Bio:
Yola released her critically acclaimed debut album Walk Through Fire in February 2019, establishing herself as the queen of country soul from the very first note.
Nine months later, she received four GRAMMY award nominations including Best New Artist as well as Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance for “Faraway Look”.
The album, produced by Dan Auerbach, is a contemporary twist on a traditional sonic tapestry of orchestral strings, fiddle, steel, and shimmering tremolo guitars. Walk Through Fire is a career-defining and genre-bending release from the most exciting emerging British artists in music today. The album won supporters from The New York Times to Vogue and accolades including Rolling Stone’s Artist You Need To Know and NPR Music’s Artist To Watch in 2019 who said Yola is "an artist sure to stun audiences for years to come."
Yola is an honorary member of The Highwomen supergroup and featured on their self titled album. She has toured Europe and the US extensively with UK highlights that include performing at Glastonbury Festival, opening for the Killers at Cardiff Castle and sold out London shows including the legendary 100 Club.
In the US Yola has appeared at The Hollywood Bowl, Newport Folk Festival, SXSW and Farm Aid. She has performed with Kacey Musgraves, Mavis Staples and Dolly Parton and will open for Chris Stapleton across multiple shows including his Outlaw State of Kind Benefit alongside Willy Nelson and Sheryl Crow.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Management
Charlie Pierce @ Neverno [email protected]
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).