Press release: Liverpool Band, The Good Intentions Release “Someone Else’s Time”

It’s been a good year so far, for The Good Intentions.  Besides winning the British Country Music Award for “Americana Act of the Year”, they also played on the bill for the Americana UK 10th Anniversary Festival and recently they’ve found out that their new record, “Someone Else’s Time” (out today!) has been voted joint #1 (with Jon Byrd!) in the Americana Gazette’s Best of 2011, and “Everybody Loves A Drinking Man” is in the Top Songs of the Year!

The Good Intentions are an Americana-Folk-Bluegrass-based band.  The core of the band is husband/wife team R. Peter Davies and Gabrielle Monk and their longtime friend Francesco Roskell. The songs are worked around three-part harmony vocals, acoustic guitars, pedal steel, banjo, autoharp, percussion and mandolin. They regularly have “Guest Intentions” including Rick Shea, Brantley Kearns, Dave Raven, David Jackson, Eric Brace, Scott Poley, John Palmer and Wyman Reese (all respected musicians and players on the album). They are not a band who will drown you in sound.  The Good Intentions are a band that likes you to listen.  This does not make it a somber event, far from it.  The band is quite lively and known for their patter between songs.  In fact, once they start playing, the audience wants to listen.

Their name, The Good Intentions, comes from a Samuel Johnson quote and sums up the connection the band feels with immigrants who brought the roots music of the British Isles to America. They embody the independent band ethic of writing songs that they care about, pouring their heart and soul into every song.  Peter Davies, whose writing has been compared to John Prine, Phil Lee and Kevin Welch, writes all of the songs on Someone Else’s Time.  The poignant song “Coal Miner’s Lament” was a personal song written about Davies’ family.  Andy Ziehli of the Americana Gazette said, “Davies has caught the elusive ‘element’ that makes a writer a step above his peers.  His simplicity in choosing chord progressions and melodies really makes these songs come alive.”

The Carter Family (who were known to sing British Folk music), are certainly an influence and the band dresses fairly formally onstage to emulate the Carter Family style. Other influences you might hear are The Louvin Brothers, Richard & Linda Thompson, Dave Alvin and Gillian Welch.  In fact, Germany’s Country Jukebox compared their sound to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and wrote “(The eleven songs) are bursting with originality and create images of expansive landscapes, coal mines, railroads and lonely country roads in the mind of the listener, and play like the music from a short film.”

The Good Intentions are a band that takes their work seriously but not themselves too seriously.  On Someone Else’s Time you can see that they’ve pushed the envelope without making significant compromises.  As Peter Davies said, “Stay true to yourself and things work out eventually.”  Hard work and excellent craftsmanship are just the components needed to make The Good Intentions a household name in the Americana world and Someone Else’s Time should be just the vehicle for them.

The band plays regularly all over the UK and have played such festivals as International Pop Overthrow, Middlewich Music Festival, BigBeat Festival, Dentdale Festival, and Maverick Music Festival.  They are planning a US tour in the spring of 2012.

http://www.thegoodintentions.co.uk/