08.05.11 Mike Heron, Georgia Seddon, Mike Hastings and Nick Pynn
Together with Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer, Mike Heron was a founder member of The Incredible String Band. Formed in Edinburgh in 1965, they soon broke from the folk club beginnings they shared with other emerging artists such as Bert Jansch, John Martyn, Davey Graham and Billy Connolly to pioneer an eclectic "world music" approach.
Signed by Joe Boyd to Witchseason, they produced over 10 seminal albums including "Five Thousand Spirits or the Layers of the Onion", the Grammy nominated "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter", and "Wee Tam and The Big Huge". In 1969 they were the only Scottish band to appear at Woodstock.
Together with a dance group "Stone Monkey" the ISB formed the nucleus of a late sixties artistic community in the Scottish Borders experimenting with theatre, film, and a wide variety of music, until their final incarnation as a six piece band.
In 1971 Island Records released Heron's first solo album. Smiling Men with Bad Reputations was produced by Joe Boyd and featured a stellar cast including John Cale, Pete Townshend, Richard Thompson, Elton John, Jimmy Page, Steve Winwood, Keith Moon, Dave Pegg, Ronnie Lane,and Dudu Pakwana.
More recently Mike has been performing with his daughter, singer/songwriter Georgia Seddon. 2007 saw him take part in two events at The Barbican in London: one celebrated the music of Syd Barrett, and featured Pink Floyd; the other was a night of British Folk music, part of the acclaimed "Folk Brittania" series.
In 2008 Mike and Georgia were invited to perform at The Hollywood Bowl, collaborating with American band The Album Leaf for an evening of World music that also featured Devendra Banhart and Gilberto Gil.
A year later the Barbican hosted a tribute to the ISB curated by Joe Boyd. Taking part were musicians as diverse as Richard Thompson, Green Gartside, Abigail Washburn, Alisdair Roberts, Clive Palmer, The Trembling Bells, Dr Strangely Strange and Robyn Hitchcock. At the end of the evening, a tribe of these musicians joined Heron onstage to perform his 1960s psychedelic epic A Very Cellular Song.
Leading on from these musical meetings, Robyn Hitchcock invited Mike to play at his Southbank Festival. Mike then joined Robyn on tour with a line up which included Georgia, and the Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings with his musical partner Solveig Askvik. Mike and The Trembling Bells went on to record a new verson of his song Feast of Stephen, which was released by Honest Jons in December 2010.
Mike and Georgia are now performing with Mike Hastings, and the multi instrumentalist Nick Pynn.