Spottiswoode

Ringleader

Home: New York City
Mum: American singer
Dad: English clergyman
Style: Not really
Crime: Against Humanity

New York, NY- Spottiswoode grew up in London. He was a good boy.

He started playing guitar at the age of twelve. It took him about ten years to write a halfway decent tune. Since then he has written hundreds and hundreds.

At the end of the last millennium, he moved to New York City. The New Yorker once called him a “genius” but now describes him merely as a “downtown ringleader.”

Spotty’s songs have been covered and recorded by numerous East Village and Williamsburg musicians, and featured in a variety of mainstream and independent films.

Spottiswoode’s early solo record, Ugly Love (Groovetown 1999), earned rave reviews and comparisons to Leonard Cohen, as well as an invitation from ASCAP to play at the Sundance Film Festival. Piano 45, his most intimate and stripped down record so far, has just been released (April, 2010) on Old Soul Records.

Spottiswoode’s duo collaboration with Riley McMahon entitled S&M (New Warsaw Records), was heralded by Performing Songwriter Magazine as the “BEST DIY RELEASE OF 2007” and nominated for an Independent Music Award.

SPOTTISWOODE’S GANG

However, Mr. Spottiswoode’s proudest accomplishment is the decade long personality cult known as Spottiswoode & His Enemies. Somehow Spottiswoode has been able to hold together a gang of seven of New York’s finest musicians, put out a string of acclaimed records, perform residencies at New York’s best clubs, play Lincoln Center, tour the country, cross the ocean… all with a band that doesn’t even like him.

In 2008, in honor of the band’s tenth anniversary, Spottiswoode was profiled on NPR’s “Weekend Edition.” In 2009, the band and six actors performed a staged reading at Joe’s Pub in the Public Theater of his new opera, ABOVE HELL’S KITCHEN. The project is now in further development.

It isn’t easy to describe the music the band plays. Spottiswoode composes songs of all genres, and his band of multi-instrumentalists is ready and willing to switch instruments and gears in the blink of an eye. A single show may include a delicate folk ballad, a balls-out rocker, a hilarious cabaret ditty, and a neo-gospel lament. But Spottiswoode cringes at the word “eclectic.” “We are expressionists!” he pleads.

Dan Reed of WXPN Radio put it this way: “Spottiswoode and his Enemies do something that few bands can do: evoke real emotions, sometimes several different ones in a single song. Spottiswoode himself is both funny and scary at the same time, and there is undeniably a major talent lurking behind the songs and the live show. Lotsa unexpected twists and turns, and lotsa soul.”

The band is currently finishing its fifth CD, Wild Goosechase Expedition, due for release in fall of 2010.

FRAME-UP

Spotty is also an award-winning filmmaker:

Loneliest Woman In The World, his trilogy of music videos for the zimmermans (a cult 90s band from DC) earned him two consecutive Student Emmies, both presented to him in Los Angeles.

His short film, The Gentleman, played the Slamdance & BBC Film Festivals before being picked up by the Independent Film Channel for regular rotation.

He also has two feature screenplays in development:
UPPER PENINSULA, a Midwestern domestic drama to be directed by Brian Dilg, an NYU Film School Graduate, and slated for production in November 2010; and THE LONG WALK, a dramatic and lyrical portrait of New York City on a Friday night, with the Cesar-nominated French actress, Audrey Dana, attached.

CONFESSION

Alas, despite all the songs and scripts he has written, poor Spotty still hasn’t settled on a style or even truly found his voice.

He does portraits, landscapes, love songs, emotional psychodramas, abstracts, expressionist hallucinations, ornamental screens, stick figures, cartoons, and old-fashioned soda pop.

He is happy to work in oil, clay, acetate, latex, wax, collage, mixed media, ceramics and crayon.

Clearly, Spotty doesn’t know what he stands for.

He recognizes this as a commercial liability and agrees with any critic who would consider it a long-standing artistic pitfall. It is the symptom of a life-long, not yet life-threatening, identity crisis.

He blames his mother.

His favorite song is usually his most recent.

PANTHEON OF TEMPTATION

Spottiswoode’s musical influences include: The Beatles, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, The Doors, Lou Reed, James Brown, Serge Gainsbourg, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Billie Holiday and plenty of others.

Spottiswoode’s cinematic heroes: Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni, Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen. Other faves: Capra, Carne, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Lean, Lynch, Peter Sellers, early Jimmy Stewart and the Marx Brothers.

Nevertheless, young Spott remains a little baby ready to suck at the teat of Hollywood, Channel 4 or the BBC, and slurp down whatever those evil geniuses decide is palatable. He only throws up occasionally. More than before. His constitution has become fragile over the years.

He is uncomfortable with any suggestion of a declining civilization.

Favorite Living Americans: Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Bill Clinton & Oprah Winfrey. (Yes, they all make him ill occasionally too.)

Favorite Living Brits: None. Not even David Beckham.

You can reach Spott at spode@erols.com