Red Sky July’s new album Misty Morning is set for release on Friday 28th February 2025. Laced with trademark vocal harmonies and stunning instrumentation, the release includes recent single’s Stones And Brambles and title track Misty Morning. 

The album promises a marked progression in their sound, with fresh sonic ideas redefining their blend of folk and Americana. The almost hypnotic quality and evokes feelings of natural landscapes whilst bending the rules of traditional music to the modern age.

In the first of three ‘why I love’s heading our way from Red Sky July, Shelly Poole from the band tells us why she loves Prince!

It was actually quite hard to choose who to write about as I would have always gone to Prince as my main inspiration. But then there is Joni Mitchell , Paul Simon , Bob D , Ricky Lee Jones etc and as I’ve got older there is definitely more time for the others and Prince has taken a back seat.

THE BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE

It’s 2 in the morning, I’m doing the music for a new TV show and there are serious edit deadlines so writing anything that’s not music for my work  means I’m not going to get any sleep, so I thought ill just write a quick thing about Neil Diamond as it’s easy but then I just played Prince in my headphones while my husband sleeps next to me and my all the best years of my life just came flooding back to me and I’ve actually got tears in my eyes.

I’m listening to Let’s Go Crazy, not a sad song, but a song that makes me feel alive and energetic and full of wonder again – so it has to be Prince. Of course it does. 

I fell in love with him hookline and sinker when I saw him crawling half naked out of a bath singing When Doves Cry on a late show that I was watching with  my parents when I should have been in bed. No bassline, just those Linn drums popping and that crazy vocal, the start of everything.

OBSESSED

I bought every album, every picture disk, every collectable thing – I was obsessed . I knew every word , every ad-lib, exactly how long in between each song on each album and it went on until Plectrumelectrum, around 2014 and that’s when I just musically stayed in time with what albums had gone before . 

My mum took me too the Purple Rain concert with my friend from school, Athena. She sat in a cafe in Wembley on her own and waited for us so we could be grown up and go in on our own. That concert changed my life. I was also allowed to take the next day off school and wait for Prince outside the Mayfair Hotel (I told school I was sick). I got to meet Wendy and Lisa and speak to them. I told them years later when I met Wendy in Medocino while recording with Bill Bottrell how lovely she’d been to me as a kid. She’s a good woman.

A MYSTERY. A WONDER.

Everything about Prince was a mystery. A wonder. I loved that. The unknown, the  untouchable stuff. He also made me want to play better. I hated piano guitar and clarinet lessons as a kid, but as I got into Prince I wanted to pick up and play everything (not very well I might add but I certainly had the enthusiasm). He also made me want to produce, to own what comes out of you fully. 

It’s way too hard and too late to pick a fav song but I can say Prince has a song for everything that went on in my life. Songs to cry to, drive to, dance to, have sex to. The harmonies  on Shy on the Gold Experience album are so good and the backing vocals on Joy In Repetition are other worldly. I loved Under The Cherry Moon when everyone else slammed it and a little bit of my heart died when he passed away… Sometimes It Snows In April is still hard to listen to.

ONE BEAT OF A LINN DRUM

Even though pop music has changed, Prince’s first 20 albums were the best work of any artist in my opinion. I’m so grateful to have his music in my life so that I can go straight back to feeling that wide eyed wonder of life and love with one beat of a Linn drum.

Here’s Red Sky July doing Stars Turn Cold:

Our thanks to Shelly for the contribution to our Why I Love archive on an artist who has also been a major inspiration on one of the ATB team! Look out for another Red Sky July why I love from Ally McErlaine in the next few days.

Red Sky July online: Website / Facebook / Instagram / X-Twitter / Youtube

You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.

Keep up with At The Barrier: Facebook / X (formerly Twitter) / Instagram / Spotify / YouTube