End of the Middle

A Northumbrian singer/songwriter with a flair for shambolic psych-folk and exploratory rock, Richard Dawson is a fixture in the underground folk scene with his distinctive blend of traditional English folk music, Sacred Harp-kissed North Country blues, jazzy psych-folk, and progressive rock. He flirted with mainstream success on the acclaimed outings Nothing Important (2014) and Peasant (2017) and teamed up with Finnish experimental rockers Circle on 2021's nature-themed art rock opus Henki. His rock and folk influences meshed on 2022's The Ruby Cord, a dark, compelling meditation on a blighted future, and he stripped his songs and style down to their essence on 2025's End of the Middle.

Based out of the industrial Tyneside region of Northern England, Richard Dawson's eclectic style has drawn comparisons to other singular artists like Jandek, Mike Waterson, John Martyn, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Adem, Skip Spence, and Robert Wyatt. Dawson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on May 24, 1981. He first became interested in music as a child, and as a teenager he started singing, influenced by Mike Patton's vocals with Faith No More. He took a job in a record store, which he held for a decade, and his tastes and influences grew more diverse; he developed a particular fondness for traditional British folk music, Kenyan guitarist Henry Makobi, and Qawwali, a type of Sufi devotional music. Eager to create songs of his own, Dawson bought a cheap acoustic guitar; it was soon damaged, and after it was repaired, it had an unusual sound that Dawson came to like. The guitar's unique sonic palette became one of the hallmarks of his music, and he began performing regionally.

Dawson issued his first recording, Richard Dawson Sings Songs and Plays Guitar, on a local label in 2005. A CD-R EP, Motherland, appeared in 2008, documenting music he wrote for a play by Steve Gilroy. Dawson burst out of the Newcastle experimental scene in 2011 with the critically acclaimed The Magic Bridge, a collection of solo performances. Released in 2013, The Glass Trunk found Dawson offering up a largely a cappella set of six songs inspired by a month spent sifting through the tattered documents of his local Tyne and Wear history museum, and 2014's well-received Nothing Important was his first outing for Weird World Records, an imprint of the successful British label Domino Recordings. Dawson released his second album for Weird World in 2017; Peasant was inspired by tales of life in the Middle Ages, and based on his research on the history of North East England.

Dawson's music took a more contemporary approach on 2019's 2020, which was dominated by rock-influenced arrangements and songs that focused on people's struggles to understand life in an increasingly unpredictable world. He continued to operate in the rock realm on 2021's driving, flora-themed Henki, which saw him collaborating with shape-shifting Finnish art rockers Circle. 2022's The Ruby Cord was described by Dawson as the final installment of a trilogy. While Peasant was set in the past and 2020 in the present, The Ruby Cord imagined a future where augmented reality has become commonplace in the wake of society's disintegration. Dawson returned to the present day on 2025's End of the Middle, a series of vignettes of British life, many focused on the difficult dynamics of family and the small tragedies of daily living. Dawson chose a stark production style and minimal arrangements for the songs, going so far as to ask drummer Andrew Cheetham to play his kit as lightly as possible. Domino Records released End of the Middle in a special vinyl edition in which the LPs were mastered to play "inside-out," with the groove beginning near the inner label and winding outward to the edge of the disc. ~ James Christopher Monger & Mark Deming