dennishopperchoppers

Dennis Hopper Choppers return!

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:31:14 +0000

Dennis hopper choppers return for their first live show in a while. Back as a band with a new six piece line-up including Pete Wareham from Acoustic Ladyland/Polar Bear on Baritone sax, Nat Woodcock on organ, Andy Waterworth bass, John Greswell (of Menlo Park and Ralfe band) viola, Tom Wenzel (ex of LA’s Screams for Tina) on drums and me of course, Ben Nicholls on guitar and vocals.Thursday 10th June 2010 ’(Its Countrier) Down South’ @ The Rest Is Noise, Brixton, London Get down there, finishing touches are just being made to their second album and it’s sounding good……

Gigs with Glasvegas…..

admin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:49:25 +0000

The Doncaster and Stockton gigs with Glasvegas have been cancelled and will be rescheduled shortly. The gig at The Boileroom in Guildford on the 4th june is still going ahead, so see you down there…….

Check out the gigs page for upcoming festival dates. DHC will now also be playing Beautiful Days Festival on the 17th August.

DHC plays Paris with Dirty Pretty Things….

admin — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:03:06 +0000

DHC will be performing on Friday 22nd Feb. with the Dirty Pretty Things in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo. As well as opening up for the band, he’ll be backing them up on some of their set as a one man rhythm section………. should be interesting.

LISTENING TO MC5 up for pick of the week on BBC Radio 2

admin — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:45:21 +0000

LISTENING TO MC5 is up for pick of the week on the Radio 2 Radcliffe and Maconie show pick’n'mix. Voting ends tomorrow, if you haven’t voted, go to the link below and do it now. If it gets selected then it’ll be played everyday on the show.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/radcliffemaconie/picknmix.shtml

‘LISTENING TO MC5′ single out on 25th February

admin — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:05:09 +0000

‘Listening to MC5′ single will be released on the 25th February, available for download on itunes.

A UK tour will also soon be announced, with live dates near you throughout February 2008. Keep an eye on this site for more info……….

‘CHOP-LP’ & the single ‘LITTLE JOHNNY’ on itunes NOW!

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:16:27 +0000

The album and first single are now both available to download from the itunes store…

‘LITTLE JOHNNY’ single, out today…….

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:09:58 +0000

Little Johnny is out today…..maybe some of you heard it on the Dermot O’Leary show on BBC Radio 2 on Saturday……..go grab yourself a copy from the itunes store!

CHOP in the shops tomorrow……..

admin — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 02:54:56 +0000

‘Little Johnny’ wins vote on Steve Lamacq Roundtable vote on 6music, 1st November, beating off Jay-Z……………
Nemone on 6music makes ‘Little Johnny’ her video of the week, starting 5th November. Director Barney Clay is interviewed on the show on Monday about the making of the video.

CHOP-LP OUT NEXT WEEK!!!!

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:56:43 +0000

Currently getting radioplay from Lamacq on Radio 2 and 6Music, Nemone on 6Music, as well as other DJs on XFM and BBC radio London. Keep your ears open, the single ‘Little Johnny’ is out on the 19th November.

Dennis Hopper Choppers will be live in session on the Bonanza show on Resonance FM, 104.4 fm at noon on Sunday 4th November, followed by a gig that evening at The Amersham Arms, New Cross to kick off the album.

There will be a free in-store show at the Rough Trade East Store, off Brick Lane, starting 1.30pm on Tuesday 6th November. Come down and hear him play songs from CHOP-LP for free!

CHOP-LP released on 5th November 2007

admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:31:01 +0000

Dennis Hopper Choppers is Ben Nicholls, a one-man-band, simultaneously playing guitar, bass drum, high hat, organ bass pedals, vox-organ and a 1969 Fender Dual Showman amplifier originally designed for Dick Dale which he said is ‘probably the loudest thing I’d ever heard.’ This coming from a man who played bass in the Silverjets and Menlo Park.

His debut, self-released album, Chop is 13 tracks of high-plains-via-East-London fretboard wrangling and heartfelt rockabilly stomp while his rich and astonishingly versatile baritone gives the album it’s soaring range.

The story of Chop’s making reads like a great unwritten Hollywood screenplay. Ben holed-up to write the album in a deserted villa in Tabernas, Spain. A villa whose owner, in true Hitchcock style, was murdered out of the blue by her son. Tabernas was also the location for filming of Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Chop has soaked up the fights, the hangings, and the hint of confederate gold carried on the wind off the dusty mountainside.

This all percolates deep into the album’s landscape: ‘The Ballad of Fu Manchu and the Red Bride’ is a tale of murdering wives with a nod to Christopher Lee; the reverberating guitar-stabbed violent chaos of a heart gone off-road in ‘Lust’ to the jealousy seeped mellow-malevolence of ‘World Gone Green’.

Chop was recorded at Ben’s Bud Sticky Sounds studio in Hackney early this year, but, ever the Peckinpah-esque outsider, he was on the receiving end as society came knocking. He was forced to leave his studio as the developers moved, knocking down artist studios to make way for the Olympics. Besieged at home under the ominous threat of eviction and with mounds of earth everywhere, he put the finishing touches to it just in time.

DHC is making a name for himself as one of the main characters on the one-man-band circuit. He created the soundtrack for this year’s Raindance award winning documentary ‘The Ballad Of AJ Weberman’ directed by Ollie Ralfe of the Ralfe Band, about the life of obsessive Bob Dylan fan and ‘garbology’ inventor Weberman. He has also appeared in the upcoming one-man-band documentary ‘One Man in the Band’ (dir. Adam Clitheroe) and has appeared on the USA Rockabilly fanzine/label Rock’n'Roll Purgatory’s ‘Attack of the One Man Band’ compilation. The hyper-noir video for single ‘Little Johnny’ was directed by Barney Clay who has also made promos for Dirty Pretty Things, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Bonde Do Role and Gnarls Barkley.

DHC collaborative work has heard him appear on albums by the Ralfe Band, Big Sur, and Cara Dillon, and tours with Seth Lakeman.

After his first gig playing between rounds at a boxing match in Bethnal Green’s York hall, DHC has played shows at Glastonbury, Brighton’s Hanbury Ballroom, The Borderline and at The Spitz Festival of Blues. Chop’s release will be followed by a gig at the Ladyluck Club, London on 29th November where he’ll be joined onstage by Acoustic Ladyland’s Pete Wareham who also appears on the album. A November UK tour will also soon be announced.

Like the carburettor cowboys of the post-woodstock road movies, setting out into DHC’s edge-of-country country may promise an easy-ride and moonshine-redemption, but, like his silver-screen namesake’s motorcycle at the end of Easy Rider, Chop will leave you in a flaming wreck with a mouthful of blood and grit on the side of the road to nowhere.