Sad news for lovers of live folk music. The magnificent Bellowhead are disbanding.
A great loss. Catch them while you still can.
This message is from their Facebook page:
This is a sad message to send but after 11 amazing years we’ve decided to call it a day.
It’s been an incredible journey for us all and we’ve loved every minute of being Bellowhead but Jon has decided the time has come for him to stand down as lead singer and the rest of us don’t feel that we wish to continue without him. We have therefore decided that we should give Bellowhead the send off it deserves and go out with a bang.
So we will be performing a two-part farewell tour (in November 2015 and April 2016) finishing as we started all those years back, with an intimate gig at Oxford Town Hall (on May Day 2016) – the very first venue we ever played as a band.
The tour dates will be announced in full on Friday June 5th and tickets will go on general sale on Friday 12th June. Mailing list members will be given the chance to pre-order on Wednesday 10th.
We are all looking forward to the remaining gigs and intend to make them our best shows yet so we hope you can come along for the party.
We hope you will not be too upset with us for calling time on the band. Of course Bellowhead would have been nothing without the support of our amazing fans over the last decade. We are all incredibly grateful to you for coming with us on this journey and want to thank you all for being part of the Bellowhead story.
Love
Bellowhead x
I learnt of this via MIA Sir Lenward of Law’s champagne corks popping on twitter. Confess it’s only part a shame. It is Boden’s caterwauling that has always rendered them near unlistenable to me. Might be interesting to hear them with a decent singer, hell, Benji Kirkp, the Half a Fruit Pie hitmaker, their bouzouki-ist, son of John, can sing a bit. They have, in nothing more, kept the trad arr wing of folk in the public view, taking away some of the attention from Mumford and drivels and the like.
I can see your point. I’m not the biggest fan of his voice.
I would have loved to hear them with one (or even several) different singers.
Why not a woman for a change? One of the Waterson Carthy crowd? That would have been interesting.
I’ve seen them twice at Roskilde and thought they were a wonderful live act. They were clearly having a lot of fun themselves.
Perhaps they got a few more people to dip their toe into folk music by showing that a folk gig does not need to be a solemn, beard-stroking experience. (the spell check just tried to change that to “bear strolling experience”!)
Glad I saw them when I did – they were huge fun live. Think I might try to get to one of the gigs on the last hurrah too.
I saw them twice, both times at Cropredy, and found them enjoyable for the first twenty minutes or so before I tired of what is essentially a brass led polka troupe led by a Kevin Turvey impersonator. I’ll catch them at Folk by the Oak too so will make my farewells then, unless I head for a bar before their set is over.
I only saw them once but pretty much agree with you plus I don’t like bagpipes.
Fuck, they had bagpipes? I take it all back!! (I don’t think they did, you naughty Dave, you)
Very occasionally, Sam Sweeney would bring out the ‘disco bagpipes’. They were English bagpipes of course – tres tres contemporary.
Retro, you are just going to love the double bagpipe fest that is the Blowzabella bal at Shrewsbury this year.
Saw them five times at venues ranging from a students’ union bar to a botanical garden. Always great fun but by the end I did begin to feel like “I’ve seen this before”.
Such talented musicians will go one to new and possibly greater things I’m sure.
The musical growth rate of this band cannot be charted….
I felt that they tried to shoe-horn songs into an ‘Let’s do it like this’ arrangement. I don’t think it was always successful. A friend said that they were excellent to dance to, (I couldn’t cope with John Boden’s voice either).
Last saw them at Shrewsbury, we left to allow others in as we thought we were taking up space that others would enjoy.
I await @thecheshirecat views.
The second time I saw them at Roskilde they certainly got the audience dancing but whether the Illustrious Cheshire would have proved of the dance steps is another matter. Danish indie kids probably wouldn’t know a hornpipe from a foxtrot.
I agree with Baron C. It’s exciting to think what all these talented folk will now go on to.
Can’t help feeling it’s a shame they never produced a hit single. That would have shaken things up interestingly. All round my hat was scarcely Steeleye’s finest moment but it probably widened their appeal.
First saw them at Cropredy in 2010 and must have seen them twenty times since and for me they have always been a blast. I am sure I will find a way of seeing them before they go. And yet, I am not distraught at their passing, as I think they’d begun to tread water. With each new album, they claimed to be aiming for their live sound, yet all that seemed to achieve was an ever brassier racket and, yes, the arrangements all began to sound the same. I much prefer the albums from when I first came across them. There was more space and light on Fakenham Fair than on some of the over-egged bawdy songs later on.
