New Hebden Bridge deli evokes spirit of the American dream
Plus, Todmorden 'outsider folk' label gets set for spectacular showcase
Hello and welcome to The Calderdale Lead.
In today’s edition we’ve got not one but two special interviews!
The first is with restaurateur Oliver Lawson - he of the much-lauded COIN in Hebden Bridge - on his new venture which takes its inspiration from a great uncle who was once the talk of New York!
Plus, I caught up with the head honcho of Todmorden-based record label Basin Rock about all things outsider folk and a very special event taking place in the town this weekend.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
From NYC to Hebden Bridge: New deli brings the spirit of the Big Apple to the valley
By Andrew Greaves
Inspired by his great-uncle’s journey from illegal immigrant to the talk of New York’s food scene, restaurateur Oliver Lawson is hoping family history equals success for his new venture.
New deli Saltas, which will open its doors in Hebden Bridge this weekend, is named after his great-uncle Romeo Salta, whose backstory is the epitome of the once-great American Dream.
Romeo, who grew up in an orphanage in post-World War I Italy, was a culinary pioneer in the Big Apple with his eponymous restaurant.
Not bad for someone who arrived in America penniless in 1929, jumping ship in New York and accepting a job as a waiter in a casino thanks to a grateful passenger he’d helped treat for a bout of seasickness.
He went on to work at a number of New York’s finest establishments before opening his own eatery, bringing elegant Northern Italian cooking to the masses in Manhattan.
Famous New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton once said ‘New York never had an Italian restaurant as good as Romeo Salta was in its heyday’.
Not only that, Romeo wrote a leading cookbook - The Pleasures of Italian Cooking - and even had his own range of frozen foods before his passing in 1998.
So, where does Oliver, Hebden Bridge and his new deli fit into all this?
He takes up the story: “Originally, we were going to do a sort of Negroni bar and wine shop that did a few cold plates and stuff. And really, it was going to act as a bit of a holding space for COIN on the busier weekends.
“My great uncle had a cookbook, and in that cookbook is this really great meatball recipe. And whenever I'm cover Alex, who's my chef at COIN, I generally put Romeo's meatballs on the menu.
“One time, I made a sandwich with them and I thought, this is really good. And we thought, yeah, let's do a sandwich shop. So it's kind of developed from there really.”
Oliver himself is no stranger to success; the aforementioned COIN has garnered near-universal good reviews since opening with its perfect mix of small plates, fine Italian produce and excellent reputation for wines.
A bit like his great-uncle, he cut his teeth elsewhere - in Oliver’s case El Gato Negro and Michelin-starred MANA - before opening COIN.
What can we expect from Saltas?
He said: “We've now decided to do a sort of Italian American style sandwich shop because we work with great Italian suppliers anyway at COIN.
“We get loads of great produce from people like Ham and Cheese in London, Carnevale, and we just thought, well, we can bring all these ingredients together that we're already sort of using, and we can just do great sandwiches.
“We're working with a baker over in Huddersfield, a guy called Roger's Bakery, and he's done us a soft, almost, Subway-esque Italian herb and cheese style, that’s a foot long, and we’re going to be serving on those.”
As well as sandwiches, Oliver is also planning to offer a small drinks menu - great coffee, soft drinks, maybe the odd wine and beer - and soft serve ice creams.
Saltas, in Albert Street, opens on Saturday. For more information and to read all about Romeo’s story, click here.
A label as lush as the landscape - Basin Rock is the perfect antidote to disposal music culture
By Andrew Greaves
The music industry, for many, is an odd beast.
It’s an industry obsessed not with longevity but with scale and size.
But for every mega label with the superstars selling out arenas and taking multi-million dollar contracts to use a certain face cream, there’s the small indie collective putting out music that stands the test of time.
One of those labels is right here in Calderdale in the form of Todmorden-based Basin Rock, a self-described ‘outsider folk’ label.
On Saturday, the label is taking over the town’s stunning Unitarian Church for a day and night of music featuring a number of acts from it’s perfectly-formed roster.
Earlier this week, I caught up with Basin Rock label boss Denny Field to find out what drives the music and what to expect from Saturday’s event.
Tell me about the foundations of Basin Rock - what was the catalyst for starting the label?
Todmorden and the surrounding countryside was the main influence on starting the label. We'd often walk past Basin Stone near Gaddings Dam and a good friend once commented how the shape would make a good logo for a label, so that sew the initial seed.
