Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy brings new music to The Palms on Thursday, Dec. 13

Jeremy Clyde first gained fame as half of the British Invasion duo Chad & Jeremy, and is a venerated actor with over 50 years of credits ranging from the West End to Broadway, from film to television, including “Downton Abbey.” He’s also a respected songwriter and solo performer. Clyde will celebrate the release of his newest album, “The Bottom Drawer Sessions, No. 4,” with a show at The Palms Playhouse on Thursday, Dec. 13. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert are $22 ($18 with student ID). In the 1960s, Clyde and Chad Stuart formed the folk duo Chad & Jeremy, which delighted American audiences as part of the British Invasion. Singles such as “Yesterday’s Gone,” “A Summer Song,” and “Willow Weep for Me” earned them a spot on music charts and in the hearts of American fans. Chad & Jeremy had seven U.S. Top 40 hits between 1964 and 1966, and topped the Easy Listening chart. According to AllMusic, “Stuart and Clyde were gifted songwriters who could work outside the standard pop framework of the day, [producing] a sound that’s both rich and intimate.” Great Britain’s venerable newspaper The Guardian said, “Their sunny, gently psychedelic final album was genuinely amazing.” After Chad & Jeremy disbanded, Clyde focused on acting. In addition to “Downtown Abbey,” Clyde’s credits include roles in “Batman,” “The Musketeer” and the Oscar-winning biopic “The Iron Lady.” Through the decades of off-and-on touring with Chad & Jeremy and acting for British television, film and stage, the songwriting gift never left Clyde. With the witty, soulful, charming new adult contemporary songs on “The Bottom Drawer Sessions No. 4,” his fourth release in as many years, Clyde continues his musical journey. Why “Bottom Drawer”? “The clue lies in the title,” Clyde explained. “The Bottom Drawer Sessions. The songwriting continued in the 1970s after I ceased to be ‘And Jeremy’, late of Chad & Jeremy. The problem was always What To Write About. ‘Got up this morning, feeling mighty bad…’ It had all been done before. “And then, at a party in the early 1980s given by the renowned jazz singer Annie Ross, I met an enormously tall Canadian fellow in a cowboy hat, David Pierce, known to all and sundry as Big Dave. I asked what he did. ‘I’m a lyricist,’ he said. He had been working with a fine 70s band, Meal Ticket, which happened to include another old friend, one Rick Jones. Naturally, I went over to Big Dave’s place the next day and was duly amazed to be shown his bottom drawer, a vast and brilliant collection of unpublished lyrics. “Since then, in London, Los Angeles, and latterly, Paris, as the wind blew both of us in unexpected directions, we continued to write in that old fashioned way: he writes the words, and I set them to music. We have been at it for so long now that we seem to speak a kind of shorthand. At The Palms’ show, Clyde will front a quartet to perform songs from the Bottom Drawer releases as well as some Chad & Jeremy hits. Tickets are available at Pacific Ace Hardware in Winters, Armadillo Music in Davis, Davids’ Broken Note in Woodland, online via The Palms’ website and Eventbrite and at the door if not sold out. For more information, visit palmsplayhouse.com and bottomdrawersessions.com.]]>