BANJO-wielding Chicagoan live-wire singer-songwriter Al Scorch, has announced a September 2016 UK tour, which includes The Flying Duck in Ilkley on Friday September 16, in support of his widely acclaimed Bloodshot Records’ album Circle Round The Signs

Al Scorch grew up in Chicago, the town that gave the world characters like Studs Terkel, Upton Sinclair, and the anarchists in Bughouse Square. Scorch adds his voice to the choir with the enthusiasm and charisma of a Maxwell Street preacher.

Balanced on wedges of punk, old-time string band, American and European folk, and soulful balladry, Al is an entertainer, road warrior, storyteller, and musician. His second album and Bloodshot debut Circle Round the Signs is built on a sonic framework sharing an intersection with the Bad Livers’ lawless next-gen take on traditional country and bluegrass, and Black Flag’s burn-it-all-down revolt and breakneck tempos. From the train-hopping tale of ‘Pennsylvania Turnpike’ – updating steel rails to concrete ribbons – to the shout-along, late-night lament of ‘Insomnia’, the aural dexterity is thrilling.

Woody Guthrie’s ‘Slipknot’ gets a complex, Western swing cum prog-grass treatment, led by the angular fiddling of Felipe Tobar, that would make acoustic thrash godfathers Split Lip Rayfield grin demonically. And ‘Want One’ blazes down the dirt track with a Stanley Brothers fireball energy driven by Scorch’s clawhammer banjoing, and the it’s-safe-to-laugh-now adventure of meeting an intensely inebriated fan while busking across the country.

But Scorch is far more than lightning for lightning’s sake. Through ten songs of high wire musicianship, debilitating despair, wild-eyed hope, and sharp elbowed views of social (in)justice, he deftly maintains a balance of precise touch and texture, pop catchiness and frenetic intensity.

He shows a keen ear for the Mekons’ transatlantic roots and marries it to the Avett Brothers’ big stage sound on ‘Lost At Sea’. Likewise, there is depth in the song’s lyrics during the cliffhanging, real life narrative of a best friend almost dying when the HMS Bounty replica sank in Hurricane Sandy.

A punk rock banjo-wielding John Prine or Billy Bragg, Al Scorch writes for the everyperson. Through his acrobatically poetic politics, hopeful tales of love lost (‘Love After Death’), or cathartic takes on urban chaos (‘City Lullaby’), he pens rowdy campfire stories, calls for action, and draws the epic from the ordinary.