The Duke Spirit at Worldspace Sessions @ Abbey Road 2008

During the Duke Spirit performance Ted Kelly said that he can count on one hand the number of record business execs that he would call upon for honest recommendation for band inclusion for The WorldSpace Session. The executive Ted referenced that day was Shangri-la Records Michael Plen, a legendary music man who was the shepherd of careers including Janet Jackson to the recent duet project of Jerry Lee Lewis with Springsteen and Keith Richard. Michael recommended the brilliant Duke Spirit and the upon the band's arrival at Studio 2..they came to play!

The band formed from the meeting of Liela Moss and Luke Ford at an art college in Cheltenham where they were studying painting and photography, respectively. They moved to London together and began writing songs. After a short time they convinced mutual friend Toby Butler to join the band and they began to perform under the moniker 'Solomon'. During this period they shared a flat with various other people trying to make it in their various facets of media. One of their flatmates, artist Dan Higgins (he has designed all their sleeve work to date) turned out to be a guitar player looking for similarly minded musicians to make music with. The basis of the Duke Spirit was formed and after a chance meeting with drummer Olly Betts, the band had developed as a complete unit with a new name, 'The Duke Spirit' by early 2003. The band released their first single Darling You're Mean in May and played their first gig at the Brixton Windmill later that year. The band's debut album was released with Loog Records/Polydor in the UK on the 16th of May 2005. After headlining the TMF Rock Festival (now known as Offset festival) in the UK, the album was released in the U.S. and the band found themselves touring through America for much of 2006, including a highly praised^{[citation needed]} performance at the Coachella 2006 festival, California. The only release of 2006 was a downloadable E.P. and limited 7" single titled 'Covered In Love' (released through Velo Recordings). This was a collection of songs, recorded to 8-track by the band, written by recently deceased heroes and heroines (Arthur Lee, Desmond Dekker and Jessie Mae Hemphill). The Duke Spirit, in April 2007 to record their own second album, "Neptune."The Duke Spirit have received much acclaim and increasing success despite relatively little advertising based promotion on TV and the radio. Initially a "word of mouth" band, their heavy touring schedules have helped them to spread their music across the country and eventually into America and Europe. They have played a number of high-profile support slots for the likes of Queens of the Stone Age, Mercury Rev, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Razorlight and Kasabian, amongst others.

Artist Website / Artist MySpace / Artists Tours / Artist Cd Store