Pool Of Sound - The Troubadours

The Troubadours

Liverpool based band 'The Troubadours' originated in 2005, when songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Mark Frith from Wigan decided to get a band together to play his growing number of self-penned songs. He began work immediately with close friend Johnny Molyneux on lead guitar but, without a bassist or a drummer, he put adverts in local newspapers in and around the Liverpool area.  With the name, 'The Troubadours', already born, the band soon recruited Merseysiders Tony Ferguson to play bass guitar and Nathan Watts to be their drummer, after both expressed a strong interest in joining the band.

After countless gigs, they built up a large fan base, amongst whom was the record producer John Leckie, who had worked with 'The Stone Roses', 'Pink Floyd' and 'Radiohead', and who in 2007 offered to produce them. With him they recorded, 'Gimme Love' and 'Here Comes The Tide', in May 2007 at the Dog House Studios in Henley-on-Thames, with their debut single, 'Gimme Love' being released soon after recordings were finished. It was a soaring, shimmering debut single that managed to channel the best bits of their hometown's tune-rich musical heritage into four minutes of perfect pop, like every great 'La’s' / 'Coral' / 'Zutons' song rolled into one.

In the February 2008 edition of Q Magazine, 'The Troubadours' were included in the '10 Best New Acts of 2008', a year that also saw the band support Paul Weller during his UK tour. Their second single, '(I'm Not) Superstitious', was released in June 2008 reaching Number 8 in UK indie singles Chart. That summer saw the band playing many festivals, such as the V Festival in Chelmsford/Stafford and the Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo. The recording and mixing of their debut album was completed in September 2008, and was released in Japan in the same month. The album was originally supposed to be released in the UK in early/mid-2009, but was pushed to an early 2010 release. In Japan they had a No 1 single in the airplay and video charts as well as a top 10 album.
Late in 2008 saw the departure of their original lead guitarist, Johnny Molyneux with his  permanent replacement announced as Robbie Taylor in January 2009.

Near the end of 2009 the band went into a supposed hiatus after heavy touring schedules through 2008 and 2009, but it turned out that they had actually split up. Even though many sources close to the band already knew of the split, it was confirmed on the 8th of June 2009 by Mark Frith. After the band had imploded and simply dissolved into obscurity Mark was left to move on, He said, " I knew it was time to end the band and went into a recording studio to work on some new songs, just for fun really but as soon as I finished the track I knew I had to get a band around it. I knew all the members of 'The Captive Hearts' from growing up really…except Kris although I did go to school with his girlfriend and had seen his face around the Wigan music scene so it was all very easy from the start really. The relationships were already strong, stronger than my previous band.

Two years passed before Mark posted a message to fans on the networking site Facebook, "The Troubadours' announced in October 2011 that they would be reforming. It came about as Mark said, "My best mate Johnny (Molyneux, lead guitar), who I started 'The Troubadours' with, contacted me out of the blue in late October. We hadn't spoken for 2 years. We met for a drink, didn't even speak about getting band back together and were just made up to be mates. We tweeted a picture then a week later a gig offer came in to do The Lomax. Sold it out …we were all made up and went on to perform a sell-out show at the Liverpool Lomax on Friday 23 December."

Mark Frith has picked up many plaudits for his songwriting. In 2008 Paul Weller called him a 'Classic British Songwriter' and the record producer John Leckie declared him 'the best Songwriter I've worked with in 10 years'.

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/07/pool-of-sound-ray-quinn.html?q=Ray+Quinn