biog
Graham Shipcote has spent literally a whole lifetime in music.
Brought up in Geordie land, with roots music all around him (His father, Bill, was a jazz trombonist), Graham started busking on string bass with Round Eyes Ray in a duo called Hot Licks Cookies in the mid-eighties. After playing the City streets & arcades, they went on to folk clubs/cafes/pubs. The Hot Licks Cookies were well loved in vintage blues/roots circles and twice invited Stateside to the New Orleans Jazz Fest. They also accepted another invitation, waltzing around Israel playing various Kibbutz’s and a very hot Jacob’s Ladder folk festival. Around that time, and with a family life to consider, Graham & his pal Adam, started up the famous Jumpin Hot Club in Newcastle, bringing rockin’ roots, country and blues, reggae and world music to North East England, which is still going strong today, nearly 40 years later.
Singer Songwriter
Also a singer songwriter at heart, just before the turn of the millennium “Shippy” started putting his own unique material out on demo albums, recorded with / in Frankie Gibbon’s studio in Co Durham, which was originally a café in the old Lambton Lion Park. Various pals helped out (Vikki P, Stikks, Gypsy Dave). So this gave Graham the idea to form a roving band with all his musician chums and call it “ Shipcote & Friends”. Having recorded a few more demo albums (he’s wrote well over 120 tunes) & a great joint effort of Shippy songs with a young acoustic quartet “Mothers Ruin”, Graham then had all the pieces together for a resident & regular Shipcote & Friends.
Bryan Younger (guitar) & Jon Codd (Upright Bass). With Cath Reding (Fiddle/Accordion) got together with Shippy for an album recorded on reel to reel in 2009 called Shipcote Rides Again . These musicians are still the nucleus of Shipcote & Friends for well over a decade & a half now. Although Shippy does mix it up, playing solo, duo or trio form with others. Shippy songs have not really changed either, however he adapted & arranged some of his songs with the Aurora String Quartet for a full album & a couple special live appearances in 2024. Otherwise they have a local jazzy swingy country flavour to them, with lots of North East interest in the lyrics & sounds from all over the globe. The band have recorded many albums, which have all been quite rightly warmly received…
All the tunes, brings a broad smile to the reviewer’s face. They’re that eccentricity in all the songs & performance that’s nevertheless so entertaining.
Dave White – Rock n Reel
We get the reward of having something that sets up a warm glow inside each time the ‘play’ button is pressed.
Loudon Temple – Maverick Magazine
He writes songs that are warm, humane and down to earth – and also leavened with a little gentle humour. I hope it’s only a matter of time, before his songs, get picked up by more commercial acts.
John Davey – No Depression
Shippy writes very clever and intricate songs about the immediate world around him and the people who inhabit it; performing them in a warm, charming and laid-back Western-Swing meets American Folk via a traditional singer-songwriter hybrid that doesn’t particularly sound like anyone else I can think of.
Chris Bartley – Link Mag
Recent Releases
Shipcote With Songs & Strings with Aurora String Quartet 2024 .
“Shipcote with Strings works like a dream. Shippy’s gentle swinging songs, augmented but not overpowered by the classical backing, gave the whole thing a laidback Hot Club Of Paris feel. ” NARC Magazine
Local Favourites :Shipcote & Friends (Trio) 2022
Local Favourites, a mixture of Shippy’s own songs about life on Tyneside and covers of songs by fellow Tyneside artists. And it’s absolutely lovely. Lee Fisher ,
“Local Stars” Shipcote & Friends (duo) 2021
‘There’s a robust simplicity to these songs and the album as a whole. As I say the circumstances that surrounded the writing and subsequent recording were (hopefully) a once in a lifetime thing; and Shipcote has managed to use them to his advantage on one of his finest and fearsomely honest albums.”
Alan Harrison -Rocking Magpie.
Pop Pickers”. 2021 (Lockdown album with Martin Stephenson )
This was produced by Graham’s old chum Martin Stephenson & recorded with their new fangled home recording devices in The Highlands & Gateshead upon Tyne. It feature’s Martin’s awesome guitar playing and some Shippy, Calypso, Pop & Reggae originals.
Alongside all this Shippy wrote a book “Where Good Music Belongs” which came out / and sold out in 2023 & will be re-printed in 2025. He also does a semi regular “78 records & Stories” program on YouTube/social media.