London Folk Magazine and News
Voices From The Cones - Live Launch 21st Oct
A unique musical tribute to the glass industry - presented by Midlands singer-songwriter Dan Whitehouse, poet/storyteller John Edgar and pianist/singer-songwriter Elizabeth J Birch
“Never before! Celebrates the lives and stories of people from the glassworks…. bringing them to a new audience” BBC TV
The album launch show on Friday October 21st in the Glasshouse Arts Centre (built on the site of the old factory) will celebrate 400 years of glassmaking, with Dan Whitehouse and John Edgar joined by local pianist and singer-songwriter Elizabeth J Birch.
The songs and Radio ballad style narration retell real stories captured from an archive of interviews with 100 former glass workers talking about their memories of working in the glass trade, alongside new interviews conducted by Dan and storyteller John Edgar. The result is an emotive journey into the history and future of the glass industry.
Elizabeth sings ´Rouse Ye Women´ on the album - a song inspired by a The Strongest Links Vase crated by Vic Bamforth in tribute to Mary Macarthur, a trade unionist and suffragette who campaigned for the right to a fair wage in 1910.
From the huge Glassworks production line and cone-shaped furnaces of the past to the reflections on bespoke pieces created in more recent times, Voices From The Cones celebrates the until now largely untold stories of the master craftsmen and craftswomen and their communities, including songs about how glassmaking was thirsty work, about the wonderful family feel of the glass community and ‘The Last Apprentice’ Malcolm Andrews.
"Like the glass the cones produced, this is a thing of beauty to be treasured." Mike Davies Fatea Magazine
“A beautifully made album” BBC Radio
A highly entertaining show and "a unique musical tribute, giving voice to the heroes of the glass industry" says the Black Country Bugle
Voices from the Cones is Dan’s second glass related release of 2022 which is, appropriately, the International Year of Glass. His first, The Glass Age, (released in July on CD and December on vinyl) looks at how our human experience and ways of connecting have changed through the ‘glass’, the screens, of virtual meetings and communication.
