“One of Britain’s most consistently accomplished songwriters” Colin Irvine, BBC Review
“One of the best songwriters we have” Nick Coleman, The Independent on Sunday
“One of the country’s finest lyricists” The Birmingham Evening Mail
In a Culzean Castle second-hand bookshop hangs a notice board that collects the store’s greatest stories. Lost and discarded notes, photographs, old receipts, letters, postcards – fragments of people’s lives that each tell their own tale and even inspire new ones.
Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine’s new album Things Found In Books is an album of songs written in response to this notice board, that celebrates the ordinary lives of those on the Scottish coast. The album is releasing 07/03/25.
Boo and Yvonne have formed an inimitable songwriting partnership weaving these ephemeral stories with their own, creating an album full of nostalgia and beauty, hope and longing.
Boo Hewerdine is an acclaimed Ivor Novello Award nominated English singer-songwriter now living and working in Glasgow. Eddi Reader enjoyed international success with the (Hewerdine written) hit single “Patience of Angels” in 1995 and Boo also produced Reader’s “Sings the Songs of Robert Burns” in 2003, an album now viewed as a folk classic. Boo Hewerdine is one of the greatest songwriter performers in the business.
Yvonne Lyon is among the UK’s brightest and best singer songwriters. Her most recent album Growing Wild is her tenth solo studio release Yvonne consistently combines poignant lyrics with strong, creative melodies demonstrating a voice that can be both fragile and intense.
She has guested on two live sessions with Bob Harris on his BBC Radio 2 show and recently completed a Master’s Degree in Songwriting and Performance from the University of the West of Scotland.
“I love her, absolutely love her… Great song beautifully performed” Michael Ball, BBC Radio 2
“Just stunning music” Bob Harris, BBC Radio 2
Yvonne Lyon –
“Culzean Castle, near Maybole in Ayrshire, Scotland has the most fantastic second-hand bookshop. I love second-hand bookshops and second-hand books. When I visited, I saw a noticeboard entitled Things Found In Books – all the things found between the pages curated on the wall and not discarded. I took lots of photographs and could feel an album forming right there and then.
Seven years later, Boo and I have completed that album. Songs conjured from fragments, momentary glimpses into people’s lives and the ordinary and extraordinary things they used to mark their place in a book.
This collection of songs was born in the imagination surrounding those fragments, the questions and ephemeral moments, the scribbled handwriting, the Post-it note, the photograph, the receipt, the letter and the postcard from a family holiday.
As humans, we often try to define our stories, arranging and rearranging our histories. We are inveterate meaning makers. We need stories in our lives and we find significance in them. Like old photographs in an album or on a wall, we treasure our memories, our love, our grief, our joy and our pain. Sometimes we choose to remember, sometimes we choose to forget. Sometimes we put them in a book.
The bookshop keepers at Culzean Castle took the time to save and cherish the forgotten lives they found in their books.
It’s remarkable how many of our own stories connect with these unknown lives. Our memories, our love and our grief are woven in the lines of these songs and we hope you find your own stories there too.”
Boo Hewerdine –
“In the second-hand book shop, occasionally, things were found between the pages. Tickets, clippings, letters, photographs, postcards… Each had been placed there for a reason. Each reason was now lost. What had been love tokens, aching secrets, catalysts for memories that brought gentle smiles had been transformed by the act of exchange into ephemera. Our job was to invest new meaning into these abandoned things. To replace fact with imagination but somehow find the deeper truth – to tell a new story that at its core chimed with a forgotten human experience. We might not know the subjects of a photograph but can empathetically divine what tale was being told. A glimpse into someone else’s dreams. Songs are not novels, movies or plays. They are small. Polaroids that appear before us in the writing. They feel related to these foundlings. They are not monuments, symphonies or histories. They are ephemera.”
For more information, please contact pete@quitegreat.co.uk or call 01223 844 440