UK Country Live! presents Country Music Takeover

UK Country Live! presents Country Music Takeover featuring Jade Helliwell, Ags Connolly and Lars Pluto and The Reavers.

Here's
one i bet you all never thought you'd see 👀 Lars Pluto on a UK Country
Live! show 😱 I sat down with him to settle our differences a few week
back and we soon realised we had more in common that we thought,
notably, our shared desire for UK Country Music to be a better place for
all. Hopefully we can start bringing people together who share the same
goal of building this great genre we all work and live in. Apart from
all that, we have the amazing Country-Pop songstress, Jade Helliwell and
the incomparable traditional tones of Ags Connolly to complete a
line-up of stellar Country Music.

Jade Helliwell is a singer / songwriter from West Yorkshire, England.
Her
style is a notably British blend of pop and country, influenced by the
likes of Taylor Swift, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Maren Morris and
Kelsea Ballerini.
A passionate song-writer, Jade crafts her lyrics
through her own observations, with a running commentary on life, love
and friendships.
Over the last few years, she has performed
alongside some of the biggest names on the scene, appearing regularly at
music festivals including Country to Country (C2C), Buckle and Boots,
FSA Festival, and Country on the Clyde. More recently she has the
opportunity to open for Sam Palladio and Frankie Davis at the
prestigious Nashville Meets London festival, in Canary Wharf.
In
October 2016 Jade released Forget The Night (EP) which went straight to
#2 in the UK country charts, and top 50 in the official album charts.
The served to put Jade on the map, with strong UK press and radio
support, including BBC Radio and Chris Country.
In May 2017, a video
of Jade singing with a busker on a night out in Leeds went viral, and
reached 21 million views on Facebook, with an additional 3 million views
on YouTube. Her EP quickly re-entered the charts and hit #1 on the
iTunes Country Charts, and #8 in the official charts.
In February
2017 Jade won the Yamaha Hoedown competition, securing a slot at the
UK’s biggest country festival at the O2 arena in London, and resulting
in an endorsement as a Yamaha Artist.
She was nominated for several
awards, including Best Female and Best Solo at Box Radio, Artist of the
Year and UK Female of the year at UK Country Radio, Best Unsigned Female
at the Best of British Music Awards and Outstanding Artist at the
Yorkshire Roots Awards, which she went on to win. Jade won the Female
Vocalist of The Year award at the 2017 BCMA awards night.
2018 saw
her release new EP Infatuation, picking up rave reviews and radio
support as well as some great Spotify playlists features.
Following
her performance at Canary Wharf, Jade was approached by tire giant
Firestone, to become the face of the international music competition
they host every year. Jade will perform at a number of press launches
and events throughout the year, on behalf of Firestone and in
collaboration with BBC Introducing presenter Abbie McCarthy.

Ags Connolly is a traditional country singer-songwriter from Oxfordshire, England.
Having
attempted to write songs for years, Ags found the confidence to take it
seriously after attending a workshop with Nashville super-musician
Darrell Scott. Since then he’s built a reputation as an inspired
songwriter at major festivals and as a constant presence on the touring
circuit. Ags has headlined shows both solo and with a band across the
UK, Europe and the US.
Ags’ influences come essentially from hardcore
country songwriters like David Allan Coe, Johnny Paycheck and Dale
Watson. However, he also takes major singer-songwriter influences from
the likes of Guy Clark, Loudon Wainwright III and Chris Knight.
The
debut album ‘How About Now’ was released in February 2014, receiving
rave reviews including being named ‘Album of the Month’ in Country Music
People magazine who described him as “the closest we’ve ever come to an
English Willie Nelson”. The album was also heralded as “a masterpiece”
by Maverick magazine. In 2016, Country Music People magazine named the
song ‘When Country Was Proud’ as one of the Top 50 country songs from
the last 30 years.
Ags’ second album, ‘Nothin’ Unexpected’, was
released in February 2017. Its release led Country Music People magazine
to declare him “the best singer-songwriter in the country field that
this country has ever turned out” and John Godfrey from The Troubador
Show to label it “the best country album to come out of the UK from the
best ever UK country artist”.

Lars Pluto was born just outside
Atlanta, Georgia to a family that was also a touring Southern Baptist
Gospel Bluegrass group. They traveled the entirety of the southern
highways of America and by age thirteen Lars had lived in just about
every state south of the Mason Dixon Line.
"Music just was. It was
everywhere when I was growing up...country, rock n roll, gospel...it's
all mixed up in the air down there. Kentucky left me with a certain
sound; Tennessee left me with another. It gets in you in the South and
you gotta get it out. You can't help it. Then we moved north to frozen
Kalamazoo, Michigan. That's where I found rock and punk in the
birthplace of the electric guitar."
A decade in New York City
followed with Lars performing in several country and rockabilly bands
before he moved to London. These days Lars can be found splitting his
time between his own country combo Lars Pluto and The Reavers, and
performing as Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash in the West End and several
national touring theatre productions.