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Sean Lakeman | |
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 Sean Lakeman (left) performing with his brother Seth in August 2005 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 29 January 1974 |
| Origin | Buckland Monachorum, Devon, England |
| Genres | English folk, British folk rock, acoustic folk |
| Instrument(s) | Acoustic guitar, guitar |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Labels | iScream Music, WEA, Rough Trade, Putumayo |
| Website | Official |
Sean Lakeman (born 29 January 1974) is an English folk musician and record producer.
Sean was born and brought up as the first of three boys in Buckland Monachorum, near Yelverton, Devon with his brothers, fellow folk musicians Seth Lakeman and Sam Lakeman. He began playing guitar at the age of six. He played with his parents, Geoff and Joy Lakeman, and with his brothers in a family band.[ citation needed ] He also made up a quarter of the BBC Radio 2 "Young Tradition Band" alongside Catriona MacDonald, Luke Daniels and Simon Thoumire.[ citation needed ]
In his early career, he partnered folk fiddle veteran Tom McConville on the UK folk club circuit, and from the early 1990s, played guitar as part of The Lakeman Brothers, with brothers Seth on violin and Sam on piano. The trio wrote and produced the album Three Piece Suite (1994), upon which Kathryn Roberts was a guest singer for two tracks. [1] [2]
Kathryn Roberts and Kate Rusby asked the Lakeman Brothers to accompany them as a backing band for a tour of Portugal in September 1994. On their return to the UK the five agreed to form their own band, Equation. [3]
The name of the band refers to the initials of the band members' names, KR2 + SL3.
Shortly after the band was formed, Irish singer Cara Dillon replaced Kate Rusby. In the summer of 1995, the band signed a record deal with Blanco y Negro (Warner Music Group).
The band recorded their debut album at Peter Gabriel's Realworld Studios in 1995 and 1996. The album, Return to Me, was produced by David Bottrill (Tool, Muse, King Crimson). There was a single release, "He Loves Me", with an accompanying promotional video. [4] The band performed on MTV and VH1, but weeks before the planned release of the album the record label shelved it. In 2003 it saw a release under Rough Trade after Geoff Travis (the band's A+R) bought its rights.
The band toured throughout the UK and Europe, and completed ten tours in the USA in the late 1990s. The line-up would change over the years but Sean and Kathryn were constants as Equation went on to produce four albums: Return To Me (recorded 1996, released 2003), Hazy Daze (1998), The Lucky Few (1999), First Name Terms (2004), and The Dark Ages EP (2001).
Lakeman has produced four albums for his younger brother Seth Lakeman. Freedom Fields went gold in the UK and was voted BBC Radio 2 Folk Album of the year (2007). The Mercury Music Prize nominated Kitty Jay and Poor Man's Heaven which were both certified Silver in the UK.
Lakeman is also half of the folk duo Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman with his wife, singer Kathryn Roberts. They have recorded four albums together: 1 recorded in 2001 and 2 recorded in 2003, and after a nine-year hiatus, Hidden People (2012). Tomorrow Will Follow Today, released in early 2015, led to a tour of the UK.
In 2013 and 2016, the couple were voted Best Duo at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Kathryn's song 'The Ballad Of Andy Jacobs' was also nominated as Best Original Song at the same awards in 2013.
In August 2023, both Kathryn and Sean appeared as special guests with rock band The Levellers at the Beautiful Days festival performing two songs during the encore. [5]
Lakeman's credits as record producer for folk and folk-rock bands include two highly acclaimed albums for The Levellers, plus other acts such as Seth Lakeman, Bellowhead, Frank Turner, Billy Bragg, Imelda May, The Willows, Carus Thompson, Show of Hands, Mad Dog Macrea, The Long Hill Ramblers and Rev Hammer.
Sean also appears as a session guitarist on albums by Cara Dillon and Caroline Herring.
Sean is married to singer Kathryn Roberts and they have twin daughters, born in July 2007.
Levellers are an English folk rock and anarcho-punk band formed in Brighton, East Sussex, in 1988, consisting of Mark Chadwick, Jeremy Cunningham, Charlie Heather (drums), Jon Sevink (violin), Simon Friend, Matt Savage (keyboards) and Dan Donnelly. Taking their name from the Levellers political movement, the band released their first EP in 1989 and LP in 1990, with international success following upon signing to China Records and the release of their second album Levelling the Land. The band were among the most popular indie bands in Britain in the early 1990s, and performed at the Glastonbury Festival, first in 1992, then in 1994, where they performed as the headline act on The Pyramid Stage to a record crowd of 300,000 people. They continue to record and tour.
Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the "Barnsley Nightingale", she has headlined various British folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival, established in 1965, held in the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is known for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs over a long weekend in summer at Cherry Hinton Hall. Until 2008 it was sponsored by BBC Radio 2, which broadcast it live, with highlights were recorded and shown later and occasionally live on digital television channel BBC Four from 2002 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2012 on Sky Arts.
