Richard Hawley

Bio:In an era where next big things, scenes and in-sounds flash by and even our favourite tunes are listened to on shuffle we need music that will stick around for a while, albums that we can go on listening to in one sitting until they wear out like previous generations had done with their Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and The Smiths records. Something real. Something timeless. Something proper.

Just as he did with the Mercury nominated Coles Corner, Richard Hawley has risen once again to the challenge of quality in a cheap thrills economy. Recorded between January and June this year his new album Lady's Bridge is filled with enough classics to last you a lifetime. Great music doesn’t need hype, it makes its own friends. And Lady's Bridge will find plenty.

It's an intensely personal record for many reasons but mainly because during its recording Richard lost his father Dave Hawley, after a three-year battle with cancer, in February 2007. Hawley Snr was a man who not only inspired his son to pick up a guitar but who gave him his work ethic (he was part of a generation of musicians who’d work in the steel industry all day then play gigs at night) and his sense of humour. Here, in Richard's words was “a first wave teddy boy who lived life to the full” and “could make a cat laugh”.

As a tribute to his dad the album cover features Richard in Sheffield's answer to The Cavern, the legendary Club 60, on the stage where his father, over 30 years ago, played with blues legends John Lee Hooker and Muddy Walters. No doubt his father would also approve of the series of videos Richard's made with Made In England director Shane Meadows – one of the growing legion of Hawley fans – which feature the singer in various states of embarrassment enjoying a romance with a mannequin, navigating a wheelchair around his local park and dressed as John Travolta crooning to a baffled audience in retirement home.