Paul Armfield

Paul Armfield is a singer-songwriter from Birmingham and the Isle of Wight. He begins his career after years of playing bass in a range of bands, while also working as a bookstore manager. He writes and records his first songs with Adam Kirk, Joan Baez’s guitarist, and these demos lead to an album commission from a new label.

Recording and collaborations

For his early recordings, Armfield works with a scratch band called The Four Good Reasons, made up of friends after Kirk has moved to the United States. The group records Songs Without Words with producer Ian Caple, whose credits include Tricky, Stina Nordenstam and Jan Tiersen, and arranger Dickon Hinchliffe of Tindersticks. One track from the album, Armfield’s self-translated version of Jacques Brel’s lesser-known song Why Should It Be That A Man Gets Bored, appears on Barklay’s Next - Jacques Brel Tribute alongside artists including David Bowie, Scott Walker and Nina Simone.

Armfield performs live in several settings during this period, including as a duo supporting Lambchop, solo with the Go-Betweens and with The Four Good Reasons. After a performance at Glastonbury, James Delingpole describes him as a standout discovery in the Sunday Telegraph.

Later albums and projects

Armfield’s second album, Evermine, appears in 2005. He continues to work as a bookseller while also playing upright bass and saw with the Gramophone Party, joining the revived 1970s folk act Shide And Acorn, renamed Stickman. He also performs occasional solo shows.

His third album, Blood, Fish & Bone, is recorded live over four days spread across six-month intervals, arranged around Adam Kirk’s visits from San Francisco. He also writes songs to order as the in-house laureate at Larmer Tree Festival, writes a song about skateboarding in Ventnor for a local skate-park fundraiser, and contributes the song Flagbearers to the second Folk Against Fascism album.

Other work

In 2009, Armfield sets some of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poems to music and performs them at Farringford, Tennyson’s home on the Isle of Wight. The album Tennyson follows. He also performs double bass in the gypsy jazz trio Tzigane and in the 1930s jazz and hula group The Gramophone Party.

Line-up

He is also associated with Paul Armfield & The Four Good Reasons.