User:Monxton/The Shee



The Shee is an Anglo-Scottish folk band formed in 2005 which plays arrangements of traditional and contemporary folk music and songs. Its members come from Scottish and English traditions, as well as being influenced by bluegrass, and several are also notable as solo artists and in other ensembles. The band was nominated as "Live Act of the Year" at the 2012 Scots Trad Music Awards.

Career
The band was formed when its members were all students, though not in the same academic year, on the Newcastle University Folk and Traditional Music degree programme. They used the name Sirens, and the first accordionist was Shona Kipling. Their first gig was the tiny festival of Windy Bottom, Yorkshire in 2005. Kipling left and was replaced by accordionist Amy Thatcher, and their name became The Shee, from Sìth, the Gaelic word for "fairy".

After drawn-out negotiations with a major label, the band decided to produce their debut album independently, enabled by financial backing from two private individuals. A Different Season was released in January 2008. fRoots magazine said it had an "air of bold friskiness and abundant energy" and called it "a very impressive debut indeed", and Folkworld described it as "raw, vibrant and powerful". The Shee were nominated for the "Horizon Award" in the 2009 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Decadence, the second album by The Shee, was released in 2010 containing a mixture of traditional and original music. Colin Irwin writing in fRoots said it showed "confidence, conviction, adeptness and raw talent".

Reviews of the band's performances were positive but described in clichéd terms – The Scotsman called them a "feisty all-female band", and the Daily Record's review started with "sexy and sparkly sirens The Shee gave a glittering account of themselves". Dave Kidman gave space in his review of A Different Season to refute "any superficial comparison" of how the music of The Shee differed from that of The Poozies, also an all-woman band – through the use of bluegrass mandolin in place of guitar, he explained – yet did not offer any reason why the comparison was necessary.

3 albums, reviews.

Continuum in detail.

Women in trad music controversies. Evening gloves, stilettos!

A live review in The Herald in 2012 praised the wide range of their material, but called for "more attention to intonation and timing and a stronger, tighter vocal impact."


 * Jan 2013 World Music Network Video Chart No. 6 –Our BottleJan
 * 2013 World Music Network Listening Chart No. 9–Murmurations
 * 2012 MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Nominee –Best Live Act
 * 2011 MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Nominee –Folk Band of the Year
 * 2010 World Music Network Listening Charts –Decadence
 * 2009 BBC 2 Folk Awards Nominee –Horizon Award
 * 2009 MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards Nominee –Newcomer Award

The opening performance at the 2017 Scots Trad Music Awards show in Paisley was a set by "The Shee Big Band". The line-up comprised the six members of The Shee, plus percussionist Signy Jakobsdottir, accordionist Mairearad Green, harpist Heather Downie, guitarist Jenn Butterworth and fiddler and Scots singer Lori Watson. Following the positive reception of that short set, the band decided to create a full show incorporating the Big Band members, expanding on the material The Shee had developed over its history. The first full performance of The Shee Big Band took place at Kings Place, London in March 2019, supported by a grant from PRS for Music Foundation Women Make Music fund. The performance was part of the mini-festival "Trad. Reclaimed: Women in Folk", part of the PRS Award-winning series Venus Unwrapped celebrating women composers.

Personnel
The core line-up through The Shee's first four albums was:
 * Amy Thatcher – piano accordion, clog dancing
 * Thatcher grew up in Stockport before moving to Newcastle. She has been Kathryn Tickell's side-musician since at least 2008, as a duo and in various collaborations, and has appeared on Tickell's albums Northumbrian Voices, Kathryn Tickell and the Side, Water of Tyne, and Hollowbone.


 * Laura-Beth Salter – mandolin, vocals
 * Originally from Lincolnshire but now part of the Glasgow music scene, Salter has a background in bluegrass and old-time music. She is a member of Kinnaris Quintet, 2019 holders of the Belhaven Bursary for Innovation in Scottish Music, and is also known for her duo with Jenn Butterworth.


 * Lillias Kinsman-Blake – flute, whistle
 * Kinsman-Blake grew up in the Scottish Borders. As well as the Newcastle degree in folk and traditional music, she has a qualification in graphic design from the London College of Communication, and designed all the Shee's album covers.


 * Olivia Ross – fiddle, viola, vocals
 * From Inverness, Ross is also a schools music teacher. She has recorded with Kathryn Tickell, Katie Doherty and Chris Wood.


 * Rachel Newton – electroharp, clàrsach, vocals
 * From Edinburgh but with family roots in Wester Ross and fluent in Gaelic, Newton is a member of The Furrow Collective, "Best Group" in the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and was part of the Lost Words: Spell Songs project. She was "Instrumentalist of the Year" in the 2016 Scots Trad Music Awards, "Musician of the Year" in the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and had five solo albums by 2020, as well as numerous credits as a guest musician.


 * Shona Mooney – fiddle
 * Mooney is a specialist in Borders fiddle styles, and was the 2006 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician. She has produced several albums of her own compositions.

In 2020, percussionist Signy Jakobsdóttir replaced Mooney in the permanent lineup, having toured with the band the previous year.
 * Signy was born in Iceland and grew up in Scotland. She plays drums and percussion, and has worked with Capercaille, Sharlene Spiteri and James Grant, as well as a gamelan orchestra and in theatre and ballet productions. She was nominated for "Musician of the Year" in the 2019 Scots Trad Music Awards.

Temporary deputies for live performances have included flautist Sarah Hayes and guitarist Jenn Butterworth.

Discography

 * A Different Season (January 2008), SHEE1
 * Decadence (August 2010), SHEE2
 * Murmurations (October 2012), SHEE3
 * Continuum (September 2016), SHEE4