OYSTERBAND 30th ANNIVERSARY TOUR
Three decades after they started out as a loose collection of musicians meeting at the now legendary Dukes Folk Club in Whitstable in the late 1970s, Oysterband continues to grow, innovate and surprise. In the past decade alone, the group has made one of its best albums ever (Meet You There, Westpark Music), garnered two BBC Folk Awards (including one for Best Group), curated an (initially) on-the-road package event called The Big Session (which became so successful after three tours that it graduated into a full-blown festival, now in its fourth year); and now they’re about to come home to party. Still on a roll from the enthusiastic reception right across Europe and North America for Meet You There, they'll be mixing up old and new material, Oysterband classics and radical rearrangements for this celebratory UK tour.
Over three decades they have produced many albums, but it’s safe to say each decade has been marked by a standout title, a pivotal work that has helped define the changing times. In the 1980s, it was Freedom And Rain (Cooking Vinyl), a collaboration with June Tabor that Rolling Stone magazine called ”a marriage made in heaven”. For the ’90s, it was Holy Bandits (Cooking Vinyl), a highly influential album that is regularly cited as one of the great folk/roots-rock albums of all time.
Today, they remain committed both to a deep folk heritage and to evolving and redefining the nature of tradition. To quote Ian Anderson (editor, fRoots): “If only most groups half their age could sustain Oysterband's effortless vitality and distinctive creativity…” Helping the band celebrate this creative longevity are a host of special guests at different venues, including a re-formed (rather than reformed!) Edward II, Chris Wood (who played with Oysterband in the 1980s), Spiers & Boden, Rosie Doonan, Dan Donnelly and 3 Daft Monkeys. Drummer Lee Partis, currently on sabbatical working as a counsellor in a prison in NW England (a long-held interest and ambition), returns to join the shows at Birmingham, Leeds, Salisbury and London for a 2-drummer assault.
The band’s pre-Christmas, Forum gigs are legendary. Book your tickets early to avoid disappointment!