Samuel Smiles (band)

Samuel Smiles (frequently known as Tim Bowness/Samuel Smiles, the name to which all of their albums were attributed) were an intermittently active English ambient-folk band. Their best known line-up featured singer Tim Bowness (of the band No-Man).

During the mid-1980s Michael Bearpark had played guitar for two Warrington art rock groups, After The Stranger and Plenty, both of which also featured future No-Man singer Tim Bowness. Bearpark subsequently moved south to study chemistry at King's College, London, where he won the Samuel Smiles Award For Scientific Genius (named after the Scottish writer, social reformer and self-help advocate). Bearpark had stayed in touch with Bowness, who suggested that "Samuel Smiles" might be a good band name.

The original lineup of Samuel Smiles was formed in Cambridge in 1990 by Bearpark (electric guitar), Charles Fernyhough (acoustic guitar), Grainne McAlonan (vocals) and Phil Unwin (double bass) - multi-instrumentalist Peter Chilvers joined on piano shortly afterwards. The band went through a number of changes in style (including folk and country). Bowness (by then singing with No-Man and making an impact within the music industry) produced the first Samuel Smiles demo tape in early 1991, following which the band parted company with McAlonan and Unwin. Fernyhough became an occasional contributor who continued to play, write and record with the remaining members (on and off) until January 1995 - he would later become a celebrated child psychologist.

In June 1991 Bearpark and Chilvers teamed up with Bowness to form a voice/guitar/piano trio, initially under the new name of Strapless. The band rapport was so instant that they performed their first live date on the day of their first rehearsal, and went into Liverpool's Amazon Studios (now Parr Street Studios) to record a live album barely three weeks later. These early sessions were eventually released on the Burning Shed label as Live Archive One. Reverting to the name Samuel Smiles, the band continued sporadically to record and perform over the next decade, playing a BBC radio session in 1992 and performing occasional support slots to musicians such as Holly Penfield in 1995. In 1997, Bearpark, Bowness and Chilvers added cellist Marianne De Chastelaine (formerly with The Wise Wound and Heather Nova) to the lineup. This quartet played several concerts and made a number of recordings engineered by David Kosten.

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