Bertie Newman

Out of the swimming lane

Newman grew up in Hackney, east London, and came to songwriting late by the standards of most folk careers — at 19, after a competitive swimming career ended. The story told to RGM is specific about the trigger: a Bon Iver album played by Newman's mother during the training years, which stuck long enough to turn into an acoustic guitar and a habit of writing. The line given to that interview — that music is "the only thing in my life career-wise which I really miss when I don't do it" — is about as close to a mission statement as the catalogue gets.

The first recorded traces are from 2021: "Lost", "Tired Of Love" and "Seaside Eyes", the last of which became the calling card and is still among the most-played tracks on the streaming profiles. A 2022 cover of Alexander 23's "IDK You Yet" did the thing covers do for young acoustic acts and widened the audience beyond the original songs. By 2023 there was a body of work, which came as a surprise to its author: "I didn't honestly think I would have an actual body of work out ever, so it's surreal for sure," Newman told When The Horn Blows that June.

Thoughts So Loud, and naming the noise

The debut EP, Thoughts So Loud, arrived in June 2023 — four tracks, and the title lifted from a lyric in the song "I Will". Newman had been diagnosed with ADHD at 22, shortly before, and told When The Horn Blows that the phrase "explained exactly how I have felt for my whole life". The single pushed to press was "Home", which York Calling described as setting the comforting idea of home against cold and unwelcoming circumstances; the write-up pinned the sound as soulful vocals and delicate acoustic guitar with electronic undertones.

The making of it was unglamorous and worth recording: two home studios, two different producers, one session in extreme heat with no air conditioning that Newman remembers as the best time anyway. Asked what came next, the answer was "MORE MUSIC !!! Writing writing writing x" — which, judged against the release schedule since, was accurate rather than promotional.

Precipice, Porcelain, and writing through loss

Precipice, released on 13 September 2024, is the record that changed the register. Six tracks across roughly 22 minutes — "Razored Glass", "Come Back Round", "Six Months Later", "Tell Me What You're Dreaming Of", "Call Me Back" and "Decay" — written after the loss of a friend to suicide. B-Side Guys opened its review with the observation that grief has a way of sharpening artistic vision and called the EP a testament to that, crediting it with holding personal storytelling and wider themes in the same frame rather than choosing one. An extended seven-track version followed the same year.

Grief stayed the subject into 2025. A four-track Porcelain and a five-track my dear, porcelain both appeared that year, the latter on 4 September; Newman's own framing of the release was that the songs should find the people who need to hear them, and the self-description on the official site has settled into "sad but warm folk songs that hopefully make you feel something". Around those EPs sat a steady drip of singles — "The Soils Ever Changing", "All Of Me Changed Forever", "Summertime's Close", "Coldest Sea" — plus a January 2025 extended edition of "Seaside Eyes" that bundled slowed-down and instrumental versions of the 2021 track, a format aimed squarely at how the song actually circulates.

Where things stand in November 2026

2026 has been a singles year rather than an album year. "what's not mine", a collaboration with Savanna Leigh, came in January; "Lighthouse" on 4 June; and "between the pines" on 16 October, with a music video and an acoustic version both posted to the official site. Nieuwste Hits covered the last of these as a song about wanting a relationship that does not exist yet — the gap between what love is imagined to be and what is actually there — and heard the production as restrained acoustic textures under an intimate vocal. That piece also widened the list of reference points Newman now cites: Bon Iver still, but alongside Ben Howard, Gregory Alan Isakov and Hozier, with Noah Kahan and early Hozier offered as the nearest sonic neighbours.

No debut album has been announced. What has been announced is a step up in room size. Newman is on Kodaline's farewell European and UK dates through late November and December 2026, and Songkick currently lists seventeen shows on sale across six countries — the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the UK and Ireland.

That booking follows two years of support work rather than arriving out of nowhere. 2024 brought a solo show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam and a support slot with Dotan in Maastricht, plus smaller UK dates — Folklore Sessions in Brighton on 15 October and the Waiting Room in London on 23 October, the latter an East of Eden showcase. 2025 was spent opening for Ocie Elliott, Dotan and Ryan Harris around the UK and Europe, with a London date at Omeara on 21 March.

The rooms on the ticket

The December leg is the largest set of stages Newman has worked. It runs Utrecht's TivoliVredenburg on 24 November, Grosse Freiheit 36 in Hamburg on 28 November, Huxleys Neue Welt in Berlin on 29 November and Batschkapp in Frankfurt on 30 November, then X-TRA in Zürich on 2 December, Forum Karlín in Prague on 5 December, Munich's Muffathalle on 8 December, Carlswerk Victoria in Cologne on 9 December and a return to TivoliVredenburg on 10 December. The UK dates close it: the Roundhouse in Camden on 12 December, Albert Hall Manchester on 15 December and O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on 16 December.

Then the billing inverts. May 2027 brings a run of own headline shows in rooms an order of magnitude smaller — Upstairs at Whelan's in Dublin on 6 May, the Poetry Club at SWG3 in Glasgow on 18 May, the Castle Hotel in Manchester on 19 May and SJQ in London on 20 May, with the Glasgow, Manchester and London dates on sale through Live Nation UK. A fifth date at TivoliVredenburg on 26 May follows. Doing the Roundhouse and the Castle Hotel inside six months is a reasonable description of where this career currently sits.