Our 2018 gig diary is filling up and March is looking slightly crazy – see our Forthcoming Gigs page.

Meanwhile, here are some lovely photos, courtesy of the great Bob Mitchell, of our Christmas Bash!

The highlight of 2017, by far, was our Scotland Tour at Easter. At the Clachaig we were honoured to find ourselves on the same blackboard with a host of Folk Award winners.  Also, a couple of the audience members asked Jack for a selfie with them because his moustache made him look like George Harrison, and we got offered a gig in Kent. Well!

As well as travelling north, we played as far east as Whitby, Scarborough and Hull, and as far west as the Langdale Folk Festival and a few pub gigs in The Lake District.

No trip south this year as we couldn’t get the diaries to work. Our agent down south had the nerve to tell one festival we might be able to make it in 2019!

We took our usual summer break but still managed to fit in 50+ gigs in 2017, plus a few sneak appearances here and there. The summer festival gigs were great and as usual there was a wedding or two.

In April we were delighted to have Jack back from his six months in Thailand, playing mandolin better than ever. Jack has also been touring round the UK and France with the Josh Burnell band.

Two new percussionists joined us for various gigs – Alex Cromarty and Billy Hickling. Alex was great but other commitments mean he will only be with us now and then. Billy will be joining us for several more gigs in 2018. Caz played a great run of gigs on percussion with us earlier in 2017 and has now gone travelling again – to Peru this time.

We’ve put a lot of new tunes and songs into the set this year, which makes it harder to agree on a set list, but easier to adapt to nights where we’re playing more songs or more gypsy tunes, or of course more Celtic for nights like St Patricks!

It wasn’t all plain sailing – Bob nearly didn’t make it through one gig when he suffered quite a bit of blood loss and one member of the audience nearly didn’t make it through the night, narrowly avoiding being thumped by Angela for talking loudly through the whole set… Inevitably there are a few dud gigs here and there – serves me right for booking them!

There will be a private ceremony to present the second annual Golden Beast Awards, where the band recognises the high points, low points and daftest moments of 2017.

Special thanks to Graham, the landlord of the Snickleway in York for booking us to play pretty well every month this year. It’s a great venue and we always have a great night there. We’ll be there for St Patricks night in 2018, which falls on a Saturday (hurrah!).

Thanks, as always, to everyone who has come to the gigs, bought the CDs and followed us online. We’re out and about gig hunting a bit further afield in January and the diary’s filling up, so see you in 2018.

Many thanks to Rob Mitchell for some great photos! Apologies for the rubbish photos from my iPhone…

We’ve got a few new tunes in store for our December gigs and the only way to play them in is to take them to an open mic or two…  Here are Bob and Linds having a run through “Five Drunk Landladies” and a couple of other tunes at one of York’s excellent Monday night open mics. Many thanks to Makiko for the photos.

Every year we have a bit of an argument about Christmas tunes. A few years back we arranged that Prokofiev tune that Greg Lake used in I Believe in Father Christmas, which sounded great but went down like a lead balloon, so we don’t play that anymore. Hiding God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen in a set of Irish Reels seemed a bit pointless so we gave up with that… We arranged the Slade Christmas number one (a personal favourite) and gigged it a few times but everyone thought it was too silly…

So, come down to The Snick on Thursday 7 December for a pre-Christmas night out with very few Christmas tunes – it’ll be great!

We usually put some kind of gig on between Christmas and New Year, and this year is shaping up nicely – it’ll be at The Post Office Club on 30 December with a few special guests including Josh Burnell and The Garland of Flutes – a fabulous flute quartet with the most beautiful Christmas repertoire. See you there!

We’ve got underway with our autumn gigs, including four over last weekend (it would have been five, but alas, the whole Cornucopia Festival was cancelled).

Many thanks to Rob Mitchell for another set of beautiful photographs taken at York’s Little Festival of Live Music on Friday:

By the end of this week the band should all have returned from their travels, just in time for a quick rehearsal before we go to The Lake District to play at the Langdale Folk Festival on Sunday 10 Sept (we’re playing at 4pm in the bar).

Jack our mandolin player has had an amazing run of gigs with The Josh Burnell Band in France.

Rachel was on holiday in the USA and was presented with a fiddle so she could do a gig in a bar in Kansas.

Closer to home, Angie joined in for a tune with her daughter Scarlett who played her first solo open mic set in York. Scarlett played guitar for Leather’o at our International Womens Day gig earlier this year.

Caz has posted a great video diary from his busking trip to Berlin with Bloom

Right – this is becoming a list, and the page layout’s a mess, so it’s time to finish…

Finally… Bob and Linds have been joining in at various singarounds and open mics in York and now they’re packing the car for the Lakes and getting a couple of new tunes ready for The Snickleway Inn on 21 September – see you there – Yay!

We’ll be playing on Parliament Street again in September. Jack will probably be playing mandolin with us, then with The Josh Burnell Band at 8pm. He’ll be dashing to Knaresborough straight after that for the Leather’o gig at The Old Royal Oak!

The first half of 2017 has been great! We’ve been gigging regularly around Yorkshire and in April we played our first few gigs in Scotland. We were also back in the Lake District for a couple of gigs in May. We were delighted to be invited back to play at The City of York Folk Weekend in June at The Black Swan.

We’ve added several new tunes and songs and we’re working on some new additions for the autumn – expect more songs about sex and death, mostly taking place in the merry, merry month of May…

Various band members are travelling over the summer. Jack will be doing several gigs in France with one of the other bands he plays with and Rachel has been promised a gig or two in the USA while she’s there. Callum is off to Berlin for a few gigs, and Linds and Bob will be taking to the hills (and a few select York bars) with their instruments. Meanwhile, Angie and Scarlett will be popping up announced, too, playing here and there.

The band will be back in September (or possibly slightly earlier) with gigs up on the Moors, in Scarborough and Knaresborough and of course in our favourite York pub, The Snickleway Inn. We’ll also be back at The York Little Festival of Live Music and at Fibbers. In September we’ll be playing at the Langdale Folk Festival in the Lakes.

All our gigs are on the band website and we’ll post reminders on Facebook nearer the time.

Oh, and Angie’s bought a gorgeous new accordion…

Have a great summer!

It’s always such a pleasure and privilege to play at the City of York Folk Weekend, known to most of us as the Black Swan Folk Festival. Roland and the club members did their usual brilliant job of organising the weekend. We played on Saturday, when the weather was great (commiserations to those of you who got caught in the rain on Sunday).

This was our fourth time on the main stage and every year we try to do something fresh – this time doing our first ever gig with Callum on a full drum kit (no photographs of that yet). We also brought out several new tunes.

It’s great to perform to an authentic folk audience – always appreciative and supportive. Thanks!

Thanks also to Christine Cockett for another great set of photographs.

The band are all keen walkers, so we were delighted to be able to support the Langdale Folk Festival, which in May raised £5,000 for charities including the local Mountain Rescue Dogs and Air Ambulance.

We played a set in the fabulous Hikers Bar at The Old Dungeon Ghyll, where we had only previously been to drink!

Later, we played “unplugged” in the Lounge Bar, which was a lovely, intimate set of tunes.

The following day we returned to play at one of our favourite Lake District pubs, The Newfield Inn at Seathwaite.

We’re delighted to have been invited back to The Old Dungeon Ghyll in September.