We're working on songs for our tourette up north next weekend (see details) when we'll be doing a wide variety of old and new songs with the banjo being brought out of retirement and some devilish guitar arrangements to spice up your ears.
We're really looking forward to playing a few gigs after a summer that seems to have gone on a wee bit too long. Back in the saddle!
13/aug/19
We are playing at one or two (or three) festivals this year and here we are at Saltburn last weekend. We're looking a little crumpled as we went for a look around the beautiful town and beach in between our soundcheck and our appearance (5 hours!) and got totally drenched, so we had to do the gig in our going home clothes!
The banjo has been brought back out of retirement with some snappy tunes on show as well as one or two banjo songs from a while ago. It's added a new welcome dimension to our sound, but unfortunately we don't get the chance to show it off for a while. It went down very well in Eastbourne last night but now we have a long hiatus during the intervening Summer breaks for the folk clubs. There are also breaks for both band members who have managed to take their hols at different times instead of coordinating them! Back in action in August. BFN
24/may/19
Great to be back at the Redbourn FC last night. Great crowd and we had a great time! We're off up to Chester today and we'll be playing at the folk festival 3 times tomorrow. See you there if you're in the area.
21/may/19
A lovely gig on our favourite island of Sheppey last night at Minster Music Mondays. It was great to see the club prospering and looking so good. Thanks to all there who make it happen. xx
9/may/19
Our physical CDs are now just £10 each including p&p. Our downloads are £5 per album or £1 per track. So click on a cover below for samples from the album and if you buy one, we hope you enjoy many happy years of listening pleasure!
This gig at the lovely Hitchin Folk Club will be our 11th consecutive Easter Sunday gig there and has become something of a tradition for us and the club. As ever we'll be splitting the evening with the gorgeous singing of Liz Simcock.
We had a ball last year (I'm not just saying that!) and this is one of the best places to come and hear us. Beautiful room in the Sun Hotel and a crystal clear sound. We will be doing one hour's set each and this year we will play first at about 8pm.
2/apr/19
We've been spring cleaning this website as it's been getting a bit cluttered over the years, so we hope you'll appreciate this new slicker version! Gone is the kit page, which might have been interesting to gear junkies but isn't what we should all be so obsessed about now is it? Also this diary page went back to 2005, so lots of ancient history could be junked and replaced with this extremely uninteresting information...
The mailing list is now incorporated into the contact page and the biography and CD reviews are incorporated into the press page, which should provide clubs with anything they might need for any of our impending gigs. Hope to have something a lot more interesting to report soon!
1/mar/19
Really enjoyed last night's gig at the Acoustic Shindig. A very enthusiastic and positive crowd and a great atmosphere. It's a long time since we played in the public bit of a pub, but the chaotic event was excellently managed by John Mannel and we highly recommend it. It happens on the last Thursday of each month at the Queen Adelaide in Ewell... give it a try. It's fun!
11/feb/19
Later this week we'll be off up north to Chester on Friday (15th) and Southport (17th) where we're hoping for massive turnouts and unrelenting adulation. Details on our gigpage. See you there!
11/jan/19
Wow!... does this month's Folk London cover mean we've finally made it as folkies? We almost feel accepted into the fold!
There is a review of our new CD 'Great Pleasure' in this issue and we met the reviewer last night at Orpington Folk Club who was complaining that there should be more information about who had played all the instruments on the recording.
We had to tell him that anything that wasn't a guitar or bass were samples played by us.
He was very impressed with this and I was very impressed that we'd fooled an old folkie with our technology!
14/dec/18
We have recently rediscovered some old recordings of our band 'The Reactors'. The quality is excellent and the songs were recorded sometime in the 90’s but most were written much earlier.
We were amazed to hear the old Reactors songs sounding so good... the weird thing is that we don't have much memory of having made these recordings at all!
If you remember us from those days we hope you enjoy it as much as we did putting it together and reliving the old times!
