Wed 28th November, 2018
8:00 pm - 10:30 pm (Doors: 7:30pm)
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‘Ridiculously great band.’
Tom Robinson BBC 6 Music
‘Brilliant performances…Faustus are at their best here.’
**** Songlines
‘One of Britain’s outstanding folk bands.’
**** The Guardian
Faustus are delighted to announce their UK ‘Cotton Lords’ Tour, during which they will be presenting new tracks from the ongoing Cotton Famine Poetry project.
For the last few months Faustus have been sifting through publications and journals of the 19th Century Lancashire Cotton Famine period, as part of a project based at the University of Exeter to archive, preserve, and rehabilitate the poetry of this distressing chapter of working-class history. As featured on BBC Radio 4, they have set some of the texts to new music, soon to be released on CD.
Between UK dates, Faustus will be making a maiden tour of Denmark, and returning to Germany, as nominees for the Malzhaus Plauen Preise (https://www.malzhaus.de/home/).
Having played the National Folk Festival, Canberra, and UK folk festivals including Sidmouth and Towersey this year, 2019 sees touring in the UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and plans for new recordings.
Death and Other Animals received the 2017 German Critics Award (Schallplatenkritik Bestenliste) in the Folk/Singer-Songwriter/World Music category.
Benji, Paul and Saul formed the core band in The Transports (Guardian *****), the revival and reworking of Peter Bellamy’s ballad opera which proved a sensation in 2017-18 and played to full houses across the country.
During 2016 the band were Artists in Residence at Halsway Manor, National Centre for the Folk Arts, in the Quantock Hills of Somerset, where they had unlimited access to the Manor’s extensive library, and where Death and Other Animals was recorded. Four songs unique to Halsway’s little-known Ruth Tongue archive, lyrics by Bill Caddick and Olivia McCannon, a Chartist poem, and the band’s own indomitable settings of traditional texts comprise Death and Other Animals . . . ‘the best thing they’ve done’ (Froots)
Nominated in the 2009 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Faustus are three of the leading lights of their generation: Benji Kirkpatrick (Seth Lakeman Band, Bellowhead), Saul Rose (Waterson:Carthy, Whapweazel) and Paul Sartin (Bellowhead, Belshazzar’s Feast). Rooted deeply in the English tradition, in 2007 they received a 75th Anniversary Award from the English Folk Dance and Song Society.