Beth Jeans Houghton, Stornoway

Beth Jeans Houghton is the Newcastle singer who, to paraphrase The Guardian, joins the dots between Gwen Stefani and Vashti Bunyan. Beth Jeans Houghton has been playing guitar since the age of 16. She’s only 19 now. In the meantime, she’s supported Tunng and Tinariwen, hobnobbed with Vetiver, the late John Martyn, Bon Iver and Joanna Newsome and recorded a single, Golden/Nightswimmer with Adem and more recent an EP ‘Hot Toast Volume 1’ with Mike Lindsay from Tunng. She was the popular hit at 2009’s Green Man festival and has been hitting the road with her band, The Hooves Of Destiny. An album is on currently being produced by Ben Hillier, the production mastermind behind Elbow’s Cast Of Thousands, Doves’s Some Cities and Blur’s Think Tank. “I plan to dip my toes into many genres before I quit this mortal coil,” says Beth. “I don't define my music and I try not to let music define me. We are two separate entities, but we get together for a shindig once in a while – and I intend to keep it that way.”

www.myspace.com/bethjeanshoughton