What surprises me is that it was just last year that the two founders, the Johns Spiers and Boden, announced their farewell tour as a duo, supposedly so they could concentrate on Bellowhead! I heard plenty of regret on the folk circuit then, as many much preferred that incarnation of their musical gift. I will wait with interest for developments.
I will stand up and be a lone voice in support of Jon Boden’s voice. I have learnt quite a few songs, triggered by Remnant Kings, Spiers & Boden or Bellowhead albums and when I have grafted away for a few days and then return to his version, I am regularly in awe of what he achieves. His Folk Song a Day project was an inspiration. He is quite evangelical about unaccompanied singing and I expect that to be an itch he will scratch more in the future. I can honestly say that he was a key player in getting me to stand up and sing out – Vince Black of this parish can bear witness.
But Bellowhead is more than Jon Boden and in many ways it excites me to guess all the new directions the members will take, no doubt in collaboration with old band mates in the process. There are some seriously gifted musicians in there, not least – definitely not least – young Sam Sweeney, who pretty much joined the band on a Youth Opportunities Scheme, but now is overlord of most of Mercia, or whatever comes with being named 2015 Folk Musician of the Year.
So, thanks for the ride. Well done for recognising when to get out. Since there’s no hint of ‘musical differences’, I look forward to the reunion tour in about 5 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqSLs4oo8Pw
Another thumbs up from me for that Folk song a day project. He is a committed and talented bloke no doubt.
But some voices one just falls for, for no explicable reason. Others not.
On the earlier albums there are some original pieces (Trip to Bucharest / Flight of the Folk Mutants for example). I always thought Bellowhead performing an original song would be the UK’s best chance of a Eurovision Song Contest winner.
I’m gutted. What a week. First Sepp Blatter and now this.
My daughter likes them. I don’t. That’s as it should be.
H.P. made me wonder whether the ‘Head had ever played Thailand on a British Council tour.
I googled and found this. And one poor Bellowhead-head in Thailand who hoped they would play in Bangkok.
I have seen them seven times in places ranging in size from Bush Hall to Covent Garden. I loved each and every show and pretty much every person in the audience had a huge smile on their face at the end, which struck me as something of an achievement. I was also struck by the age range of the audience ( bearing in mind I am not talking about festivals). And even taking into account the number of old guys like me, the average age was somewhat younger than most ‘rock’ shows I have been to recently, in London at least.
A great live act with some superb musicians. The mix of brass alongside traditional folk instruments worked much better than should be possible and all held together with a great bass line from the sousaphone / tuba player.
I suspect things started to go a little sour last year when they upped sticks and went to join a proper record company. Whilst their recordings never captured the spirit of their live performances, the most recent record (to me) seemed over produced. Maybe they lost their independence and control as part of the deal.
One things for sure, my money is on Bellowhead reunion tours being in full swing before the decade is out.
As someone who generally likes folk music for me they were very much a Marmite band. Live I can see their appeal – on record they were pretty dire.
Won’t be mourning this decision.
Very true. In the studio they never came anywhere near the joy of those live shows.
I was never in any great hurry to buy their albums but would have gone well out of my way to see them live.
A tale we’ve heard before, eh? Wrong producer? Poor material? Lack of internet in record making?
Incidentally, is Cheshire here the only one here with twinkling toes? No other closet Morris Men or Morris Women. Anybody’s kids into it? Morris minors!
I’ll get my coat..
I know someone else on here who dabbled with all things Morris but it is a state secret and he/she might kill me.
I know someone else too, as he tells his son ‘you wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for morris dancing’
Oi, T, for that here’s my old troupe in 2012. Mind you, I left in 2002 when “we” were still Cotswold, dabbling in Border. They look good, don’t they?
Agree with much of what’s been said: some great musicians in the band but with a too many cooks feel about them.
Our team of folkie/quiz addicts were discussing this news on the way to the pub quiz last night. The logistics and economics of a big band came up.
I recalled Q-Tips; the biggest, best-paid, unsigned band/support act in the early 1980s but ultimately destroyed by having to share the money 11 ways as much as by their lead singer’s obvious destiny as a solo heart-throb.
Just think of the hotel bills for a band this large. That they’ve lasted 10 year is remarkable.
I’m sure that rockonomists have done diagrams showing how the size of a country’s bands is inversely proportional to the cost of living. The poorer the country, the larger the bands. The Kings of Convenience were a very convenient size in expensive Norway. A husband and wife duo, like The Handsomes is even better: only one room needed.
Africa and Brazil have enormous bands. And it’s hot they don’t need many togs either, which saves on the costs.
Just look at a Timbalada.
I won tickets to see them last year through the local bus company. After checking out a few of their performances on YouTube or whatever I decided they weren’t my cup of Darjeeling, and went to the pub instead.