Welcome to HowdenLive

THE END OF AN ERA: It is with some sadness that we need to announce that Maggie Smith at Touchwood, more than ably assisted by Steph, will no longer be selling tickets for Howden Live events from Touchwood, the Shire Hall will be taking over that role. In the early days of Howdenshire Live Arts Maggie was one of a few ticket outlets in Howden, as time went by it made sense to focus ticket sales in one place and the ticket selling box office legend at Touchwood was born. For 17 years, possibly one or two more, the number of shows Howden live have presented per year has averaged around 20, thats a lot of tickets!
Anyone ringing up with enquiries about an event, or going in to Touchwood to buy tickets, were met with unfailing courtesy, patience and good humour. Maggie was our first port of call for many folks and perfectly represented the volunteer ethos of Howden Live. A long (ish) time ago Maggies husband Mike coined the phrase “Enjoying live entertainment in the company of others” A fundamental principle to which we still adhere to today and will continue to, Maggie has been an integral part of that, thank you, we’ll miss you.

 

 Doors for all shows are 7.30 for 8pm unless otherwise stated. Please not that as well as tickets being available online here they are also available from the Shire Hall Box Office on:

01430 432510

SHERBURN,  BARTLEY & SANDERS.

& Foleys Folly.

SEPTEMBER 29th    £10

Following a chance meeting at Whitby Folk Festival in 1993, Chris Sherburn (concertina) and Denny Bartley (vocals and guitar) have been bringing their unique sound to audiences across Europe and America, creating one of folk music’s most enduring partnerships. In this time, they have recorded 7 critically acclaimed albums. Their obvious rapport has made them one of the busiest acts on the folk scene in the guises of their duo work and their well-loved line-up as Last Night’s Fun. Their soul stirring songs, exhilarating tunes and quick wittedness, ensures that no two concerts are ever the same.

Chris and Denny have now teamed up with Emily Sanders (fiddle/viola and vocals) and have become a well-established trio, for the first time blending vocal harmonies and strings to underpin Chris and Denny’s unique sound.

Emily originates from Staffordshire and was a founder member of the acclaimed Isambarde. They recorded 5 albums and came to the attention of Phil Beer who recorded and produced their last album. Emily has also toured with Simon Fowler’s (Ocean Colour Scene) acoustic folk line up, Merrymouth and regularly appears with Pete Morton and Chris Parkinson.

A new album featuring Chris, Denny and Emily (and other guest musicians) is currently being mastered as we write – check the website www.chrisanddenny.co.uk for release dates and more information.

 

BUY TICKETS HERE

 

THE SEX PISSED DOLLS

October 13th    

Due to circumstances beyond Howden Live’s control the Sex Pissed Dolls show  has had to be cancelled. Please contact the Shire Hall on 01430 432510 for ticket refunds. We Got Tickets will contact anyone who purchased tickets via them. Our sincere apologies to anyone who had bought tickets and were looking forward to this gig.

TWO PIANO’S

SATURDAY OCTOBER 13TH  £12.50

Its not often we have to cancel a show and to get Two Piano’s to step in at the realatively last minute is wonderful news indeed! Are you ready to rock & roll like it’s the 1950’s again? Two Pianos will take you back in time to celebrate the magnificent “Sun Studios” era, performing classic hits from Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis, Chuck Berry and many more.Your evening will kick of to a rockin’ start as two of the UK’s finest and charismatic rock & roll pianists each individually perfom, along with a five piece band, a score of hits including “Whole Lotta Shakin”, “Never Can Tell”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Roll Over Beethoven”, “Honey Don’t”, “True Love Ways”, “Chantilly Lace”, “Johnny B Goode”, “Great Balls Of Fire”, “Oh Boy”, “Blue Berry Hill”, “Love Me Tender”, “You Win Again”, “Maybellene”, plus many more! The evening will progress into a climatic and energetic piano duel between the two pianists, resolving into a memorable night of foot stomping rock & roll! A show that even “The Killer” himself thinks “ROCKS!” Al Kilvo is an Americana piano player from Hull, Yorkshire in England, who plays with a style and verve described as that of the ‘Killer’ Jerry-Lee Lewis himself. As a youngster, Al appeared in many line ups in his native Yorkshire UK before forming an original country-folk band with M.G Greaves and the Lonesome Too. He has toured nationally with Hull’s own Beautiful South taking in major venues such as The Hammersmith Odeon and Edinburgh Playhouse. Al continues to home his skills in the musical styles of Americas southern states.In 2013 Al was invited to record an album with his close friend Johnny Pat in the world famous Sun Studios in Memphis TN with Kenny Lovelace and Robert Hall of The Jerry Lee Lewis band. Subsequently the event and recording have been brilliant and now Al and ‘JP’ are enjoying playing the music they love to a wider audience across Europe and the USA. Later in 2013, Al and JP performed in live venues on world famous Bourbon Street in New Orleans and Phil Brady’s in Baton Rouge as they continue to sell the Americans back their music! Al also continued to perform all over northern England and appeared weekly with his Country band in Cottingham ‘The Fork Handles’David Barton is a pianist and singer from Hull in East Yorkshire. From the age of eight, David developed a passion for the blues and boogie woogie piano, later discovering the art of rock & roll piano and likened to other artists such as Jools Holland, Meade Lux Lewis and Jerry Lee Lewis.  At the age of 26, David has already performed alongside some of the world’s most accomplished musicians, including jazz maestro Jamie Cullum, American blues guitarist Walter Trout and classical Mezzo-Soprano Katherine Jenkins to name a few. David has performed in venues around the country, including the prestigious Royal Albert Hall.  ‘He’s better than me. I have a funny feeling he will have his own show here one day’ – Jamie Cullum, RAH London.

