Denise Black's Loose Screw
Wed 24 Apr 2013
At 08:00 PM
Artists Performing:
Featuring Graeme Taylor (guitarist for Home Service)
Denise Black and Graeme Taylor emerged from very different corners of the entertainment
business, Denise with a background in TV, Theatre and Cabaret, and Graeme from the
Progressive and Folk-Rock arena.
Denise is probably best known as Coronation Street's siren hairdresser and Queer as Folk’s
Hazel. On stage she has worked at every major producing theatre in the UK in such diverse
work as Chekhov, Albee, Shaw and Lorca. She recently won a Manchester Evening News
Award for Roots at the Royal Exchange and toured the UK playing Mother Superior in Sister
Act The Musical.
Graeme is a founder member of Home Service – who have just won BBC ‘Best Live Act’ BBC
Folk Award. He is also a founder member of Gryphon, MD on War Horse and has been Rolf
Harris’s loyal guitarist for 17 years, playing Glastonbury no less than five times!
They met 4 years ago on a show in Chichester Festival Theatre. Black was singing folk songs
in Greek and Taylor played bouzouki. In ’10 they hosted a midnight party with an ad hoc band
(hence the name ‘The Loose Screw’) for the Edinburgh Fringe and were picked by the Daily
Telegraph as one of the top 10 music shows at the Festival.
In 2011 the Loose Screw line-up stabilised when Black and Taylor met Dedi Madden (bass,
guitar and vocals) and Andy Dewar (kit and percussion) and the 4 piece (with Denise now
playing auto-harp) sound started to come of age through gigs at the National Theatre, Cromer
Folk Festival and Manchester Gay Pride.
"Denise has stage presence. She was funny, entertaining and welcoming. Nobody walked out without feeling like they had made a friend in Denise" - Portsmouth News
"The dozen songs on Kiss The Joy find Denise in playful mood, reminiscent of Kirsty MacColl's more down-to-earth fun numbers" - Northern Sky
"She not only stands out, she gets the right focus. Kiss the Joy has real gravitas...an album that managed to cut through my cynicism" - Neil King, FATEA
"I loved the way she encouraged everyone to sing along, relax and just go with the flow...her energy was amazing - what great entertainment!" - BBC Festival Café
"Graeme's guitar is breath-stopping, spine-tingling. Brian may...Graeme does" - The Scotsman
