ChoiceCuts presents 

Mayer Hawthorne & The County (Stones Throw) support tbc           

Crawdaddy, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2           

8pm                        €17.5           

Mayer Hawthorne grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. Hometown to proto-garage-punks The Stooges, and a stone’s throw from the birthplace of techno, Detroit has a rich musical legacy that runs even deeper.

‘Most of the best music ever made came out of Detroit’ claims the singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, who counts Isaac Hayes, Leroy Hutson, Mike Terry, and Barry White among his influences, while drawing inspiration from the music of Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, and the legendary song-writing and production trio of Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland, and Eddie Holland Jr.

With a ‘retro’ tag hastily applied to almost any contemporary work that sounds like it was originally recorded between 1966 and 1974, Stones Throw label head Peanut Butter Wolf was initially sceptical of Hawthorne’s music, refusing to believe that they were brand new compositions, recorded and played in their entirety by Hawthorne himself. Hawthorne has taken the Motown assembly-line production model, and eliminated nearly every element but himself, and a few hired hands.

BBC Radio 1 host Gilles Peterson and producer/DJ Mark Ronson were similarly struck by Hawthorne’s startling falsetto and vintage breakbeat production on his first recorded effort – made all the more remarkable by the fact that never formally trained as a singer.

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