BUY TICKETS HERE…..

 

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MARTIN CARTHY & JOHN KIRKPATRICK

& Jack Parker

OCTOBER 27th       £15.

National treasures Martin Carthy & John Kirkpatrick embark on a rare UK duo tour next autumn. These two leading interpreters of English folk traditions – folk guitarist/singer Carthy and squeezebox virtuoso/singer Kirkpatrick – are long-time collaborators in a variety of seminal musical projects: from John’s iconic 1976 Morris tunes album Plain Capers through Steeleye Span to Brass Monkey.

Their enduring enjoyment of playing with each other shines through in their performances – warm, natural and charismatic. Pure English folk pedigree! 

For more than 50 years, BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Martin Carthy has been one of folk music’s greatest innovators, one of its best loved, most enthusiastic and, at times, most quietly controversial of figures. His skill, stage presence and natural charm have won him many admirers, not only from within the folk scene, but also far beyond it.

Trailblazing musical partnerships with, amongst others, Steeleye Span, Dave Swarbrick and his award-winning wife (Norma Waterson) and daughter Eliza Carthy have resulted in more than 40 albums, but Martin has only recorded 10 solo albums, of which Waiting for Angels (Topic TSCD527) was the latest. A ballad singer, a ground-breaking acoustic and electric-guitarist and an authoritative interpreter of newly composed material, Martin always prefers to follow an insatiable musical curiosity rather than cash in on his unrivalled position. Perhaps, most significant of all, are his settings of traditional songs with guitar, which have influenced a generation of artists, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, on both sides of the Atlantic.

John is one of the most prolific figures on the English folk scene, performing solo, in duos, acoustic groups and electric bands, and has established an enviable reputation as an instrumental virtuoso (melodeon, Anglo concertina and button accordion), as well as a leading interpreter of English folk music. He has been a member of the Albion Country Band, Magic Lantern, The Richard Thompson Band, Umps and Dumps, Steeleye Span, Brass Monkey, Trans-Europe Diatonique, and Band of Hope, as well as numerous ceilidh bands.

As songwriter, composer, choreographer, and musical director, he has contributed to over sixty plays in the theatre and on radio. And as featured artiste, band member, or session player, his music can be heard on over 200 different commercial recordings.

Praise for Martin:  `Arguably the greatest English folk song performer, writer, collector and editor of them all’ Q Magazine

 ‘Carthy is a master of the ballad of substance, songs that tell stories, whether they are traditional, his own or from contemporary writers.’ The Telegraph

Praise for John: English Folk Dance and Song Society’s Gold Badge 2003

(Awarded for his outstanding contribution to English Folk Music)

“Kirkpatrick’s buoyant presence and lust for this music sounds more rampant than ever”Colin Irwin – fRoots 2009

BUY TICKETS HERE

STEPHEN DALE PETIT

NOVEMBER 10th     £12.50.

Stephen Dale Petit was so good on his first visit to Howden last year we just had to invite him back again. 

In the age of the TV talent show and the corporate pop cabal, Stephen Dale Petit is leading the resistance. He’s a man on a mission, sworn to establish the blues as the dominant force in popular culture. He’s a riot-starter and rabble-rouser, blowing out speakers with the “thrusting hooligan anthems” (Mojo) of his acclaimed studio work and igniting a new venue each night with his “raw, fresh energy” (The Times). He’s a genre spokesman and bluesman savant, whose BLUnivErSity lectures reboot the old masters for the modern age, while rallying new recruits to the cause. No wonder that Guitar & Bass cited Petit as “proof positive that the blues can move forward in the 21st century”.  

