years old, got a tattoo at twelve, hacked the high school computer network at fifteen but always remembered to offer a seat to the old lady on the tram.. Imogen Clark When an artist first emerges at a young age, they often have a limited well of knowledge and experience to draw from, yet on her debut Love & Lovely Lies, Imogen Clark captured, with great clarity, that sense of blossoming creativity and wide-eyed innocence as it segued into the joy and pain of negotiating young adulthood. Fast forward two years and Imogen is taking another creative leap forward with the release of her second album Collide. With two years of touring, collaborating and living behind her, she's been able to take the themes of her debut and delve deeper into their meanings and repercussions, embracing and exploring both the dark and light sides of the human condition. At the age of 24, Imogen has already realised a wealth of personal goals. From strong showings in national and international songwriting competitions to performing at the iconic Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, signing with Lost Highway Records Australia (Shane Nicholson, Ruby Boots, Adam Eckersley Band, Catherine Britt), receiving multiple CMC Music Award and Golden Guitar Award nominations, and having her last five singles reach #1 on the CMC Top 50 chart. That industry acknowledgement and respect from her peers has led to high profile shows with artists such as Shania Twain, Clare Bowen, Diesel, Ian Moss, Daryl Braithwaite, Willie Watson and Shane Nicholson. She has also earned an abundance of songwriting and studio work credits, having co-written two songs on Kasey Chambers' ARIA Award and Golden Guitar winning #1 album Dragonfly, and recorded backing vocals on Shane Nicholson's award winning Love & Blood record.