5/dec/18
A couple of great reviews for 'Great Pleasure'. See review page.
22/nov/18
This guitar tuning came about when I was idly gazing at a 12 string in a shop one day and wondering if I tuned it to pairs of fifths, could I reproduce acoustically some of the songs I wrote years ago using a guitar synth tuned a fifth above and blended with the guitar? Folk clubs are not known for their welcoming of gadgetry and I thought this might solve the problem.
So I have been using this weirdly tuned 12 string to produce some unusual songs for over a decade now and I thought it was about time I put something on youtube.
'Rocket Ship' was the first song I wrote on it and I hope you think it was worth the effort!
9/nov/18
We're now back from our Dave & Boo Tourette of the North, where we had a varied selection of 4 gigs which gave us a different experience each time. All of them happy ones, but none happier than the last one at Bromborough Folk Club which has always been top of our list for welcoming audiences. After our encore one or two people started to stand up and we thought they were just going to put their coats on, but then more of them did the same and we ended up with the only standing ovation that I can remember!
We may of course have had other ones when we have played to audiences that were already standing up but then we'd never have known!
Thanks to everyone who came to the Raven Folk Club in Chester, Number 39 in Darwen, Sandbach Folk Club and of course... Bromborough. We love yous!
3/nov/18
Here is our video for 'Great Pleasure'. We really enjoyed making this ... hope you like it!
14/oct/18
Some stills from the video we're making for the title song of our new album 'Great Pleasure'. We'll be shooting a bit more of the live song at our launch gig at the Ram Club on 19th Oct.
It would be a great pleasure to see you there! (see gig page)
26/sep/18
Our new album 'Great Pleasure' will be out on 20th Oct and we will be having a launch gig at the Ram Club on Friday 19th Oct. Tomorrow we’ll be shooting part of a video of the title track at Ally Pally and it should be completed with live footage at the Ram.
With an occasional dip into our past repertoire, this is a truly varied assortment of our new and old songs in what we hope is a coherent bundle and a great listen!
Click the album cover for track listing and samples.
Hope to see you at the Ram gig if you can make it!
6/sep/18
I know everyone says this, but we really enjoyed last night's gig at the White Horse Folk Club in Highworth near Swindon. We were very worried about this gig beforehand as several things conspired to put a spanner in the works... Dave had a stinking cold and could hardly sing (it got better after croaking through a couple of songs plus some lozenges donated by the audience!)... the road to the gig was inaccessible because of a fun fair... and Dave broke his only important right hand thumb nail getting equipment out of the car making some of the picking quite painful!
However we developed the spirit of the Blitz and soldiered on and had one of the most enjoyable gigs we've had for some time. Thanks to everyone there. We hope we can do it again some time when our health improves!
31/may/18
We had a great time at Dusty's Blues Bar near High Wycombe last night. A lot of thought has gone into transforming a sports centre into a club for the night and providing something that actually manages to attract an audience.
It was a nice pairing with the Hallelujah Trails too... two duos... both with blond female bass players. My guess is this was not an accident!
12/may/18
We've been doing some lovely gigs this week... Dorking Folk Club on Wednesday and Orpington Liberal Club on Friday. Two entirely different clubs where we enjoyed ourselves so much. A question raised at both clubs was when will your new album be ready? This was perfectly valid as people came to realise that most of our set now consists of new numbers not yet available on CD when they checked out our merchandise.
Well... we've finished the album which now has a total playing time of 49 mins (in danger of being too long maybe?), but we've got one more tune to try before we get it mastered. We did it at both gigs with a view to frightening ourselves into getting it right. It's called 'Women In Love' and features Dave performing his first ever strummed accompaniment (hailing as he does from the Jansch school of fancy finger picking!) to Boo's vocal.
We'll see how it turns out and then we'll be off to Denis Blackham up in the Isle of Skye to get it mastered. We're very pleased with this new album which has a few surprises on it we hope you'll like.
