Noted members of the UK Blues and roots community have come together to produce the ‘Songs of Isolation’ Compilation in aid of NHS Charity + Heroes.

Crawdaddy Club promoter Mike Rivers explains :-

‘In the early days of Covid 19 and the lockdown I had the germ of an idea inspired by my friend and musician Adam Norsworthy. He had sent out a message to musos on Facebook to see who might be interested in contributing to a song. He had an instant response and the different musicians all recorded their bits remotely and sent it to Adam to splice together. The result was Isolation Blues, a cracking recording which is featured on this album.

This triggered an idea in my head that we could take this a stage further by creating a virtual album, and after talking initially to Adam we asked Mark Ede (BiGiAM) to join us with a view to challenging friends and contacts in our music community to write and record a song related to the lockdown. In the meantime Judy Astley volunteered her music producer/engineer husband Jon (The Who, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Jools Holland to name just a few) to work his mastering magic to create a fabulous one-off album.

The result is an album that digs deep into the sadness and difficulties that we all face during these uncertain times. The music mirrors the feelings that only excellent musicians & songwriters can express in song. It is a present-day history of our times.

We are deliberately releasing this as a charity album now to allow time for the giving frenzy to have died down, and hope that we’ll stand out from the many other excellent earlier initiatives.

Everyone involved has generously donated their songs and time freely in aid of our chosen charity, + Heroes, a small charity set up by NHS staff for NHS staff helping them obtain much needed PPE, childcare and food as well as financial and emotional support.

As we have no costs every penny will go to + Heroes. You can now download the album on BandCamp

We ask for a minimum donation of £8.00, but hope that those of you who can afford it will give more generously

Thank you to all the talented, brilliant musicians who contributed to this very special charity album.‘

The featured artists and their crisis inspired original songs are as follows:-

1. The Della Grants – 2020

2. Ash Wilson – Covered Hands

3. Georgia Van Etten – Lockdown With Love

4. Adam Norsworthy – Quiet Town

5. Rick Cassman – When This Is Over

6. Frank Collins – Stay Home Blues

7. Emma Wilson – Hold On

8. Peter Harris – Self Isolatin’

9. Sonja Allen – What’s Right Or What’s Wrong

10. Ben Hemming – Undone

11. Mike Ross – Places

12. Marcus Lazarus – Gonna Need Some Water

13. Grange McKenna – Paranoia Blues

14. Ian McHugh – Locked Down And Lonely

15. Staff & Stew – Gotta Get Out

16. Gareth Huggett – World Keeps Spinning

17. The Surreal Lockdown Experience – Isolation Blues

The album, officially released on Thursday 12th June, will initially be available to purchase via bandcamp here (https://lockdownmusicproject.bandcamp.com/album/the-crawdaddy-club-richmond-presents-songs-of-isolation) although a limited edition physical CD version is also planned. The recommended minimum donation is £8 for the downloadable album, although people can pay more as they may want.

We do hope you can support this good cause and enjoy this album.