Contact:

Band:
sparrowandtheworkshop@hotmail.com

Management - David Taylor:
djtmanagement@gmail.com

Label - Distiller Records:
info@distiller-records.com

Live Booking - Phyllis Belezos, ITB:
phyllis@itb.co.uk

Radio - Prudence - RocketPR
prudence@rocketpr.co.uk

Press - Lee Haynes - RollingRock
lee@rollingpress.co.uk

Press Area:

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(selected bio and images available on 'about' tab)

24 Feb

EDINBURGH

National Museum of Scotland
Support: Bwani Junction

Taken from Wikipedia

Sparrow and the Workshop are a three-piece based in Glasgow consisting of Belfast-born, Chicago-raised Jill O’Sullivan (vocals, acoustic guitar), Welshman Nick Packer (guitar, bass, basstard) and Scotsman Gregor Donaldson (drums, vocals). The band's debut album Crystals Fall was released by Distiller Records in 2010 to critical acclaim, with the likes of Drowned in Sound and Clash Magazine awarding the album 9/10. The band is notable for their use of harmonies and bastardized instruments/FX pedals and they have been compared to bands as varied as Jefferson Airplane, Talking Heads and Black Sabbath.

2008 - Present

Sparrow formed in early 2008 and soon after caught the attention of Distiller Records, who offered to put out a single and EP for them in 2009. They have toured with many bands including British Sea Power, Idlewild, Broken Records, Sivert Hoyem (ex-Madrugada) and supported the likes of The Lemonheads and Thee Oh Sees. They were invited to support American psych-rockers Brian Jonestown Massacre on their 2010 European tour after band leader Anton Newcombe saw their video of Devil Song on Youtube[5]. In May 2010 the band played a number of gigs in New York, one of which was again supporting Brian Jonestown Massacre in Williamsburg Music Hall. They were also invited by Spider Stacy to join The Pogues as main support on their 2010 Farewell Christmas Tour.

In 2008 the band played at Connect Festival and British Sea Power's Sing Ye from the Hillsides festival in Tanhill, North Yorkshire. The following year they played the BBC Introducing tent at Glastonbury Festival in 2009, along with End of the Road Festival and Kendal Calling. They completed a string of festivals in 2010, including the Green Man Festival, T in the Park, Bestival, Stag and Dagger, Pohoda, Hop Farm Festival, Moseley Folk Festival, Standon Calling, Y Not, 2000 Trees and the Insider festival in Aviemore.

The band released single Black to Red on October 11th, 2010 through Distiller Records with an accompanying DIY 3D video.

In March 2011 the band announced they had been recording a new album with producer Leo Abrahams, due to be released in late-May, 2011.

Other Projects

Jill provides backing vocals for Dia dos Namarados! by Broken Records, and Work Like You Can and Roll Along by Roddy Woomble, Fruit Tree Project collaborating w/Jenny Reeve (Strike the Colours), Emma Pollock (Delgados), Scott Huchenson (Frightened Rabbit), Rod Jones (Idlewild), Alasdair Roberts, James Graham (Twilight Sad), James Yorkston, Karine Polwart.

Gregor plays drums and provides backing vocals throughout Roddy Woomble's 'The impossible song and other songs' 2010 Album.

Discography

Albums

Artwork	Name	Tracklisting	Released	Format
	Spitting Daggers	Pact to Stay Cold You don't trust anyone Spitting Daggers Our Lady of the Potatoes Faded Glory Snakes in the Grass Father Look Old Habits Against the Grain Soft sound of your voice	23rd May 2011	CD, Download
	Crystals Fall	Into the wild Blame it on me I will break you Mercenary Swam like sharks Last Chance Devil Song The Gun Broken Heart, Broken Home Medal around your neck A horses grin You've got it all	12 April 2010	CD, Vinyl, Download

EP's

Artwork	Name	Tracklisting	Released	Format
	Into the Wild	You've got it all Into the wild Crossing hearts Blame it on me A horses grin Jealous of your heart Swam like sharks	23 Nov 2009	CD, Vinyl, Download
	Sleight of Hand	Devil Songs Last Chance The Gun I will break you My Crime Broken heart, broken home	1 Jun 2009	CD, Vinyl, Download

