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.

Our three gigs in Scotland over Easter lived up to every expectation! We had great, appreciative audiences and some extraordinary feedback, including a couple of invitations to return and play again, soon. Here we are playing an afternoon session at Fyne Ales:

We also gigged several new tunes and found some time to work on a few more (including two great new songs Angela will be singing) that we’ll be bringing out in the summer.

A Leather’o tour isn’t complete without a spontaneous photo shoot on someone’s phone, so here we are in a wood up a Scottish mountain. We’ll have to photoshop the lads in because Jack wasn’t out of bed yet, and Callum’s still somewhere in Asia – he’ll be back on percussion next week.

The next few weeks will include gigs in Scarborough, York and the Lake District, and rehearsals for an exciting new development that we’ll be launching at the beginning of June!

We’ve added some more gigs to the diary, including our first at a great bar in Scarborough – have a look on our Forthcoming Gigs page for details.

We’re very excited that Jack will be back on mandolin for our gig at The Snickleway Inn in York on 6 April and Callum will be back on percussion at the end of this month!

Meanwhile we’re playing-in some new tunes for our gigs in Scotland and the Lake District this spring. Many thanks to Martin for this photo from an informal session in York this week:

We’ve been playing Scottish tunes for years now, so we’re piling all the instruments into the car (plus the dogs, the daughter and the big Scottish guy that Angie’s married to) and we’re off to Scotland for a few gigs this Easter!

The first will be on Good Friday at the legendary Clachaig Inn in Glencoe.

On Easter Sunday afternoon we’ll be playing in the Tap Room at Fyne Ales.

We’re bound to find ourselves in a few other pubs along the way, doing a bit of playing as we go.

Many thanks to Robert Mitchell for taking some great photos of the band at The Snickleway Inn.