Samuel Smiles were an intermittently active English ambient-folk band. Their best known line-up featured singer Tim Bowness.
Band history
During the mid-1980s, Michael Bearpark had played guitar for two Warringtonart 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. 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, Charles Fernyhough, Grainne McAlonan and Phil Unwin - multi-instrumentalistPeter Chilvers joined on piano shortly afterwards. The band went through a number of changes in style. Bowness 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 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 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 to the lineup. This quartet played several concerts and made a number of recordings engineered by David Kosten. A subsequent version of the band, with De Chastelaine replaced by Myke Clifford. A live album, The Way We Used To Live, followed the next year. Samuel Smiles performed regularly throughout 1999 and 2000 including support slots with Porcupine Tree, Marillion and Roy Harper but ground to a halt after that.
Post-career and related projects
The members of Samuel Smiles retained their personal and professional friendships, and would continue to collaborate on other projects.
Some of the band's style and songs were carried on into the subsequent Tim Bowness/Peter Chilvers duo project, which released the California. Norfolk album in 2002.
In 2000, Bowness and Chilvers formed the progressive rock bandHenry Fool with former LaHost keyboard player Stephen Bennett: Bearpark subsequently joined as guitarist, with additional saxophone contributions from Clifford.
Between 1998 and 2001, Bearpark and Bowness played together in Darkroom, with occasional contributions from Chilvers on bass guitar.
Bearpark would join Bowness and Steven Wilson in the live line-up of No-Man in 2006.
Developments and reconnections
Samuel Smiles acted as an incubator for several songs which subsequently travelled to other projects. Aside from the Tim Bowness/Peter Chilvers duo project, both "Flame" and "Brightest Blue" were revived for the Richard Barbieri/Tim Bowness album Flame. "Walker" was re-recorded by No-Man and eventually released as an archive track on their All The Blue Changes anthology. Samuel Smiles also recycled an old song from a previous Bearpark and Bowness band, Plenty and covered No-Man's "Watching Over Me" on their debut album. In 2008, Bearpark reunited with Charles Fernyhough in the rock band Aimless Mules; and Marianne De Chastelaine was reunited with Tim Bowness in 2008 when she added cello to the No-Man album Schoolyard Ghosts.
