BIG COUNTRY-‘Return To Steeltown’ 40th Anniversary Tour 1984-2024:

BIG COUNTRY

+ special guests: The Icicle Works

‘Steeltown’ was the second studio album by Big Country which was recorded at ABBA’s Polar Studios in Stockholm with production from Steve Lillywhite. Released in October, 1984 Bruce Watson remembers the time very well, amid the nationwide strife back in the UK, fully in the grip of the Miners Strike: “We started work on Steeltown back in June 1984 at Abba’s studio. My Dad was a miner, so what we did was knuckle down to hard work for six weeks”.

Regarded by many as a classic, the multi-million selling ‘Steeltown’ went straight to the #1 slot in the UK album charts.

Big Country will be performing songs from the album as well as the classic hits and live favourites including: ‘Fields of Fire’, ‘In A Big Country’, ‘Chance’, ‘Wonderland’, ‘Look Away’ and many more.

Named after the 1960 short story “The Day The Icicle Works Closed” by science fiction author Frederik Pohl, The Icicle Works joined Liverpool’s early 1980s ‘neo-psychedelia’ wave and quickly became part of the cult-like renaissance movement that included Echo And The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, and OMD.

Almost immediately, The Icicle Works scored a string of highly rated hit albums and singles all over the world. They were one of the few bands of their genre who made an impact in the USA, having been invited to perform on TV shows such as American Bandstand. There has been resurgence in their global popularity in recent years, with their 1984 hit “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)”, featuring in the Netflix smash hit series “Stranger Things”.

Whilst Ian McNabb has kept The Icicle Works very much alive in recent years, this will be the first time in 25 years that he and Chris Layhe have played together.