Darren Hayman presents a 15 year anniversary show looking back at Essex Arms, his second in a trilogy of albums about his home county of Essex. While the opening album of the trilogy (Pram Town, 2006) dealt with the displacement and ennui of living in a new town (Harlow), and The Violence (2012) rolled back the years to visit the 17th century Essex Witch Trials, 2010s Essex Arms is a conceptual piece about the East Anglian rural underbelly.
Best known as the singer-songwriter of the phenomenally successful and much-loved Hefner, Darren Hayman is now 15 years, and over 14 albums, into an increasingly idiosyncratic career path, where he has taken a singular and erratic route through England’s tired and heartbroken underbelly. Darren is also writing the best tunes of his career; increasingly complex and mature songs, he is a thoughtful, concise and detailed songwriter.
Hayman’s first two solo albums, Table For One (2006) and The Secondary Modern (2007), charmed the critics – with The Guardian opining that Hayman’s profoundly English songwriting was “the match of Ray Davies”. Mostly joined by his band The Secondary Modern – a loose, urban folk collective, underpinning Hayman’s concrete sorrow with rural violins and tired pianos – he has released a series of albums, largely focused on place. This allowed for the exploration of nuanced subjects in detail, with a trio of albums based in Essex (2009’s Pram Town and 2010’s Essex Arms) and culminating in 2012’s The Violence, a 20 song account of the 17th century Essex witch trials. From this he developed an album of English Civil War folk songs of the time (2013’s Bugbears) and stayed with the historical theme for Chants For Socialists, which saw him set William Morris’ words to music, creating an album of kindness and hope that brought Hayman’s most critical acclaim yet.
In 2016 Darren was awarded ‘Hardest Working Musician’ by the Association of Independent Music for his epic project on Thankful Villages, the 55 villages that survived the Great War with no casualties. 12 Astronauts tells the personal story of the only men to have walked on the Moon.
“bold and unique" The Sunday Times
“Hayman has hit a creative purple patch… a treat” Mojo
“uniquely intimate and very satisfying” - BBC
Tickets from WeGotTickets and Ticketweb.
Doors open 1900. Music starts at 2015 prompt.