Butler, Blake & Grant

Butler, Blake & Grant to release debut album through 355 Records this March.

This is the first LP from the trio featuring Bernard Butler, Norman Blake and James Grant, who joined forces after are they were invited to perform a low-key concert in South Lanarkshire.

Norman Blake is a driving force in Teenage Fanclub, Bernard Butler is renowned for his production and songwriting with a myriad of artists, most recently for his Mercury nominated album For All our Days That Tear The Heart with Jessie Buckley and his own critically acclaimed album Good Grief, and James Grant is best known as the writer, guitarist and singer of Love And Money.

From the outset when the three started playing together, it all just seemed to work. They found a space within what they were doing that felt novel and very quickly established a musical rapport. It wasn’t too long before the possibility of making an album was being discussed.

The first music to be released is Bring To An End. Watch the video below:

 

Bring An End…

James Grant said “With Bring An End Norman wrote the tune and sent me it and I had a feeling about it right away. Honestly, I just opened a notebook and it was pretty much all there and I had absolutely no recollection of having written any of it. I spent an afternoon honing it and that was it. ‘Bring an end to this ugliness…’ has a universality about it. Maybe it can be our Mull of Kintyre.”

Norman Blake added “Bring An End was one of the many musical fragments that live on my phone. When I was looking for something that might work for BBG, this tune sprang to mind. It was a musical idea without a lyric and it occurred to me that James might have something in one of his notebooks that would work. I sent the phone recording off to him and the very next day we had a finished song.”

Album Tracklisting

Side One
Bring An End (Norman Blake)
One And One Is Two (James Grant)
The 90s (Bernard Butler)
Down By The Sea (Norman Blake)
The Old Mortality (Bernard Butler)
Side Two
Girl With A Little Black Number (James Grant)
Writing’s On The Wall (Norman Blake)
Rosus Posus (Instrumental)
Seemed She Always Knew (James Grant)
There’s Always Something You Can Change (Bernard Butler)

Butler, Blake & Grant Live

6 June – The Junction, Cambridge
10 June – Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich
11 June – St George’s, Bristol
12 June – City Varieties, Leeds
13 June – Union Chapel, London
14 June – The Glasshouse, Gateshead
15 June – Cockpit Theatre, Prescot, Liverpool (Knowsley Music Festival)
24 June – City Halls, Glasgow

Butler, Blake & Grant is released on 28 March 2025. Available as an exclusive numbered edition of 500 gold & black opaque marbled sepia tone vinyl with signed print and limited edition of 1000 numbered transparent vinyl with signed print. The album is also out on CD and Digital. Pre-order here

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