Wednesday 14 May 2025, 7.30pm
Excited to host a debut UK show for Sachiko Kanenobu, generally acknowledged as Japan’s first female folk-rock singer-songwriter.
Sachiko Kanenobu was discovered as a precocious 18 year old and signed in 1968 by Japan's first independent Record company, URC (Underground Record Club) who released her first album, Misora, in 1972.
A few months before the album's release, Sachiko left Japan and married music critic, Paul Williams, had two sons, and stopped writing music. However, in 1976 she met world-renowned science fiction author, Philip K. Dick. When he heard Misora, he encouraged Sachiko to return to writing songs again. And so in 1981 Dick himself released her first American single, Fork in The Road / Tokyo Song, and Sachiko started performing again.
She kept performing though the ‘80s up until the year 2000 - both solo and with her rock band Sachiko & Culture Shock, before a long hiatus until 2019, when Seattle Label, Light In The Attic reissued and released Sachiko’s debut album, Misora, creating a whole new following in the process.
Now in her 76th year, she is still performing and touring worldwide. Her second album Fork In The Road was reissued and released in Japan in 2023, and a song from Misora - Aoi Sakana (Blue Fish) - was used in the soundtrack for Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated movie, Perfect Days, in 2024.