I was very clear from the start that I wanted it to be a "Todmorden" record label and the name is on the back of all our releases under the logo. We then just need to wait for the right first releases to come along and they did.
As a relatively recent discoverer of the full BR back catalogue (currently loving listening to the Trevor Beales release!), how do you approach the relationships you have with the artists on the roster - do you actively seek people to work with or do you get people proactively reaching out to get their records out on BR? (Or is it a bit of both?)
It's a little bit of both, they all tend to find us quite naturally though. We're never in a rush to find anything new, as with a lot of things in life, you tend to discover the best stuff when you are not really looking for it.
Is there a sense of place in the music you release? There's clearly a connection between the landscape and the 'type' of music that fits a Basin Rock release but how much does it influence what you choose to release?
It often works out that way but everything and everyone is a product of their environment so it's almost impossible to not be influenced by "place" in whatever you do. Some artists/musicians may naturally lean more on the landscape for inspiration, but they often don't realise it until you start chatting to them.
It certainly appeals though and some are more obvious than others. The next release is by Eve Adams and an album called 'American Dust' which is shaped by her life out in the high desert of California.
It sounds cheesy, but it really is how the music hits if we know if we want to release it or not. We have to 100% love it, if it's even 99% then we won't.
The recent Freak Zone mix for 6Music was an absolute joy to listen to, how important are shows like Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone and other DJs who champion music outside of the accepted 'mainstream'?
6 Music was certainly very pivotal in our early releases in 2017 and we'd often get playlists. As they've moved more away from playing as much new music, we still get plays by the likes of Stuart, Cerys, Gideon Coe, Huw Stephens and others which is nice, but definitely not as much... maybe we're releasing weirder stuff to the bosses ears. In recent times without doubt, Elizabeth Alker on her BBC Radio 3 Unclassified has been the most supportive of the label on the wireless (she's compèring the do at the church) and it's always cool when NTS shows (shout out Golden Ratio Frequencies) pick up on our music. The more left-field/folk leaning places - The Quietus, The Wire, KLOF, Gold Flake Paint, Aquarium Drunkard - have been good to us and we're lucky to have a few writers who seem to get what we do and write for more mainstream publications, which is important in getting the word out further afield, especially as music press has diminished.
In terms of Saturday's event, how important is the venue in terms of the overall feel/atmosphere/experience you want the audience to have? And how lucky are we in Todmorden to have not just a venue like that but one that is so open to events like Down off the Tops?
It's called Down Off The Tops as a nod to our favourite walking guide for the area from the 1980s by a chap Geoff Boswell entitled 'On The Tops'. The venue itself looks very special, particularly inside and it's also very close to where we're based, so it's very convenient!
Church gigs can sometimes be a stuffy and straight but the Unitarian has a looser feel to it, something that we would actively encourage. In terms of the acts, I think the music will flow nicely throughout the whole day and we would suggest folks to get there at the start. Resonance are doing the sound and Jamie House some visuals using film Duncan Marquiss shot around the area one weekend, this will add to the atmosphere and change as the light does outside.
We're very lucky to have so many spaces and variety for the town the size of Todmorden - some people have worked really hard over the years to make it all happen.
And finally, what's coming up for the label in the next 6-12 months - are you able to plan that far ahead, is there anything we should be looking out for that is coming down the tracks?
Yeah, you tend to work 6 months ahead on a release, being a small label we can be quite flexible but we also need to know the current releases sells, so we can do another one. It's very much a hand-to-mouth existence. The aforementioned Eve Adams album is out this summer, and we’ve just released the first single Nowhere Now:
Juni Habel has sent us the bones of the new album that is sounding really special and we've a few other things in the fire - including a possible compilation of country & western from the Midlands in the 70s!
The Basin Rock back catalogue can be found on Bandcamp here.
Tickets from "Down Off The Tops" - which starts at 2pm - are available here and there’s an afterparty at the brilliant Nan Moors after the live music in the church.
That’s it for this edition. Hopefully I’ll bump into a few of you in either Hebden Bridge or Todmorden (or both!) over the weekend if you feel inclined to check out Saltas for a sandwich before heading for some outsider folk action in Tod.
Whatever you’re planning, enjoy the rest of the week and I’ll be back in your inbox on Sunday!
Andrew