The Beverley Folk Festival (Folk, Acoustic, Roots) will be presenting its first pre-festival warm-up concert of the year at its partner venue, FRUIT in Hull’s Old Town, on Thursday 7th April, featuring some of the best local talent around today.
As well as one of Hull’s favourite bands, Circus Envy, it will be bringing two of the region’s best young bands to Hull; Blackbeard’s Tea Party from York and Sea Fret from Bridlington.
Circus Envy, an alternative-folk band feature a line-up of primarily acoustic instruments, which adds a traditional sensibility to their
intricately crafted harmony-led modern songs with use of bouzouki, mandolin and cajon. Last year the band released an EP – “A New Dawn”
which reached the HMV Folk CD Top 40 and received critical praise and reviews. The track “Three Score and Ten” received significant BBC airplay, including on BBC Radio 2.
Back to Hull again, after having performed at the Half Past the Weekend concerts last Summer, are Blackbeard’s Tea Party. A young and lively
six-piece band from York, they play traditional and contemporary dance tunes and new arrangements of folk songs and sea shanties, with heavy
electric guitar riffs, fiddles, melodeons and an eclectic feast of international hand percussion, with occasional brassy outbursts and some surreal synth bass – all combined to create a sound that is big, tasty,
dramatic, danceable and totally unique.
The youngest musicians performing will be Sea Fret, an acoustic duo from Bridlington who write and record their own music as well as doing covers from artists such as Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Paolo Nutini, Bob Dylan, Eva Cassidy and many more. Their youngest member is 15 , but already the duo have been recorded by Radio Humberside as well as having performed all around the region. Certainly a duo to watch.
The concert, is being supported by the English Folk Dance and Song Society as a part of their Folk Rising programme, which supports young
performers throughout England. This is funded by the Arts Council England.
