31 December: Tonight we hold the band’s annual award ceremony, the Golden Beast Awards, named after the two golden retrievers and the ginger cat who follow us around. As we contemplate the high and low lights of 2019, who better to share them with but our small but perfectly-formed fan base?

We were pretty pleased with the Acid Croft rave we created at York’s Mindfest on Parliament Street in September.

Who could forget the many, frankly scary, gigs at the Irish bar in Scarborough, best summed up by Angie when she exclaimed, mid-gig, ‘…what do you have to do to get thrown out of this pub?’ 

Best audience has to go to The East Riding Theatre in Beverley – thanks to Phil Simpson for putting us on. Most persevering audience goes to the regulars who come and see us in Scarborough. They sit very still while the stag and hen do’s kick off around them and we take shelter with them in the break.

Most mud goes to Greenside Festival in the Dales (to be fair, it wasn’t a very muddy year).

Toughest journey was probably driving two hours through the fog to a gig at the Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales.

We clocked up a few more festivals this year (Can you hear us Shrewsbury… Cambridge? We’re up here, waiting to hear from you…).

We sold the final few copies of our CD ‘Six’ and together with the streaming fees we can treat ourselves to a packet of crisps with the proceeds. Yay!

This year has also stood out for the number of new tunes and songs we’ve introduced to the set (someone in the band clearly has time on his hands…) and we’ve got quite a few new ones already in rehearsal for next year.

Thanks to everyone who came to see us, and to the promoters and pub managers who booked us in 2019. Thanks as always to Graham, landlord at The Snickleway – the best pub in York, and thanks also to Bob Mitchell for all the fantastic photos he takes of the band!

We have nearly 30 gigs in the diary for 2020, from the Scottish Highlands in the North to the Lake District in the West and Wiltshire in the South, plus our regular gigs in York and on the East Coast. Happy New Year – see you there!

The year is drawing to a close with the last couple of Leather’o gigs, both at our favourite York pub, The Snickleway Inn on Goodramgate. The perfect way to end a great year!

The band’s members are busy through December, touring with other bands, travelling and attending to some family stuff – all very good!

We’ve posted our initial gig list for 2020 and we’re gathering nominations for our annual awards – a private affair, acknowledging the best (and sometimes the worst) of the year – best gig, best audience, best new tune…

We’re very excited about our plans for next year, which already include gigs in Scotland and the Lake District, and a trip south for a showcase gig in Wiltshire. Hurrah!

York Mind is putting live music on throughout the York Food Festival and what a great crowd they brought in to see us! We were brought back on stage for two encores, they danced like crazy and what a noise they made!!

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Many thanks once again to Bob Mitchell for his wonderful photography!

We’re back from our summer break and our first gig was a great set at the lovely Greenside Festival in The Yorkshire Dales – just look at that moon and that bonfire!

Leather’o has a full diary of gigs going into the autumn (well, maybe room for one or two more…). They will all be in the Forthcoming Gigs sidebar on this website and will be on Facebook nearer the time – see you there!

The festival season is upon us and we’re delighted to be playing at the Folk Festivals in Filey, Cleethorpes, Goodmanham and The City of York Folk Festival at The Black Swan. Later this year we will be playing in York’s Rowntree Park, at the Greenside Festival in The Dales and the Langdale Folk Weekend in the Lake District.

We’ve been working on some new tunes! Over the past few gigs we’ve been introducing several big, exciting sets from the new tradition, two from Scotland and our first French Canadian set.

We’re also working on a couple of new tunes of our own in the Celtic tradition – they’ll be ready soon. 

So, with all those new tunes, it’s time to find some new songs too, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing – we’ll have two new songs in the set later this month, both about sex and death, like they always are…

We recorded a few tunes for Beverley FM 107.8 a week or two back. They will be broadcast on Max Roberts’ Tuesday night Folk Hour, which is syndicated across several other independent local radio stations.

Thanks to Bob Mitchel for this photo of our mandolin player, Jack Woods.

Many thanks to Colin Bailey at Rock’n’Reel magazine for his four-star review of our recent CD Six!

The highlight of 2018 for Leather’o was recording and releasing our new CD Six. It was very well received by the reviewers and tracks from it were played on at least half a dozen local radio stations, including BBC Radio York. It also led to us playing live on two independent local radio stations and BBC Radio Leeds.

We played at some great new venues, including our first appearance at The Musicport Festival in Whitby. We were delighted to again play at two of the Black Swan Folk Club events this year, including on the main stage at the City of York Folk Weekend. We were also very pleased to play at The Little Festival on Parliament Street during the York Food Festival. In all, about 50 gigs this year.

There were some truly memorable nights, including an absolutely packed-out St Patricks night, an open air gig in the middle of our blazing hot summer, a freezing cold one outdoors at a beer festival, a bizarre Breton dance night in an Irish pub down in the docks in Brest and some great sessions from Hull in the east to the Dales in the west – no tour this year as most of us were busy all summer with a long road trip and a wedding in Italy.

We also put a lot of new tunes and songs into the set in 2018, some of which made it onto the CD.

Billy Hickling formally joined us at the beginning of the year on percussion, bringing his unique energy to the band – he’s also on theCD!

2018 was the year that the band’s website finally got a makeover with a new look and more up-to-date technology behind the scenes – many thanks to our webmaster Oli.

Members of the band often crop up on other people’s recordings or in other bands around the York scene. For the first time this year, we took the whole band along to play on someone else’s album – look out for the new Rich Hardcastle Band CD in the new year and Leather’o playing on the song Dancing Room Only.

As always there were a few scrapes… On one occasion our support act fainted part way through her set and had to be helped away. There were one or two slightly disappointing venues and the odd dodgy festival PA, but all that was more than made up for by great venues where we hadn’t played before and great crowds to play to, like The Head of Steam in Hull and the legendary Green Dragon in The Dales.

Thanks to Graham for booking us to play every month at our favourite York pub, The Snickleway, to Phil Snell at Limbo Studios for recording us, and to all the audience who came to the gigs, listened to us on the radio and bought the CD. Here’s to a great 2019!