Jo

Jo has many hats; poetry, silversmithing, art and song. With years of experience as an artist working in a wide range of mediums, each one seems to evolve constantly, growing into many new off-shoots.

From teaching creativity workshops to producing her own unique work, Jo takes the natural world and human history as her inspiration. Her organic, textured jewellery designs often look like archaeological finds dug out of the ground and illustrate the many layered approach of her work.

Jo's visual eye translates into her evocative nature writing. The land comes alive and builds a connection to place in a sensory relationship for the reader to experience. With two books ‘Finding Home - Journeys with the Hillforts of Shropshire’ and ‘Finding Beauty - A Year of Nature Outside Your Door' to her name, she also writes regular nature articles for her local Herald and blogs on her wordpress site.

But all things evolve and change and whilst walking the land, Jo also began writing songs. It wasn't planned, they just arrived, with words and melodies complete and insistent on being sung. After some spontaneous improvisations with her friend Rick around a campfire, a natural collaboration swiftly emerged. Jo feels music is her true calling and her emotive lyrics and harmonies have now taken flight amongst Rick's percussive beats. Follow Jo's work on jojukes.wordpress.com

Rick

Rick Wilson works with sound: rhythmic and melodic, composed and improvised, contemporary and traditional. Drum kit, djembe, chenda, percussion of all kinds. Rick Wilson is so much more than just a drummer. With four solo albums to his name, he started messing around with drums in his teens whilst recovering from the fall-out of inadequate secondary music teaching.

Listening to a wide range of music developed a can-do attitude that grew after meeting other like-minded souls. He honed his drumming in post punk bands Family Fodder and The Work before travelling to India to study Chenda temple drumming, Berber rhythms in Morocco and Brazilian carnival music in London. He also worked as a resident drummer for contemporary jazz weekends held along the Welsh Marches.

As accompanist for education and performance dance projects, he has also been a tutor for WOMAD and Glyndebourne and spent many years working throughout the UK with Common Lore Storytellers, poets and musicians, as both performer and teacher working in theatre and storytelling initiatives worldwide. Rick not only performs and teaches but composes, designs soundscapes and installations and runs music sessions as psychiatric therapy.

Back to the present…Jo’s songs caught Rick's attention and his rhythm's weave through Jo’s songs like silk. Rick has the skill and ability to know just what to add and what to take away. As their musical collaboration grows with more songs, sounds, stories, words and poetry, the excitement now is in seeing where they will go from here… Follow Rick's story and career on eaststorywilsound.co.uk