Singles

Artwork	Name	Tracklisting	Released	Format
	Snakes in the Grass	Snakes in the Grass	23 May 2011	Download
	Black to Red	Black to Red	10 Oct 2010	Download
	I will Break You	I will Break you Giant	5 April 2010	Download
	Horses Grin	Horses Grin	16 Nov 2009	Download
	Devil Song	Devil Song Cold-hearted Twist	11 May 2009	Vinyl, Download

Misc

Artwork	Name	Tracklisting	Released	Format
	Just what I needed	Just what i needed		Free download and video
	Tired of this town			On black to red promo

download hi-res

UK & European Tour, New Single and Video, Brand-spanking-new T-Shirts

Hello Everybody! hope you’re all well and not getting blown sideways by this storm rattling our shores right now!

So we’ve been pretty busy of late - we’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to Germany to play some showcase shows in Hamburg, Berlin, Koln and Munich with D/R/U/G/S, Ali love, Dan Black and the awesome Miracle Fortress. Thanks to everyone who came out, clapped (there were some fine clapping skills..) cheered, threw stuff or bought a cd! and thanks to SSC and SPEX magazine for putting us on! we are going to be back very very soon!

so, to the news New Single, Video, UK Tour, European Tour and New T-shirts!!!

NEWS:

New Single and Video
The 2nd Single to be taken from our Album ‘Spitting Daggers’ will be Faded Glory, released on October 3rd on distiller records. Our very own Gregor has produced the video. Shot on an allotment in East Glasgow. Our cast consisted of bloodthirsty friends who gave awesome performances as angry plot holders out for a fight. Special thanks to James Anderson (Camera work) and Sunni Caro (location and snacks). Watch it here on youtube

UK and European Tour
We’ve got loads of dates coming up that we want to share with you, starting with a UK mini tour that kicks off in London on Wednesday, September 14th at Proud, Camden. We’ll also be heading to Europe on October 11th and we’ll be driving all over the place so we might be heading through your town. there are still a few more dates to be confirmed… hopefully some french and italian dates too…

UK:

14 Sep LONDON Breakout @ Proud

15 Sep WOLVERHAMPTON Slade Rooms

17 Sep LECIESTER Lock 42

18 Sep MANCHESTER Deaf Institute

20 Sep BRISTOL louisiana

Europe:

11 Oct FRANKFURT Das Bett

12 Oct SCHAFFHAUSEN Tap Tab

13 Oct BASEL Kaserne

16 Oct VIENNA WUK

17 Oct DRESDEN Groovestation

18 Oct OBERHAUSEN Drucklufthaus

19 Oct ZURICH Papiersaal

22 Oct BOLOGNA Covo Club

24 Oct COPENHAGEN Pumpehuset

25 Oct OSLO John Dee

26 Oct STOCKHOLM Barn Owl-Debaser

29 Oct AMSTERDAM Paradiso (small)

New T-Shirts
So we’ve decided to produce a fancy new T-Shirt, Designed by Jill it features a fancy monoprint she did…This will be AVAILABLE SOON, keep your eyes and ears to the ground.

ok, take care and hopefully see you at one of the shows..!

Jill, Nick and Gregor x

New UK Tour Dates , European Dates To be Announced

Hellu!,

How’s a goin’? Nice summer? It’s been a while so I thought we should catch up.