14/apr/18
We've finally caught up with the 21st century and our recordings are now all downloadable. You won't find them in Amazon or itunes as we make hardly anything from these sites. We reckon that most people know us from the folk clubs and will look for our recordings via our own site, so CDs and downloads are all £10 and can be found in our own little shop.
Last night at Hitchin was a lot of fun! We played some new songs mixed with some tried and tested ones and also a couple of old Reactors (our old band) songs reconfigured to be folk club friendly. If you remember 'Gunga Din' you'll know what I mean. Here's a rare picture of us not smiling... we did a lot of that last night. Thanks to all who came to make up an almost capacity audience.
12/mar/18
After a rousing gig in Horsham last night we are going to be back in the studio this week. The tracks for our new CD sounded pretty good in the car on the way to the gig, but we've got some more work to do on one or two of them, plus we've got to start thinking about the title, running order, mastering and cover, which all takes a lot longer than you'd think! It will defintely be ready by Christmas I'd say...
22/feb/18
So nice to be playing in public again after rather a long lay off due to illness. We're both OK though and we really did appreciate seeing some old friends and all the regulars at the Hoy folk club in Southend last Tuesday. If you enjoyed it anything like we did, then it gave you great pleasure to be there!
16/jan/18
D&B gradually coming back to full battle strength after bouts of flu etc over the holiday period and we have a deluge of songs to record (voices permitting). There are 3 new ones and 2 old ones, which one or two of our older friends might remember... 'Great Pleasure' and 'Fair Warning'. These are both about 35 years old and we used to do them in the Reactors. Both have a certain folky quality which we are hoping will translate into what we do now.
We already have 13 tracks recorded for a new album but we're going to work on these new songs and then we'll see what we're left with. It will be nice to pick and choose from a plethora of tracks for once!
28/dec/17
It's been a trying year with health issues and not many gigs, but we're on the road to recovery in both areas now and we wish you all a much better year than we had this year... that's not saying much.. but it's just another way of saying HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
17/nov/17
Thanks to everyone who came to our three gigs this week. We've enjoyed all three of them more than you can imagine! We won't be gigging again until the end of Jan at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. If anyone can give us a December gig or three, we'd be there like a shot! In the meantime we'll be continuing the industrial work on our next album which is nearing completion.
14/nov/17
Great to be gigging again last night in Croydon. Ace crowd. Tonight we're in St Neots near Cambridge and on Thursday we're in Orpington (see gig page for details). Hoping to repeat the experience... see you there!
5/oct/17
Dave did a rare solo gig at Number 39 in Darwen, Lancs last Saturday. A very different kind of gig supporting a soul band called Butterfly Jam who were an inspiration... with a bunch of musicians who were as into what they were doing as we are into our own stuff. It was a pleasure to meet you guys if you read this!
It became as quiet as a folk club when Dave played, so thanks to you Darwenites for giving a wayward folkie a chance!
There are plans afoot for the entire duo to play there next time. We'll keep you posted.
13/sep/17
For one reason or another we haven't done many gigs lately, but we'll be back in the saddle when the way-into-the-future folk club diaries let us! In the meantime we are heavily involved in recording tunes for a new album which we expect to have ready by Spring.
There are a few of these songs we haven't played live at all yet, and we are keeping them back to sprinkle in our set with the advent of the new CD.
The titles so far:
New Songs:
All That There Is
Don't Know Why
Fallen Angel
It's All In The Past
All The King's Men
In A Lover's Eyes
Never Say Goodbye
My Own Sweet Way
Refugee
Requiem
We Are All Here Together Old Songs revisited: Hole In The Dark
Walking Wounded
The plan is to keep writing and recording until we have a good balance of songs for an album. As ever, there is a wide range of material, but there are always too many miserable ones!
18/aug/17
Here are the hard drinking duo just before their afternoon gig on the main stage at Broadstairs this week. We were on a double duo bill with Liz Simcock & Clive Gregson.
