Foy Vance: Celebrating 'The Wake' And The Songs of 'If'

Foy Vance plays Birmingham Town Hall on Tuesday 20 October, bringing his new album If to the city. It's a double-bill of a night: the set celebrates The Wake alongside the songs from If, with Bonnie Bishop and Niall McCabe opening the bill.

To understand where this sits, it helps to know what The Wake is. It's Vance's seventh album, and the final volume of a cycle he set out to write after his father died. The story behind it is a heavy one: in January 1999, while playing a gig on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, Vance had a moment of transcendence on stage, only to learn the next morning that his father—a travelling preacher who'd moved the family to the American South and taught him guitar—had suffered a fatal heart attack that very night. Overcome by grief, Vance resolved to make seven albums informed by that loss. The Wake closes that chapter, produced by Ethan Johns and blending folk, soul and Southern blues. It follows 2007's debut Hope, 2016's The Wild Swan (executive-produced by Elton John), 2019's From Muscle Shoals and To Memphis, and 2021's Signs of Life.

With that chapter closed, Vance opened an archive of more than a hundred songs he'd kept guarded for twenty-seven years. He reimagined them with producer Anderson East and shaped them into a third act: the album If, spread across three parts—If: We, If: You and If: I. That's the material he's touring now, so the night pulls from both the end of the cycle he started after his father's death and the new songs he's finally let out.

Doors open at 18:30 and the music starts at 19:00. Tickets are £51.75 for P1 and £40.25 for P2, both including booking fees.