A Berlin-based duo will be performing a special pop-up gig in Eden next week.
Freschard and Brinks will be performing at Armathwaite’s Drybeck Farm campsite in association with On The Verge events on Wednesday, July 24.
Eden-based world folk musician Katuš Young started On The Verge during lockdown to do her own pop-up shows.
She invited other musicians to play with her, literally, on the verges, so they could all socially distance and have a good time.
Drybeck Farm campsite has an outdoor stage, as well as a barn with stage and bar with 180 capacity – so if the weather is good, the gig will be outdoors and if it’s bad, then it will take place in the barn, Katuš said.
She said she was not usually a fan of any musician or band except this duo, based in Berlin, Freschard and Brinks.
She saw that they had a gap in their tour schedule as they were playing in Nottingham on July 23 and Glasgow on July 25, so she got in touch with them to see if they fancied stopping off in Eden.
“I am so excited because, like a teenager, I wrote to Freschard and Stanley Brinks last week, and asked them if they would stop in Penrith on their forthcoming UK tour, and they said yes!
“Not only that, they may want to cover one of my songs. I already cover one of theirs – and I generally don’t do covers – but they are prolific and brilliant writers,” said Katuš, who will also be performing at the event with her band, The Gift Horses who are Alan Cooper, fiddle; Veronica Perrin, trumpet; and James Knows, bass.
Stanley Brinks was born in Paris in 1973. He studied a bit of biology, and worked as a nurse for a while. Half Swedish, half Moroccan, strongly inclined to travel the world, he soon started spending most of his life on the road, and developed a strong relationship with the city of New York.
He also started playing the soprano sax (among other instruments) in jazz bands. He finally became a full time singer-songwriter – as André Herman Düne – in the late 1990s.
He recorded several albums and Peel sessions with his three piece indie-rock band, Herman Düne. After a decade of touring Europe, most of the time in the company of American songwriters, he finally settled in Berlin, Germany.
There he developed a taste for the early carnival music of Trinidad, and in the early 21st Century he became the unquestioned master of European calypso, and changed his name to Stanley Brinks.
Freschard grew up in a farm in French Burgundy. She started organising shows in the barn when she was about 12 years old. Aged 18 she moved to Paris, where she baked pies and cakes in a café.
There, a local musician and regular customer called Andre Herman Düne wrote a few songs for her to sing.
In 2004, Freschard moved to Berlin, where she recorded her first LP, Alien Duck.
After making other records, in 2019 she released Freschard On Fire and in 2020 Five Mountains an album composed by Stanley Brinks.
