Billy is well known for his work in Stomp both in London and the USA. He also plays regularly with King Courgette and thousands of kids know him as the Trash Bang Man.

Billy joined us on our recent recording sessions for a new CD that will be released later this year.

We‘re delighted that after many gigs with us he is now formally part of the Leather‘o family!

We will be playing on the King Billy stage at The Cottingham Springboard festival (that’s the King William pub to us out-of-towners) around 5pm on the Sunday afternoon, 27 May, but if you fancy a bit of Leather‘o unplugged and a pint, we will be warming up in the bar earlier in the afternoon!

Thanks to Bob Mitchell for another great set of photos from the Little Festival!

Rachel couldn’t make this gig as she was away in Scotland. We‘re all jealous because as I write, she and Niall are in The Boots Bar at The Clachaig Inn, Glencoe where we did one of our favourite gigs of all time, this time last year!

It‘s York Little Fest again, and all in a very good cause – Hurrah!

Bob has bravely volunteered to do the sound for the whole day, so expect him to get completely distracted and play a load of wrong notes…

Actually, we‘re really excited that we managed to mic-up Jack’s breakfast…

I’m afraid this is one of those “we‘re really excited to be back in the studio” posts.

Still can’t figure out which way up to hold the iPhone…

This year, St Patricks day falls on a Saturday! So on 17 March, we will be playing at our favourite York pub The Snickleway Inn, alongside our brother-band Stout Boots.

Hurrah!

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!