A teen singer songwriter who started his musical career busking on the streets of Huddersfield is to release his debut album and has just played at one of Manchester’s iconic venues.
Joe Robinson’s album, boilersuit, is out on Friday, May 31 and this week he played Manchester Academy 3 supporting indie band the Florentenes.
Joe, 16, who plays under the name doogle, will be headlining Northern Quarter in Huddersfield for his album release party on May 31.
He’s started to grow a following across the north west, already playing venues such as The Jacaranda in Liverpool, Retro Bar in Manchester and multiple headline shows in Huddersfield. He’ll be at the Pilgrim bar and live music venue in Liverpool on June 22 after a promoter spotted him playing elsewhere in the city and wanted him to play a bigger venue.
Joe, who has already released singles and EPs, is in his first year at the Access Creative College in Manchester doing a Level 3 diploma in music performance. He’s also a business intern at the famous Grayston Unity pub and live music venue in Halifax.
He said: “The boilersuit album has come from my stage image. The trend is to have a distinctive image these days so now I wear boilersuits whenever I play live which is not what you’d expect an indie artist to wear.”
Joe has a session band who joins him on stage to give his songwriting the full sound effect and he finds it easier to get live music bookings with a band, although he’s still aiming to busk on New Street in Huddersfield town centre this summer.
“This debut album will be my most ambitious release yet,” he said. “I create fantasy worlds with metaphorical lyrics that take listeners on emotional journeys.”
Joe has worked with Halifax music producer Liam Hardy from Yew Tree Studios to craft his boilersuit album that starts with an upbeat track in Take Me With You but slower songs like Ballad strip back the pace and provide emotional lyricism paired with haunting instrumentation.
Joe was busking on Huddersfield’s streets within four months of first picking up a guitar just under three years ago when he was 14. He taught himself how to play using the website Ultimate Guitar.
Joe, who lives in Stainland just down the valley from Outlane, with dad Rik, mum Fiona and 18-year-old sister Niamh, first started playing drums when he was three and is now a proficient drummer.
Rik – headteacher at Ravenshall School in Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury – played guitar in a band called The Container Drivers championed by legendary DJ John Peel.
Joe’s stage name doogle comes from his mum’s Irish roots. His middle name is Dougal named after the character in Irish sitcom Father Ted and was always a source of folk poking fun at Joe so he turned it around by changing the spelling to doogle.
There’s an Australian guitarist already called Joe Robinson and an American comedian also shares the same name so Joe wanted to make sure he was different.
For more information on doogle go to his website at https://doogle.live/ and his music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Music and Tidal.
Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content and copywriting.
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