All the best bluesmen come with a backstory, and at 46, Petit has walked a winding path to the head of the modern scene. If his 1969 birth in California’s Joshua Tree desert was prescient – he was delivered by a passing doctor with a passion for the blues – then the acquisition of a Gibson SG at the age of twelve confirmed his calling. “The reason I’m on the planet is to play blues guitar,” Petit told BBC News. “I’m on a mission to spread the word about the blues and about the guitar – especially to young music lovers.”

Petit’s own epiphany hit hard. Rewind to his adolescence in the early-’80s and his formative influences were growing daily, taking in the vintage US heavyweights (Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Son House) and the British upstarts (Cream, Zeppelin, Yardbirds). Soon, he began his own precocious march on the Californian club circuit, playing five nights a week, cutting heads with senior players, jamming with titans including B.B. and Albert King, and immersing himself in the genre’s ethos. “The blues is a beautiful thing out of the cesspool of human nastiness,” Petit told Classic Rock. “This music was forged in horrific conditions. It was really the wail of a soul of a subculture of society in America. As a teenager, I was scared by it – but I couldn’t escape the pull.”

By the early-’90s, the bluesman’s love of the British boomers had lured him to the epicentre – London – for a period whose dazzling highs were offset by desperate lows. Collaboration and friendship with musicians including Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mick Jones and David Gilmour should have been his springboard, yet as the drugs flowed, Petit floundered, losing his momentum to addiction and dangling his talent by a thread. “It got to basically living on the street,” he recalled. “It was the blues that saved me. There was a moment when the choice was pretty clear: ‘Am I just going to be a drug addict and is my passion going to be washed down the toilet…?’”

Following that moment of clarity, Petit clawed himself back from the brink, regaining his confidence as a performer by busking in the bearpit of the London Underground, and attracting both a grass-roots fanbase and a media profile. “People started asking if they could buy the music they were hearing, and I didn’t have anything,” he says. “So I set about recording Guitararama.”

Guitararama proved to be the line in the sand. Originally self-financed and released in a limited pressing of 5,000 units, the buzz prompted a reissue in 2008 (with distribution from Universal) and pricked up the ears of media tastemakers. Suddenly, this former best-kept-secret was a regular guest on BBC Radio 2 (try 2011’s The BBC Sessions for a collection of his appearances) and a fixture in the music press, who declared Petit’s incendiary Firebird fretwork to “occupy a stunning middle-ground between the fire of Freddie King, the instinct of Jimmy Page and the soul of Clapton” (Classic Rock).

By 2010, The Crave upped the ante (included by Classic Rock in the Top 50 Albums Of The Year), while in 2013, the man in the hat raised the bar with Cracking The Code. Patently Petit’s most ambitious release to date, the album was home to his most ferocious originals, from Get You Off to Riot City, bolstered by A-list guests including Dr John, Mick Taylor and Hubert Sumlin. Tracking his solos mere days before his death, Howlin’ Wolf’s iconic guitarist gave Petit a glowing endorsement, “If a lot of people could play like you, shit, I’d sit back and smile”, and the wider reaction was just as receptive, with Cracking The Code deemed “rampant perfection” by The Blues.

Somehow, throughout this dizzying rise, Petit stuck resolutely to his guns. In 2007, the bandleader began spreading the word though his famous BLUnivErSity lecture tours, speaking at the UK’s universities and reeling uninitiated students into the genre with his charisma and insight. In 2010, he pulled together a crack squad of high-profile musicians, including Chris Barber, Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor, in a successful bid to protect the iconic 100 Club (a venue that Petit dubs his “spiritual home”, having played there on more than twenty occasions).

That same year, Petit hit the High Voltage Festival in London for a decibel-limit-defying set that was bottled by the legendary Ronnie Lane Mobile Recording Unit. The resulting album – Live At High Voltage – was initially issued in 2012 in a vinyl-only, limited-edition run, before its near-mythical status sparked the 2014 digital reissue. “This is hands down the greatest live record you’ll ever hear,” raved The Blues in a 10/10 review. “Even The Who didn’t quite reach the intensity of Petit and friends.”

