Matt Henshaw's Rhythm & Gospel Cavalcade Tonight in Leicester !!

SEE YOU ALL THERE !!!

Peace, Love & Tea, MHx

Matt Henshaw Recommends ... Stef Baker

Head down to the Soundhouse to see Grace & The Magic Roots and catch up with the great Rhett Barrow on a quiet Tuesday night and you just might happen to see someone who stops you in your tracks and blows you away. That's exactly what happened last night with the wonderful, glorious and extremely talented Stef Baker ... I enjoyed her short set so much that I've added her to my show at The Cookie on Friday night.

Just four songs was all it took, and to be fair she had me hooked after two original gems, and then produced a superbly haunting cover of Wonderwall that reminded you that, even though you've heard it a million time ad infinitum, and it may have driven you up the wall at varying points in your life, it is a great, great song. Kind of like when Ryan Adams slowed it down and Noel Gallagher said that's how he always intended it to be. Although The Chemical Brothers claim he took it to them before they recorded Setting Sun and N. Gallagher wanted to make a Balearic dance tune with it !

So, yeah, Stef Baker will be joining myself, Becky Edwards, Kate Rendell and Emily Carr at The Cookie in Leicester on Friday night, and there's a few other surprise guests planned too, and with Charlotte Carpenter hosting her Tea Party downstairs we're sure to have a whole building full of Love !

Other reasons to Love Stef ... even though you'll have hundreds after Friday night ... she obviously quite likes LEGO almost as much as I do as well !!

Matt Henshaw's Rhythm & Gospel Cavalcade Poster !!!

SEE YOU ALL THERE !!!

Peace, Love & Tea, MHx

Matt Henshaw's Acoustic Rhythm & Gospel Cavalcade Part II @ The Cookie, Leicester

One week away and I'm hosting my second night at The Cookie Jar in Leicester, very excited I am too, we're going for it on the third Friday of the month, every month, until Christmas, and maybe beyond !

This month I'm hosting a bevvy of beautiful ladies, a harem as such, but this is more by accident than design, but what a happy accident ! So for your pleasure, and mine as well, we have ...

Kate Rendell

Becky Edwards

Emily Carr

... and myself of course, trying really hard to follow my very own Supremes ! I need to really up my Marvin Gaye A-Game !! See you then Leicester folk !!



Here's me and James Byron sharing some love last time around ... this picture pretty much sums up the good feeling in the air for a solid 5 hours of great music and positives vibrations !!

Spread The Love ! MHx

Things I Like ... Gardening

Springtime is upon us ! There's nothing better than getting yourself in the garden, hence the existence of Henshaw's Horticultural Blog ...



I loves me some bulbs. The Daffodils, Tulips and Garlics are coming through right now and looking glorious. Come Henshaw trivia for you - the Tulip is my favourite flower. Every man should have a favourite flower, and know his fair maiden's too. And the spiritual paganistic symbolism behind each and every one, well, maybe not that much, but it's important to know what's growing, when where and why?!

I've always enjoyed pottering, my grandad Walter was my hero as an infant, he walked up to his allotment everyday and kept it pristine, weed free and everything in perfect rows. A great man! The other side of my family has pig farmers, keen pruners and very much outdoorsy kind of folk. We're all in the Domesday Book, William the Conquerer knew about the Henshaws, Millses, Hooleys and Watsons.



Gardening is Good. Gardening is Great. It can relieve depression, fatigue, give you a spiritual mystical energy that only getting your hands dirty and in the earth can bring. You are creating life, and in some cases, produce you can eat and live from !

And we need to spread the word to the little ones ! Here's me (above) with the beautiful Becky Edwards' daughter Evelyn. Thank goodness she knows the power of gardening, a shining example to all. Can't wait to hear how her herbs, veg and flowers are getting on !

Also, just a side note, composting can save the world ... or as those inclined to being pinickety about things, composting can help preserve the conditions of the planet to necessitate human survival on the spherical rock floating around the sun.



This is my mum. She likes getting out in the garden. But even if you haven't the time, nouse or energy to plant, rotate, harvest, etc. then get yourself out for a walk, get involved in some nature ... it'll do you the world of good, and the world.

It was her Birthday and Mother's Day in this last month, so as these things come bound together each year, please by my record so then this time next year she'll be reeling from all the nice things that I've done for her !!

---===DOWNLOAD LINKS===---
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/it-aint-easy-my-life-ep/id814589358
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Aint-Easy-My-Life-EP/dp/B00I8ZDJZC/
https://play.spotify.com/album/733AAcf7c2KcZ75SUFlpi3
http://matthenshaw.bandcamp.com/album/it-aint-easy-my-life-ep
http://www.emusic.com/album/matt-henshaw/it-aint-easy-my-life-ep/14753983/
http://www.7digital.com/artist/matt-henshaw/release/it-aint-easy-my-life
http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/matt-henshaw/album/it-aint-easy-my-life-ep
http://www.napster.co.uk/artist/matt-henshaw/album/it-aint-easy-my-life-ep

Peace, Love & Tea,
Matt Henshaw x

Matt Henshaw Recommends ... Emily Carr

When you walk into a pub, order a pot of tea and take a seat, place you Wednesday scarf and coat on the back of your chair, take a sip and watch some open mic acts you're not usually expected to be overly impressed, but in Leicester, where there's seemingly an open mic night every night of the week you might just be surprised from time to time.

