A WEEK IN THE TEMPLE

The day her grandma died, Billie Bottle was starting work as a live-in carer, looking after someone else’s grandma. The songs on her new album grew out of the experiences of the weeks that followed.

The Temple at the centre of the album is the structure of the seven-day week, layered with cosmic meaning, but also the pattern around which the domestic tasks of care and repair have been organised for millennia.

Billie was part of the team that hosted our Homeward Bound series in 2020-21, but her collaborations with Dougald go back to the folk clubs and street-corners of the northeast of England where they used to sing together in the 1990s.

So to mark the launch of the eponymous first album from her new band, Billie Bottle’s Temple of Shibboleth, we invite you to join us for A Week in the Temple: a celebration of friendship, collaboration and care.

Each day, you can join us for a YouTube livestream at 2.45pm BST / 3.45pm CEST (use the links on the left). We’ll play a track from the album, Billie will introduce us to the stage we’ve reached in the cycle of the week, we’ll take your questions and see where the conversation leads us.