In September we will be playing at the highest pub in England – The Tan Hill Inn in Swaledale. A great venue for live music, surrounded by proper walking country.

We’ve been rehearsing some fresh new Irish tunes for St Patrick’s Day on 17 March. This year we’re playing at the Aldwark Arms, just outside York. It’ll be a great night!

Here’s a low-light photo from our recording session in February and you can hear a couple of live tunes on our Listen page. Recording Engineer Isaac McInnes says it was the first time a band had brought their dog with them to a session (we only brought one, well-behaved dog – the new puppy and The Wolf had to stay at home).

We’ve put two “live” tunes, fluffs-and-all, on Soundcloud while we get to work on a few more carefully crafted recordings.

We’re also working on a couple of new tunes. We should be playing one of them this Thursday (11 February) at The Snickleway Inn on Goodramgate in York (see our Forthcoming Gigs page). With Valentine’s day approaching, we’ll probably punctuate the tunes with a few highly unsuitable songs about love, infidelity, class rivalry, murder, etc..

What a great night at the Basement Bar in York! Always an intimate venue, there was a great atmosphere – here are a few photos.

Thanks to Mulholland, Over The Yardarm and Zak Ford and Jennifer Chubb for playing so brilliantly. A highlight for Leather’o was when Jennifer joined us to play The Water is Wide after only a quick play through in the green room.

It’s been another great year with the band. We’ve continued to write new tunes and the gigs we’ve been doing have become more and more diverse, from festivals like Cleethorpes, Cornucopia and The Black Swan to a couple of support spots at Fibbers in York. We’ve also played at weddings, charity gigs for several different causes and the occasional band night out at an open mic or community event. Our regular pub gigs, both in York and further afield have continued to be an important part of our calendar

We’ve had great reviews and lovely feedback from audience members. We’ve also had great support from our fellow musicians around York.

Jack Woods has become an increasingly regular member of the band on mandolin and a few new instruments have appeared – the Alto Celtic whistle being the most prominent.

It was great to get some new photographs of the band in action in 2015 – thanks to Marc of Yellow Mustang for creating those for us.

Thanks to the promoters and landlords who have booked us to play and thanks to the audiences who have been great! We’re looking forward to 2016 – already confirmed to be playing at new venues and returning to favourite places we’ve played before.

In February we will be recording a new EP – the studio is booked, final rehearsals are in the diary and all we have to do is make the last minute decision which tunes to include. You’ll be able to listen and download in the spring.

Have a look on Facebook or our Forthcoming Gigs page for where to see us in 2016 – see you there!

Meanwhile, our superb mandolin player Jack Woods does the odd wedding gig on guitar here and there…

Leather’o has played at several weddings in the past year or two – feel free to give us a call!

We’ll be playing a handful of great Christmas tunes at our December gigs. Come along and join in!

This Thursday, 12 November, we’ll be playing at The Snickleway Inn. It’ll be a special one because it’s Angela’s birthday. Come along!

Stop Press: we’ve confirmed our studio dates for February – the new EP’s on its way! After lunch on Christmas day we’ll be making the final decision on what tunes to record.

Leather’o were in the studio this week and we surprised ourselves by getting ten tracks recorded in just a few hours. We have been gigging most of them for several months!

We’ll be listening back to the rough mixes this week and getting a few friends to give us their view. Then we’ll decide which ones to go back and record properly for our new CD!

You can hear two rough tracks on our Listen page.

This Autumn Leather’o will be back in the studio with recording engineer Isaac McInnes at Crooked Room to record some of our newer, edgier material. We’re starting with some rough recordings this month, which we will take away and have a critical listen to. We should be bringing a new CD out by the Spring.