Cara Elizabeth Dillon is a Northern Irish folk singer. In 1995, she joined the folk supergroup Equation and signed a record deal with Warners Music Group. After leaving the group, she collaborated with Sam Lakeman under the name Polar Star. In 2001, she released her first solo album, Cara Dillon, which featured traditional songs and two original Dillon/Lakeman compositions. The album was an unexpected hit in the folk world, with Dillon receiving four nominations at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
The BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards celebrate outstanding achievement during the previous year within the field of folk music, with the aim of raising the profile of folk and acoustic music. The awards have been given annually since 2000 by British radio station BBC Radio 2.
John McCusker is a Scottish folk musician, record producer, and composer. He had a long association as a member of Battlefield Band beginning in the 1990s, and was later a band member and producer for folk singer, Kate Rusby. He has served as producer and arranger for various artists. He has also released several solo albums.
Seth Bernard Lakeman is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar, but also plays the viola and banjo. Nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize, Lakeman has belonged to several musical ensembles, including one with his two brothers, fellow folk musicians Sam Lakeman and Sean Lakeman, but has most recently established himself as a solo act.
Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
Freedom Fields is an album by Seth Lakeman released twice in 2006. It is his third album as a principal performer. It is named after a park in Plymouth, England, where the Sabbath Day Fight during the Siege of Plymouth is commemorated.
The Punch Bowl is a music album by Seth Lakeman published in 2002. It is his first album as a principal performer.
Beautiful Days is a music festival that takes place in August at Escot Park, near Ottery St Mary, Devon. The festival was founded by, and is managed by the band The Levellers and was first held in 2003. The festival has no corporate sponsorship or branding, leading to Virtual Festivals proclaiming it "the festival that sells out ... by not selling out". In 2011 Beautiful Days was pronounced "Best Family Festival" by the UK Festival Awards, later winning the "Grass Roots Festival Award" in 2015, as well as the "Best Medium Festival" award from FestivalKidz the same year. Every festival from 2003 to the current one (2024) has sold out in advance; although the 2020 festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current capacity is 17,500.
The Lakeman Brothers were an English folk music trio, consisting of Sean Lakeman, Sam Lakeman and Seth Lakeman. They released one album, Three Piece Suite, in 1994 before forming the band Equation with Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts.
In 1990, at the age of fourteen, folk artist Cara Dillon formed a traditional Irish music band with school friends called Óige. In 1995 she joined folk super-group Equation and signed a record deal with WEA.
Hill of Thieves is the fourth solo album by Irish folk singer Cara Dillon. It is her first full-length release on Charcoal Records, the label formed in 2008 with her musical partner and husband Sam Lakeman. The album was recorded and produced by Sam and first became available in October 2008 at their live concerts. It is also the first release since she gave birth to their twin boys Noah and Colm at 26 weeks, after going into labour onstage at the Swindon Arts Centre, UK. It has been the most successful of her first four albums in relation to chart performance, entering at No. 7 in the UK Indie Album Charts
The discography of Kate Rusby, an English folk singer, consists of twenty solo albums, four albums as part of a duo or group, four extended plays (EPs), two video albums, fourteen singles, and seven music videos. Rusby's debut was Intuition, an album recorded in collaboration with five other female singers from Yorkshire, which was released on a small label in 1993. Her breakthrough came with an eponymous album recorded with Kathryn Roberts, another of the singers featured on Intuition. This album, which was named as the best of the year by Folk Roots magazine, was the first release on Pure Records, a label set up by Rusby's father on which all her subsequent solo recordings have been released. Rusby and Roberts also formed the band the Equation in conjunction with the Lakeman Brothers, but Rusby left the group after their debut EP. In 1996 she joined the all-female folk group the Poozies, with whom she released one EP and one full-length album.
Samuel Charles Lakeman is an English musician, songwriter, and producer and co-owner of Charcoal Records.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an annual festival of folk and world music and traditional dance held in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England.
Joseph Francis, better known by the stage name Winter Mountain, is an English singer-songwriter, based in Cornwall. He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, bass, piano, and harmonica, whose music is predominantly indie folk/rock.
Equation were a British, young Devon-based folk supergroup formed in 1995, which combined the core talents of the Lakeman Brothers with Kathryn Roberts and Kate Rusby, later replaced for a spell by Cara Dillon.
A Thousands Hearts is the fifth solo album by Irish folk singer Cara Dillon. It was the second release on her own label Charcoal Records and was released in partnership with Sony Music. A Thousand Hearts features more traditional production and arrangements than her first three albums. The album contains traditional songs as well as two modern covers, "Shotgun Down the Avalanche" by Shawn Colvin and "River Run". The album was produced by Sam Lakeman, Dillon's musical partner and husband.
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