Thursday, March 15   8:00 p.m.
Stubb's   (801 Red River St)

Add this to your SXSW Calendar

  Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly - The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager (Part One)
Download   |   Stream

Fighting in the toilets of a dodgy club in Southend, many thoughts were going through Sam Duckworth�s head. Things like�

�Why does this lairy Essex lad have such a problem with anyone who�s not whiter-than-white?�
�I was minding my own business, having a pee, I�m a local lad but I�m half-Burmese � does that make me fair game for boozed-up twats?�
�Are the BNP really being taken seriously again?�
�Hmm [biff], could I get a [bang] song out of this [pow]?�
Escaping serious assault by the simple expedient of being fast on his feet, Duckworth legged it home. As he did pretty much 24/7, he picked up his acoustic guitar, fired up his laptop, and sat down to write a song. �Glass Houses� was the result. Over delicate-then-furious acoustic picking and ambient techno beats � and in a frankly belting voice � Duckworth pondered the nature of prejudice, home and what the hell was going on in British society.

Another Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly mini-masterpiece had been committed to tape. The next time he went off on tour � just him, his guitar, a laptop, a backpack and a train ticket � Duckworth would play �Glass Houses� and refine it, and develop it, and sing it with vein-popping passion.

He would tell his swelling audiences how disgraceful and worrying it was that racism seemed to be on the rise (again), that the British National Party had councilors in positions of power. Remind them of the importance of being intolerant of intolerance. Encourage them to stand up. Then he�d ask them to buy copies of either of his limited-edition indie singles. Just so he could get another train ticket and tour some more, you know? Oh, and could someone put him up for the night?

Sam Duckworth is 20. He writes, records and gigs � 140 times since January 2005 � as Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

He grew up in Southend in Essex, home county of his hero Billy Bragg. You should hear Duckworth�s version of �A New England�, then you should hear his own song, �The Lighthouse Keeper�, detailing his love/hate relationship with the �scummy town� he calls home.

In his teenage years he served time in local hardcore bands, before realizing that he could say more on his own. He took himself off round the UK on self-generated, self-funded, wing-and-a-prayer-and-a-rucksack tours. In January 2004 he released �Smile� as a split single (150 mini-CDs, long sold out). In April 2005 he released the five-track �Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly� EP on Big Scary Monsters (500 copies, some still available, if you know where to look).

In autumn 2005 Duckworth played the In The City music industry conference in Manchester; an impressed Huw Stephens of Radio One promptly offered him a session. By the beginning of 2006, 18 months of inter-city gigging and a panoply of agit-folk/emo-tronic/bloody catchy songs had stoked huge interest in the mystery man with the unusual name. He was the young tyro-troubador with the hearty internet following who could gig anywhere at the drop of a plectrum (myspace or yours?). Eventually, in March this year, Atlantic Records signed Duckworth. Then he headed off to Austin, Texas, for what would be a series of brilliant gigs � in barbeques, in car parks, in the vicinity of Billy Bragg and of the similarly spiky acoustician Plan B � at the SXSW festival.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

That punctuation-defying name? He took it from the sub-headings in an article in a computer gaming magazine. Rather than just use his own name, it was a way of projecting something beyond the limitations and prejudices surrounding the idea of the singer-songwriter (another one).

Those songs with the forceful, beguiling melodies? With the classicism of folk music but shot through with youth�s-eye view of contemporary Britain? They�re Duckworth�s reboot of protest music. As he discusses in current single �I Spy�: it�s the song, not the singer.

�People get caught up in pretension,� says Duckworth. �As if music has to be redefined all the time. Why? Communication is the thing. Getting a message across. Think of Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg. Just because a song�s got a simple melody doesn�t make it less important than something more convoluted.�

As he says in the other side of the double-A-side release, �Call Me Ishmael�, it�s important to celebrate the simple stuff. And don�t sweat the hard stuff.

�We all have things that we use to displace negative energy from work: playing guitar, skateboarding, drinking on a Friday. Escapism is important. The title is the first line of Moby Dick,� he explains. �The song and the book are a call to arms: make life worth living.�

�The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager Parts One to Four�? They�re a quartet of songs Duckworth wrote on his gig-to-gig, sofa-to-floor, hand-to-mouth, bus-to-train journeys across Britain. �Part 1� has had 50,000 plays on his myspace site and was written in a railway carriage en route to a show in Oxford. Both it and �Part 2� are � like Paul Simon�s �Homeward Bound� (written on the platform at Wigan station) � reflections on the life of the lonely singer-songwriter. �They�re about the emotional issues that bubble up for you, about meeting people on the road, and how they end up becoming some of your best friends �cause you share common experiences.�

�Part 3� began life as an instrumental before Duckworth�s ever-evolving songcraft used it as the basis of �Call Me Ishmael�. �Part 4� has since been retitled, and will appear on his debut album as �If I Had A Pound For Every Failed Song Title I�d Be 30 Short Of Getting Out Of This Mess�. He�s gonna get back to us on what that means.

Last summer Duckworth kept up his furious gigging pace, with strings and brass players rounding out his acoustic-and-laptop setup. As well as rock festivals aplenty, he�s played the Martyrs of Tolpuddle Festival, an event to commemorate the historic revolt by six Dorset farm laborers that paved the way for the founding of the trade union movement. Earlier he played the Love Music Hate Racism gig in London�s Trafalgar Square. Do we call Duckworth a protest singer?

�I�ve been labeled that a couple of times and I find it kinda uncomfortable. I�m using whatever platform I�ve got to express things I feel. But musically, that tag limits you. Every artist, if they�re passionate and have something to say, in theory, is a protest songwriter.�

Meanwhile, sensible and low-key record company contract in hand, Duckworth is cracking on with making his debut album, to be called The Chronicles Of A Bohemian Teenager. He�s using his own studio in his old bedroom in his mum and dad�s house, and a set-up in an industrial unit in Letchworth.

�There�s a preconception that when you sign to a big label, everything changes, but it doesn�t need to. I want to record in way that fits with everything else I�ve done,� he says. �Do it for yourself, don�t spent �150,000. Keep it home grown and let it stand for what it is.�

Angry, cheerful, impassioned, inspired, solvent (sort of), tuned-in and tuneful: Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly is ready for lift-off.

For more information contact Jon Wilkinson at the Darling Department on 020 7379 8787 or jon@darlinguk.com