True to his word, this is a man on a mission. And in 2016, with Petit returning from double-headlining with blues-rock titan Walter Trout, there’s no mistaking a man who means every line, every lick, every fleck of spittle and drop of sweat. “I want to see the blues become mainstream,” he says. “I want to see it become common currency in the discourse of modern popular culture. I want to see it become blues city.”                                            

BUY TICKETS HERE

 

ANIMALS & FRIENDS

NOVEMBER 24th  £20

Featuring from the original Animals John Steel and Micky Gallagher(The Blockheads, The Clash, Paul McCartney) plus Danny Handley and Roberto Ruiz . Following their critically-acclaimed and hugely successful tours together in 2008, 2011 and 2012 this legendary combination of musicians will once again be performing on the same stage together. With over 20 global top ten hits, The Animals remain a seminal rhythm and blues band who still command great respect. Expect a fantastic concert of pure classics including House Of The Rising Sun, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Baby Let Me Take You Home and more. After over 50 years the legend still grows.

As The Independent noted recently – 

“Though the band has changed, the songs remain eternal… alongside covers of Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker classics, they ensure that the nostalgic element comes with an enjoyably abrasive edge”.

Featuring from the original Animals – John Steel & Mick Gallagher (The Blockheads) Danny Handley and Roberto Ruiz.
In 1964 a wave of new energetic rock and roll swept over the youth of the world. On the crest of this wave was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and of course The Animals. From the banks of
the River Tyne came the North East’s offering; a brand of rhythm n blues that the whole world seemed to grasp greedily.
The Animals were the second British band to top the American charts after The Beatles with the now multi-million selling and legendary anthem, ‘House of the Rising Sun’. The band subsequently
achieved over twenty global Top Ten hit records, many of which gained the Number One slot in various parts of the world. In Britain alone, the band had no less than twelve chart entries.
The Animals were the first British band to tour Poland and Japan.                                                                         

 Have a look’n listen, click here….

BUY TICKETS HERE

 

THE REVOLUTIONAIRES!

& The Juke Joint Kings.

Saturday December 1st      £12.50

So good we booked them thrice! Without doubt one of the very best bands ever to have appeared on the Shire Hall stage and they are in some illustrious company believe me…

Established within the ‘hotbed’ of the North East music scene in the UK, they power out jumpin’ hot rhythm & blues in their own indomitable hard hitting style.

Primarily, they are influenced by 1940’s and 1950’s R&B. In particular, Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Roy Brown but have adopted a harder and more aggressive approach, synonymous with modern blues artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Duke Robillard, Jools Holland and Mike Henderson which helps create their own high energy sound.

Over the last decade, The Revolutionaires have established themselves on the UK and European Rockin’ circuit, as well as the Blues scene.

They have toured extensively both in the UK and abroad, performing at festivals in Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Malta and Dubai.

Highlights include performing at festivals with artistes such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Sting, Tom Jones, Hugh Laurie, Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Cray, Walter Trout, Eric Bibb, Albert Lee, Snake Davis and Dave Edmunds.

Now also touring with their Big Band project which consists of extra horns and pianist, The Revs are hitting the Festival circuit with this power house line up and big sound.

They have recorded five CDs to date containing a collection of Hot Rockin’ R&B tracks. Each CD captures the ‘rawness’ and sheer energy of the band, who like to give their performances a ‘hard-edged’ vibe!

BUY TICKETS HERE.

DR FEELGOOD

& Martyn Barkers Tea Band

DECEMBER 22nd   £20.

Formed on Canvey Island in Essex in the early 1970s Dr. Feelgood remains one of the most popular and exciting live rhythm and blues acts in the world. The raw and uncompromising style of their performance resulted in the album Stupidity that immediately went to the number one position in the U.K. charts.

Dr. Feelgood have also enjoyed global success with a string of hit singles including Roxette, Back in the Night, Milk and Alcohol, Down at the Doctors, She Does it Right, Going Back Home and See You Later Alligator – which gave the group their first gold record.

The last album to feature Lee Brilleaux  – Down at the Doctors, was recorded live at the Dr. Feelgood Music Bar on Canvey Island, (now the site of the Oysterfleet Hotel) just two months before he died.

The current line up features the rhythm section Kevin Morris on drums and Phil Mitchell on bass (both 35 years), Steve Walwyn on guitar (28 years), and Robert Kane (formerly of the Animals) the most recent addition – joining in 1999.

Julien Temple’s film Oil City Confidential released on 2^nd February 2010 tells the story of the bands formative years featuring the Wilko Johnson era.

May 2011 saw the digitally re – mastered re release of Chessmasters originally released in 2000 on EMI Records … the band’s tribute to the Chess label, home to many of the finest blues artists of the 20^th century and the first Dr Feelgood album to feature Robert on vocals.

The band continues to tour extensively throughout the World.

BUY TICKETS HERE