Beverley Folk Festival: Jamie Lawson + support from Toria Wooff

Beverley Folk Festival in association with East Riding Theatre presents Jamie Lawson

Little Weaknesses the brand new album, is Jamie Lawson’s return to music after a four-year break that saw the birth of his son in 2020. “Originally, I had intended to take six months off when he came along. And then the pandemic hit, and I had what felt like three years off,” he says. The time away instilled him with a desire to re-wire his creative process, following a period of immense career highs that included performances at Wembley Stadium and Croke Park, and tours with Ed Sheeran (who called this album Jamie’s strongest body of work to date) and James Blunt. Fatherhood brought a new sense of direction and meant any music he left his young family to play, perform or promote had to fulfil him completely.

“Having that time settled me into a style of music that I wanted to make that I wasn’t making,” he shares. “Now, I would say this record is not that far away from the others, but it does feel much more cohesive. I remember listening to some playlists, like Lost In The Woods or Fresh Folk, and just thinking: ‘Oh, this is where I should be sitting. This is the music I love. This is the music I get the most out of.’ It’s all quite simple, but it’s all quite beautiful. And there’s proper lyrical content, something going on that makes me think about things. Those are the songs I wanted to write.”

Little Weaknesses is 14 tracks of concise, emotive, painterly beauty. It’s a record that sees Jamie wholeheartedly embrace collaboration, working alongside a close-knit group of artists and friends, including multi-genre violinist Isabella Baker who arranged strings for six songs and songwriters Simon Aldred (aka Cherry Ghost) and Jack McManus. The entire album was crafted in Jamie’s music room in his family residence in Manchester and recorded by producer-collaborator Tim Ross at his home studio in Twickenham.

The exceptional writing on this album makes it clear why Jamie was the first signing to Ed Sheeran’s label Gingerbread Man Records. In the same year as his signing (2015), Jamie released his self-titled third album which hit the number 1 spot in the UK and top 5 in several other territories, featuring the international hit Wasn’t Expecting That, which has to this day been streamed over 300 million times. In 2016 Jamie was awarded an Ivor Novello Award for ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’, which he followed with his fourth album in 2017 called Happy Accidents. Jamie spent the start of 2018 in Nashville further expanding his songwriting toolbox, and the remainder of the year on a stadium tour with Ed Sheeran playing 52 stadium dates throughout Europe.