So what have us Sparrows been doing this summer? Apart from a handful of festivals (London Calling, the Great Escape, Rockness and Secret Garden Party), we’ve been keeping busy with bits and bobs. Budding film director Gregor (who kind of looks like Ron Howard-just saying) has been challenging himself with the task of creating videos for most of the tracks of our last album (We can’t show you his video for Faded Glory yet but check out Snakes in the Grass in the meantime), Nick has been working on his 𔃲nd Rate Pedals’ project, where he builds FX pedals from scratch and then paints ~~annoying people~~ your favorite people on them. Here’s the paint-job he did for the ‘Bejeebur’ which he made for Liam from John Knox Sex Club

And me, I’ve been writing a lot of material lately I’ve also had the pleasure of working with a lot of other musicians and been lucky enough to sing on some really exciting forthcoming albums coming from John Knox Sex Club, Grand Gestures (Jan from Spare Snare) and Rod Jones and the Birthday Suit, and I’ve even had the chance to get the ole’ violin out for Project Serendipity ( here’s a pic of myself and the incredibly talented Jenny Reeve of Strike the Colours recording violin parts in our ~~livingroom~~ state-of-the-art recording studio this morning…

Anyhow, amidst all this we’ve been dying to get back out on the road and play some gigs and AT LAST it’s looking like we’ll get Old Yeller (our beautiful-on-the-inside tour van) a whirl on the M1/5/6 this Autumn - Below are some UK dates and we will announce our full OCTOBER European tour in the coming weeks.

Hope to see you around. High fives.

Jill

ps. Feel free to check out our website for tour dates and our shop for Sparrow Merch.

Tour Dates

19 Aug Mad Ferret Preston

6 Sep SPEX live - Mondial Club @ Indra Hamburg

7 Sep SPEX live - Festsaal Kreuzberg Berlin

8 Sep SPEX live - Gebäude 9 Köln

9 Sep SPEX live - Ampere Club München

14 Sep Breakout @ Proud LONDON

15 Sep Slade Rooms (rescheduled show) Wolverhampton

17 Sep Lock 42 Leicester

18 Sep Deaf Institute MANCHESTER

20 Sep louisiana BRISTOL

11 Oct European Tour TBA Europe

Fruit Tree Foundation

Last year I was lucky enough to take part in a collaborative project with 8 other Scottish Artists as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival. Myself, Rod Jones (Idlewild), Scott Hutchinson (Frightened Rabbit), Jenny Reeve (Strike the Colours), Emma Pollock (Delgados), James Graham (Twilight Sad), Karine Polwart, James Yorkston and Alasdair Roberts spent a snowy week in a house in Perth and wrote an album titled “Fruit Tree Foundation-First Edition’. We originally performed the songs in two shows in Glasgow and Edinburgh later in the year, where a limited amount of the albums were available for purchase, but now Chemikal Underground Records have awesomely agreed to release it to the wider public. It is now available to buy here and you can download two free tracks from the Fruit Tree Foundation website here.

You can read more about the conception of the Fruit Tree Foundation here. Hope you can pick up a copy, 50% of the profits will go directly to the Mental Health Foundation.

Cheers,

Jill

Jet streams from Manchester airport coming over our t-lodge this morning.

Proud galleries where we play tonight, cool looking place. We are turning our amps up to 11, very reverby in here.

Asked for 2 beers in Munich, got these! And Nick’s eyebrows look cgi’s, wha?

Flying moustaches on the Ferry

Nearly home! A welcome back from the ducks at westmoreland…or was it my pie crust that got there attention?

Gregor is really excited about his eggs florentine at Boston Tea Party in Bristol.

Someone get the puncture repair kit! We’re not gonna make the jump to light speed like this…

New Tee’s at the Merch Stall

Liverpool o2 is impeccably clean, took ages to find this example stuck on the mirror.

I’m starting a new hobby, collecting dressing room artwork. Everywhere we go we are stunned by the creativity of bands in their endeavours to produce more and more variations of this toilet wall classic. Starting off fairly conservatively with this example from the Manchester roadhouse.

A day off!!! We went to visit Englands highest waterfall, Teesdale high force. Purrty cool, thanks Bob Fisher for the recommendation.

Check out the pissed up mime we found in Amsterdam. He wouldn’t shut up!

It’s the sight that let’s you know your almost home. The upside down cock and balls on the hillside near Abingdon services.

Fly my pretty’s!!

Hanging out on Brighton bizeach at the great escape.

Nick and Jill, as seen from my wee drum booth at six music today. G

Customising my guitar today!

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