Everyone had a great time and there was a good turnout in the 600 seater marquee. It was really nice to see so many old friends again!
Have a look at our gallery for more pics.
9/aug/17
Holidays are over for a while and we'll be playing at Broadstairs Folk Week next week. 2 concerts on Tues 15th Aug and 2 workshops on Wed 16th. Details on the gig page. Below is a pic from 4 years ago when we had an unexpectedly fab time. Hope we can repeat it this year. See you there if you're anywhere around Kent next week.
23/may/17
We were very pleased to be invited to Sheppey Folk & Blues Club last night with only a couple of months notice. Some folk clubs book as long as two years ahead, so it was great to get a 'last minute' gig in Sheppey. A good turnout on our favourite little island and we had a great time, so... thanks!!
13/may/17
A lovely gig last night in West Wycombe St Lawrence's. An atmospheric church with a fantastic turnout of appreciative audience in this beautiful setting. A big thank you to Clive Carey for organising the event.
8/may/17
We got back into the swing of gigging again at Deal FC last Friday where we played to an extremely receptive crowd. We haven't done a two setter since Dartford in January and it was great to play the full range of what we do, including some new songs and one or two of our favourites we picked out from way back.
Our next gig is this Friday (12th) at St Lawrence's Church in West Wycombe as part of the Wycombe Arts Festival. Details on our gig page.
20/apr/17
We really enjoyed our night out at Hitchin Folk Club on Easter Sunday after a slightly longer gap than usual between gigs because of illness (don't ask... we'll be here all day!). We're now safely back in the saddle and our next gig is on 5th May in Deal, but one a bit nearer to home will be on 12th May in West Wycombe. See gig page for details.
13/mar/17
We organanized our CDs to be downloadable from this website until someone informed us that you have to charge VAT regardless of income threshold and start doing VAT accounts for any digital downloadable material you might be trying to sell on the internet.
Oh well, it was a good idea until we found out this little hitch, so now we can only offer physical CDs for sale and if we have sold out of a CD, we can only offer a reduced price computer copied CD ROM. Not very hi tech we know but it does mean that you can still buy all our albums.
15/feb/17
We're doing a lot of recording at the moment and we've got a good selection of tracks building up for our next album. They are in different stages of development depending on how much work we felt like doing on them at the time. Some we have done live and some we haven't. There are also one or two tunes of ours from way back. The list so far...
Refugee
Some Are Living
In A Lover's eyes
Don't Know Why
All That There Is
Never Say Goodbye
Hole In The Dark
My Own Sweet Way
We Are All Here Together
Walking Wounded
18/jan/17
We've had our fair share of illness over the last few weeks and it was so nice to be out playing again last night at Dartford Folk Club. It was strange without Pam being there (she passed away last year) but it was great to see all our old friends at Dartford struggling on and making the club work. Dartford is one of the biggest and best run clubs around the London perimeter and long may it continue.
We always enjoy playing there... see you again next time. xx
We are playing at one or two (or three) festivals this year and here we are at Saltburn last weekend. We're looking a little crumpled as we went for a look around the beautiful town and beach in between our soundcheck and our appearance (5 hours!) and got totally drenched, so we had to do the gig in our going home clothes!
The banjo has been brought back out of retirement with some snappy tunes on show as well as one or two banjo songs from a while ago. It's added a new welcome dimension to our sound, but unfortunately we don't get the chance to show it off for a while. It went down very well in Eastbourne last night but now we have a long hiatus during the intervening Summer breaks for the folk clubs. There are also breaks for both band members who have managed to take their hols at different times instead of coordinating them! Back in action in August. BFN
This gig at the lovely 
Wow!... does this month's Folk London cover mean we've finally made it as folkies? We almost feel accepted into the fold!
Here are the hard drinking duo just before their afternoon gig on the main stage at Broadstairs this week. We were on a double duo bill with Liz Simcock & Clive Gregson.
