Twenty-five-year-old Bathgate singer Luke La Volpe is to play Dunfermline’s PJ Molloys on Thursday April 14 and Dundee Church on Friday April 15, 2022.
Tickets have gone on sale for the gigs ahead of his previously-announced, sold out show at Glasgow’s St Luke’s on Thursday December 16.
Last week Luke was announced for the line up at TRNSMT 2022, playing on Friday July 8.
He’s delighted to be on the bill alongside the likes of headliner Paolo Nutini after having to pull out this year following a last-minute positive Covid-19 test.
La Volpe will also support Bathgate pal Lewis Capaldi in front of 20,000 fans at Lytham Festival, Lytham St Annes on Wednesday June 29.
Musical hotbed
Luke La Volpe is the latest star to emerge onto the national scene from the musical hotbed of West Lothian, home of contemporaries and friends The Snuts and Lewis Capaldi.
After the stress and enforced touring hiatus of lockdown, 2021 has seen Luke come roaring back into the live arena with sold out shows at Glasgow’s King Tut’s and St Luke’s, supports with The Lathums and Tribes and festivals including Latitude, Liverpool Sound City and Live at Leeds.
Now he’s announced a headline tour for April 2022, including his very first headline dates outside his native Scotland.
Following support slots with Capaldi, Tom Grennan, Tom Walker and Jake Bugg, Luke’s music career was kicking up a gear when everything shut down in March 2020.
He’d finished a sold-out Scottish tour and tickets for a show at Glasgow’s legendary King Tut’s were snapped up in a day but, as fate would have it, that gig wasn’t to happen for another 18 months.
With everything suddenly on hold, Luke knew he had to keep busy and set about organising a series of online gigs in support of Music Venue Trust, who were a lifeline for grassroots venues through the crisis.
Such was the interest in his Sofathon Singalong events that barely a month later it escalated into a 24-hour marathon festival with 70 artists performing to over a million people online.
In recognition of his efforts, the charity made him a patron alongside legends including Sir Paul McCartney and Billy Bragg.
Lockdown anthem
The View’s Kyle Falconer, who had performed a set for the Sofathon festival, got in touch with a song idea which the pair turned into lockdown anthem Terribly Beautiful, evocatively capturing the sense of insecurity, longing and sacrifice of that uncertain time.
Luke’s Terribly Beautiful EP, released in May 2020 scored him a Scottish Number one and iTunes Number four single with Dead Man’s Blues and put him, for one day only, at Number two in the National midweek singles chart, splitting Katy Perry and The Wknd.
“They’re both on the same label in the US and we actually got a call from someone there asking who the f*ck I was and how I’d done it,” laughs Luke. “I’ve got no label and no money, it was hilarious.”
Another single, the defiant Stand Up, followed in November, coinciding with Luke being awarded the prestigious Male Breakthrough at the 2020 Scottish Music Awards.
The accolade has a record of pointing to great things ahead, having previously been won early in their careers by such luminaries as Paolo Nutini, Amy Macdonald, Joesef and Lewis Capaldi.
A writing session with his friend, Yungblud guitarist Adam Warrington and Glasgow writer-producer Buzz Killer (ST PHNX, Seafret) resulted in current single Alter Ego.
The accompanying video features Luke locked in a nightmarish, Tarantino-esque battle with his own demonic alter ego.
Covid-19
It’s not all been plain sailing of course. Luke was due to play for his growing legion of fans at Glasgow’s returning TRNSMT festival but, heartbreakingly, he had to cancel the show at the last minute after testing positive for Covid-19.
“I couldn’t believe it, the timing was so bad but I had to isolate and that was that,” he says.
“TRNSMT was going to be one of the biggest shows we’d ever played and I’d visualised every moment of the set.
“On Sunday, instead of heading up on stage I was in the garden finishing off a fence I’d been repainting.
“I had a cracking new three-piece suit I was going to wear for the gig but ended up in my old painting clothes instead.
“You couldn’t make it up. I was pretty upset when I found out but I’m OK with it now. Sometimes in life you just have to paint the fence.”
Back on track
Firmly back on track, Luke will round off this year by adding another milestone, sold-out Glasgow venue to his list of scalps, when he plays at the city’s 600 capacity St Luke’s on December 16, his biggest headline show yet.
He’s already been announced to support Lewis Capadi at the Lytham Festival and for TRNSMT next summer, with more festivals to add.
He’s working on a new EP with song-writing legend Iain Archer for release in early 2022 ahead of his first UK headline tour.
