CHARLIE DORE

Although best known as a respected songwriter for others, Charlie enjoys a multi-faceted career that includes acting, comedy-improvisation, writing for radio and composition for film and TV as well as performing live with her band. After drama school, regional rep and a stint in childrens' television Charlie formed a bluegrass band playing Monday nights in a west London pancake house.



The band, with dramaschool friend Julian Littman graduated to the pub circuit from where she was signed by Island Records in 1978. She made her first album in Nashville and London and released a single, Pilot of the Airwaves, which became a hit in the US and is still a worldwide radio favourite.

Since then she has made eight albums, one per decade for the 80's ('Listen' for Chrysalis) and 90's (Things Change, Black Ink), during which time she also returned to acting and started writing for other artists. She became one of a handful of UK songwriters to have success across diverse genres with songs covered by George Harrison, Tina Turner, Celine Dion, Martha Wainright, Ricky Ross, Paul Carrack, Lisa Stansfied, Sheena Easton (US No 4), Black, UB40, Status Quo, and a UK No 1, 'Ain't No Doubt' for Jimmy Nail. In 1996 she had a surprise European Club hit with an Italian remix of 'Time Goes By' from the Things Change album, which reached No 6 in Italy.

She starred opposite Jonathan Pryce in the award-winning film 'The Ploughman's Lunch', worked in theatre, appeared in two shows with the iconic People Show company, television and radio with Eric Idle and co-founded and performed at London comedy-impro venue The Hurricane Club for seven years, working alongside many comedy icons including Bill Bailey, Harry Hill and Robin Williams.



Eight albums & two EP’s have been released since 2005 on Charlie’s own label Black Ink, all of which have seen her rediscover her own voice and return to her earlier folk-americana-roots influences. Her songs have won two Ascap awards, an Ivor Novello nomination, both the Overall Grand and the Folk Prize from the International Acoustic Music Awards, Best Album Lyrics for Cheapskate Lullabyes, plus both Album of the Year & Best Lyrics for 2017’s Dark Matter from the US Indy Acoustic Project, while her 2020 album, Like Animals won her the FATEA 2020 Female Artist of the Year + a further Best Lyrics award from the US Indy Acoustic Project.

The most recent album Like Animals explores our most basic instincts and how we’re often hi-jacked by our emotional responses. Fear, anxiety and aggression figure but on the plus side, intense joy and love are in the mix too. Charlie says “However sophisticated we imagine we’ve become it seems we haven’t evolved all that much. We’re still animals, it’s just that now we wear suits and we know how to make gunpowder.”



As well as the multi instrumental Julian Littman the album also features Michele Stodart of the Magic Numbers, who duets on the co-written ‘A Hundred Miles of Nothing’, Gareth Huw Davies on 5-string double bass & cello, Jessie May Smart on violin and Quentin Collins on flugelhorn & trumpet.

December 2021 saw the release of her first ever Christmas EP ‘The Man Who Built Christmas’, an entirely unconventional collection of songs, some of which she includes in her current tour sets on the basis that a good song isn’t just for Christmas. Meanwhile she continues writing ‘Background Noise’, a series of essays about her life both on and off stage.