On 27 September 2024, the song ‘Pioneers’ will be released to mark the official one year count down to the bicentenary of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the birth of the modern railway
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The single ‘Pioneers’ will announce a brand-new album called ‘Passengers & Pioneers’ by Sam Slatcher with four North East poets, due for release in March 2025.
The album has been written using archive history from the first passenger railway journey in 1825 on the Stockton and Darlington railway and stories collected from those travelling and working on the line today. It will be performed in celebration of the 200 year anniversary of the first passenger journey. The release of this first single marks the start of a year long countdown to the bicentenary, on the date of Locomotion No.1’s inaugural journey.
The opening track ‘Pioneers’ begins the story with George Stephenson, walking through the night to convince stakeholders in Darlington to finance his creative vision for a modern passenger railway which would ‘set the world on track’.
The album was commissioned by the railway companies Cross Country and Northern that now operate the line along with the Community Rail Network and Bishop Line Community Rail Partnership, featuring poetry from Lizzie Lovejoy, Carmen Marcus, Rowan McCabe and Harry Gallagher. To create the content they each spent time as artists in residence on the historic line still in operation from Bishop Auckland to Saltburn.
The album tells the story of how this short line, connecting two North East towns changed the shape of the region, the country and the world. From the global experience that railways became to the ways it brings communities together today. It draws on a letter written by a 14-year-old boy to his younger sister describing his track-side view of the first journey, on news reports from the hundred year anniversary and from testimonies of railway workers throughout the ages (from station staff to engineers to those who work on board). The songs and poetry also feature stories of passengers who commute, holiday, encounter strangers, meditate from train windows, find love, seek work, find pride and belonging and experience a sense of homecoming, on those same 26 miles of track.
The album was recorded at Blank Studios in Newcastle, produced by John Martindale. Sam and the poets are making plans to tour the songs and poems and venues across the North East and beyond in 2025. If you would like to host them for a night of stories, songs and poems, please get in touch at storylines2025@gmail.com
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