The Complete Recordings Of Hezekiah Procter return to Europe in August / September

This year, Li’l Andy and the band will be recording The Lost Recordings of Hezekiah Procter, a sequel album that reveals the fictional singer’s collaboration with non-Western musicians at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933. The album brings together the same musicians as the first Hezekiah release, along with the engineering of Ben Caissie, who specializes in antique and obsolete recording technology. The Complete Recordings of Hezekiah Procter return for another European endeavor:

21/08: Nijmegen, NL - Merleyn
22/08: Stembert, BE - La Taverne du Perron
23/08: Den Haag, NL - Wild Rooster
24/08: Baars, NL - Speelplaats Baars
25/08: Eindhoven, NL - Americana Mondays
27/08: Hamburg, DE - Hafenklang
28/08: Tønder, DK - Tønder Festival
29/08: Tønder, DK - Tønder Festival
30/08: Tønder, DK - Tønder Festival
31/08: Braunschweig, DE - Kulturbühne Gärtnerei Volk
02/09: Malmö, SWE - Medley
04/09: Kristiansand, NO - Vaktbua

The Complete Recordings of Hezekiah Procter is a live medicine show act, a dazzling display of virtuosity by Canada’s most revered old-time and folk musicians, and a performance art piece that takes audiences back to the beginnings of country music.

A collaboration between Montreal songwriter Li’l Andy and folk festival darlings Sheesham and Lotus & ‘Son, The Complete Recordings of Hezekiah Procter sees Andy adopting the persona of “Hezekiah Procter” a long- lost legend of old-time music. The group combines harmony vocals, fiddles, banjos, sousaphone and theatre to recreate the medicine show and vaudeville act of the fictional 1920s performer.

The album began as Andy writing old-time country songs as Hezekiah Procter, imagining the singer’s troubled life and legend through song. He then recruited the multi-instrumentalists of Sheesham and Lotus & ‘Son to record those songs on a “wire- recorder” — an actual antique piece of recording equipment from the 1920s. The double album they made together sounds like a new discovery of 78rpms records from the early days of country music.

Included in that box-set is a novel written by Li’l Andy telling the imagined life story of Hezekiah Procter, a performer as talented and troubled as Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers or Robert Johnson.