I went down a Wednesday night show just south of the city centre hosted by The Simpletones and was knocked out by the talent. I've seen Matt Zara, Kate Rendell and Becky Edwards down at the Cradock open mic nights from Little & Large, and loads more acts that I'm sure I'll share with you another time, but this time around I'd like to shine a light on Emily Carr ...

Emily was seemingly shy, although everything about her makes you want to shout and point and exclaim how great she is. Carrying the weight of the 2010s, as all teenagers do in the decade they leave school, Miss Carr is strikingly visual and has a voice that nabs your attention puts it in a box and let's it float upstream.

I like guitars, I love Emily's guitars, maybe it's because they're blue and white, maybe it's because they're exceptional pieces of wood, or maybe it's because she plays them wonderfully, either way it warms the cockles of my heart, and I'm sure the way she sings and plays will cheer you too.

Henshaw's Horticultural Blog: National Agriculture Day in the Garden with Becky Edwards & Evelyn ...

Happy National Agriculture Day everybody ... I don't really know what that means, but I just read it on the internets, so let us rejoice !!

If you missed my blog yesterday, I recommended the wonderful, beautiful and effervescent Becky Edwards ... I 'll give you a moment or two to go back and read that one ...

... so now then, we're well and truly into planting season, spring has sprung and I'm so very pleased and happy and excited and all those things in between that make your heart and soul warm and tingly.

Here's me and Evelyn in the garden yesterday ...



... she is a smashing a terrific little human being ! We planted some mint, carrots, tomatoes, peas and some sunflowers ! She informed me that "gardening is an outside activity", "gardening makes you happy", "it doesn't matter if you get messy" and that "mummy doesn't like getting messy, except when she eats!"

You can read more of Evelyn's hilarious oeuvre over here at Things Evelyn Says ...

In the meantime, do as we do, get your wellies on and get outside !!



And, also, if you missed it, share, Like, Love and cherish this ...

Matt Henshaw Recommends ... Becky Edwards

Matt Henshaw here recommending again, and bringing you the beautiful people of the world that make music and songs. And they don't come much more beautiful inside and out than the wonderful Becky Edwards. The twists and turns of fate and serendipity have brought both myself and Becky to Leicester from the north of the East Midlands, growing up as we did in Ilkeston and Ripley respectively, and finding ourselves in Leicestershire & Rutland.

My first week out last July with acoustic guitar in hand I met Becky and shared a stage at a little pub on Granby Street in the city. I was a humble open mic participant, and Becky was the headline act along with the marvellous Chris Conway, whom I've mentioned before whenst babbling about thems there Mia and the Moons. Massive Thanks to Stevie Jones for putting this one on !

Here she is having a sing song with her best friend, daughter and equally beautiful and hilarious Evelyn ...



... it's not all Disney classics in Becky's repertoire but I would be more than satisfied if it was. This video highlights the love between a mother and daughter and I feel, as we all should feel, grateful to Becky (as it says on her birth certificate - Rebecca she is not), for letting us into her life and sharing her blessings of music, talent and family with us. If this video has failed to make you smile, even just a little bit then I suggest you may need a support group of some kind, I don't know what, just Google "How to make myself happier" or something.

I Love Miss Edwards so much in fact that, along with Leah Sinead, I invited her to come and play at my birthday party last September. What a jolly pleasant night we had !

Here she is, above, playing at The Cookie, and no doubt you'll see her back again when I invite her to come and join me at an Acoustic Rhythm'n'Gospel Cavalcade sometime soon in the not so distant future ...

A few more things to note about Becky ... she is vegan and a shining example of someone who is talented, beautiful and healthy living a life she knows is right and pure, she is multi-talented so much so that alongside her music, she can dance, she is hilarious and a grand purveyor of words emotions and feelings, one day her and Evelyn will be known around the country, and making people smile in the same way I hope that Tippy and I do. Most pressingly though, is the race for the space at the top of the YouTube search, my friend Becky Edwards is not a pole dancer!

I owe a great deal to hanging around with Edwards, just being in her company inspires me to be a better person, when I say Leicester is a warm and loving place to be as a musician, I don't think I'm exaggerating too much when I say that a lot of that is down to Becky, for better or worse she helped forge the friendship between myself and Stu Crown and The Bobcats and led me to my discovery of The Simpletones.

I haven't even mentioned some of her great songs, 'Princess in a Paper Bag' is my personal favourite, 'Thin' is an honest and astoundingly heartfelt emotional ballad, and 'Your Face' is a sumptuous slice of acoustic pop, that I secretly think is about me, or maybe I just wish it was! Excellent songwriting!!