Thea Gilmore to play The Apex next month
Singer-songwriter and Brit Award nominee Thea Gilmore (pictured above) has made 20 albums since the release of ‘”Burning Dorothy” in 1998 when she was just 18 years old.
In 2003 she hit the UK charts for the first time with her fourth album “Avalanche” and the hit singles “Juliet” and “Mainstream” and she is to appear at The Apex, in Bury St Edmunds, next month.
During this period, she refused to sign to major record labels and refused to work with a famous dance remix team. She was told by two A&R men that she had “missed her moment”.
Thea grew up with her father’s record collection: Dylan, The Beatles, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel and Joni Mitchell.
This, she says, led her to “the obvious conclusion that music was a lifelong relationship. But when I got absorbed into the industry and saw first-hand how it could chew up artists and spit them out again, it was a bit of a shock. It made me angry. [I] decided that I had to have a different type of career, one more like all those artists I’d admired.”
Her single “London” was used extensively in the BBC TV coverage of the Olympic Games and her music features in Olivia Coleman’s film “Joyride”, as well as Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” and “Blithe Spirit”, starring Judi Dench.
Thea became a regularly playlisted artist on BBC Radio 2 and her razor-sharp lyrics, melodic flair and honey-toned voice have been much admired by contemporaries such as Bruce Springsteen, Martha Wainwright, John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle and Beth Orton.
Whilst perhaps not a household name, Thea Gilmore has crept up on us all as a quiet icon and she is at The Apex on Monday, February 5, at 7.30pm.
See www.theapex.co.ukor ring 01284 758000 for more information or to book tickets.