About

William and Marie South

CleverClogs is the brainchild of William and Marie South, a husband and wife team from South London who are both highly experienced musicians and music teachers.

William South

William has been a professional musician since 1984 and has recorded numerous albums for several major labels and, with his projects, Heavy Shift and Philadelphia Bluntz, toured the world (both promoting his own and other people’s music) and has worked as a session player with many household names including Tom Jones, All Saints, S Club 7 and Bond as well as recently branching into the world of TV and film music writing.

Much of William's music is jazz and dance orientated, some of it deeply melodic while some of it explores much more abstract territories. Recent projects include being commissioned to record a series of CDs for a company called Punk Rock Baby – this entailed taking classic songs from different genres – dance, heavy rock, punk, 80s pop and soul (Hip Hop Baby is the latest in the series) – and doing weird ambient blessed out versions for young children to go to sleep to. These have attracted quite a cult following with a lot of national radio play and press coverage over the past few months!

However a substantial part of William's time has been taken up recently with co-composing the music for series one and two of the BBC series Hustle. William’s first foray into TV and film music, Hustle has been a huge success – a soundtrack album is to be made during the summer of 2005 and a third series is to be scored this autumn.

Also, after a couple of years away from the dance scene, William is teaming up with his old Philadelphia Bluntz partner, Rennie Pilgrem, for a series of festival gigs this summer (including Glastonbury).

Inbetween this and William's regular engagements at various jazz bars around London and his various teaching gigs he has also been commissioned by L'Ouverture to write two new musicals for the company to stage – half complete at the time of writing, these are due to be premiered at the end of August 2005.

Marie South

Marie cut her musical teeth in the early 90s doing the vocals on several reggae hits and worked with many of the best known names in the genre including Gregory Isaacs, Phyllis Dillon and John Holt. After moving into the R'n'B field for a couple of well received singles and taking some time out to have her and William's daughter Georgia, Marie moved into teaching, where she discovered her true metier.

Working with L'Ouverture, a visionary company who deliver all sorts of creative projects to London's schools, Marie soon was evolving her unique teaching methods, connecting with children and helping them discover their creative selves and nurture them.

Currently Marie is maintaining a very busy schedule of workshops all around South London, working at several different schools, Goldsmiths University, and has recently been awarded a CHE after completing a course with Community Music (affiliated to the University of North London).

The Bag Lady

Another long term project for William and Marie is 'The Bag Lady'. This is a musical that L'Ouverture commissioned to be written from a script already prepared by the children's writer Petronella Breinberg, working with school children.

From inauspicious beginnings – a couple of small scale productions in primary schools in East London and Liverpool – the project evolved to a full scale production with professional band and support staff at Goldsmith's University in the summer of 2001, some extensive recordings to a very professional level (utilising the 11 – 14 year olds who'd appeared in the show) in the summer of 2002 and some 'PA' shows using some of the songs at various events around London. In 2003 another show was mounted – this time to an even more sophisticated level with an all teenage funk backing band and show stopping choreography.