IPSWICH THINGS TO DO

Young Gun Silver Fox

St Stephens Church, Ipswich

Information - Young Gun Silver Fox

Andy Platts and Shawn Lee need no introduction, having each clocked up a life time of musical brownie points, whether through Andy’s career as a world renowned composer and  singer/songwriter/guitarist with British soul sensations Mamas Gun or through Shawn’s esteemed work as a producer, multi-instrumentalist and composer which has placed him at the forefront of the global soul and funk community.

The duo’s fourth studio album, Ticket To Shangri La showcased a band at the very top of their game, fine-tuning their potent brew of sun-kissed pop-soul, west coast AOR and natural groove with a skill for composition and production that sees them forging ahead down a musical highway blessed with blue skies and positive vibrations. For both participants, the chance to make a new record together is always a liberating experience, as Andy explains; “I always come back to Young Gun Silver Fox like taking a drive to the coast and I just smell the ocean and the air and it’s like ‘wicked I’m back here again’ and I can just kick back and enjoy it.”

Key for Shawn when it came to starting the creative process for the new record (the follow up to 2020’s Canyons) was taking their already skilled approach to writing and recording and adding something new to the mix. “We have a sound and a language that we’ve cultivated that sounds like Young Gun Silver Fox, and these things are great but they can be a double-edged sword because you think ‘well nobody wants to make the same thing over and over’,  so you need to find ways to move forward and do something you haven’t done before.  I was thinking we have a lot of mid-tempo stuff, so I started thinking if we had some bangers and some more up-tempo stuff that would be great and would add to the canon, and so I concentrated on delivering a few things like that.”

This self-imposed mandate to up the groove factor is born out in the album’s first half and exemplified in the uplifting four to the floor and sky-high chorus of lead single ‘West Side Jet’, which started life in Shawn’s London studio and became an instant contender as the first introduction to the album. “When Andy sent me the vocals I was honestly like ‘this is the first single!’ We hadn’t even finished the album yet but it was instant.”