Vinyl LP of County Show  out now! If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, copies will be available soon at St. Ove’s bandcamp page.

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A second single from County Show “South Street Werewolves” released Friday 30th October with a version of Neil Young’s “Vampire Blues”  – just in time for Halloween.

“Full of hooks and wry nods to the artists that shaped us growing up from Creedence to Springsteen, South Street Werewolves is really a love song to our hometown. A southern rock soap opera about our village and all the small-time local legends that fill the pubs. The funny dirty places we drink, hang out and sometimes play songs in. Walking home in the rain and after one especially heavy night I started singing about all the bands I loved, and it became this homesick howl at the moon – lamenting the lost years, looks and friends.”  – John George Cooper

For years people had tried to convince John George Cooper to record his songs. But there was always something better to do. Like the night he was locked out and slept in a foxes den. Or that weird summer when a loophole made magic mushrooms legal and he spent his entire pay check on them. Or re-applying to the Natural History Museum for a job in their bat department.

The devil makes work for idle hands. Time’s a thief. And talk of rock stardom, forever daft, becomes ludicrous in the context of ‘proper’ jobs, debts, growing families and responsibilities.

But the songs kept coming. And in the summer of 2019, childhood friend, multi-instrumentalist, Steve Blackwell decided it was time to put a band together. He enlisted Dan Akerman on bass and Adam Killip on guitar. The music came quickly. They already all had their hooks in the same pond: Creedence, Magnolia Electric Co., Westerberg, Zevon, The Band, REM. A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

In late 2019 they headed to Greenmount Studios in Leeds and sought the talents of more old friends: producers Jamie Lockhart and Lee Smith. Over four days they recorded the songs that would become the album County Show.

All they needed now was a name. Since it was Steve’s band how about… ‘Steve’? But there’s already a band from Athens, Georgia called Steve. So they settled on Stove. As Lowell George tells it: “I’ve had my head stoved in but I’m still on my feet”. Yes, “Stove” like the Lemonheads song. But of course there is already a band called Stove from Connecticut. Just when they thought hope was gone, along came St. Ove. The patron saint of lost time, wasted talent, old waves, silver-haired werewolves, dark secrets and last chances. Here to keep it going. Here to sing us all back home:

“It’s in the trembling voices. Parting of ways begun again. Like there’s a choice, like there’s a choice. It’s as old as a wave”

St. Ove’s first single “See You Later” released 28th August 2020, taken from the  long player County Show, released online on 4th September, with the vinyl LP due out in November – all courtesy of Half A Cow Records.