Stephen Steinbrink + Julie Byrne + i am your autopilot

Two of America’s great young wanderers, Stephen Steinbrink and Julie Byrne, will fly the Atlantic this September and embark on a co-headline tour around the UK, following appearances at the End Of The Road festival.

Stephen Steinbrink is a 27-year-old songwriter and recording engineer born and raised in the arid desert of Arizona and currently floating around the western USA, dividing his time between the green spaces around Olympia, Washington and the concrete flats of Oakland, California. Having spent the better part of a decade touring North America and Europe in buses, vans, and trains, his wanderlust travels shaped his stunning breakthrough album Arranged Waves, released last year on Melodic (Malcolm Middleton, Dark Dark Dark). Truly engaged with the unintelligible and absurd, Steinbrink is more cultural observer than 21st Century busker with his intelligently cool left-of-centre approach to a sincere melody, using pop tropes to convey something deeper. At the same time, it’s his lyrics that mark Steinbrink out as a true punk troubadour trying to how to figure out how to be a person in the world.

Julie Byrne has counted Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans and New York as her home in recent years and spent the majority of the last two years on the road. It's these travels and new places that inspire and influence her most, giving us a glimpse inside her own quietly mystical world and her unique slant on the one the rest of us happen to inhabit. Her debut long player Rooms With Walls and Windows, released last year on Orindal (Advance Base, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone), is a true modern-day word of mouth success and was voted number 7 in Mojo's best albums of the year and Huffington Post called it '2014's Great American Album'. It's a stunning set of front porch psych-folk that unknowingly recalled the greats - Vasthi Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Karen Dalton - but very much for our time. For all her otherworldliness, there is a realism too to Byrne, she is street smart and more punk in spirit than searching for the hippie ideal.

Local support comes from I Am Your Autopilot, who blend analogue synth oscillations, choral vocals, orchestral textures, and chiming guitars. A truly eclectic sound, ranging from pure electronica to orchestral psychedelia, from psych-folk to dirty pop, I Am Your Autopilot have released two albums: Robots in the Orchestra (2009) and The Stillness of the Sea (2013).

The Eagle Inn is an excellent traditional pub from the team behind the Castle Hotel, the Parlour and Gullivers. It's just off Trinity Way, an eight-minute walk from Manchester Cathedral on Deansgate.

Price: £7 adv
Info: http://www.heymanchester.com/stephen-steinbrink-julie-byrne