About Bellowhead

Bellowhead is an English contemporary folk band, active from 2004 to 2016, reforming in 2020. The eleven-piece act played traditional dance tunes, folk songs and shanties, with arrangements drawing inspiration from a wide range of musical styles and influences. The band included percussion and a four-piece brass section. Bellowhead's bandmembers played more than 20 instruments among them, whilst all performers provided vocals.

Their third album, Hedonism , is the highest selling independently released folk album of all time, having sold over 60,000 copies and earning the band a silver disk.

The band parted after their final gig at Oxford Town Hall in May 2016. In 2020, the band reformed for a reunion concert and, in 2022, played a reunion tour, visiting Portsmouth, Oxford, Leicester, Cambridge, London, Brighton, Southend-on-Sea, Ipswich, Bath, Plymouth, Cardiff, Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Harrogate, Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester.

The idea for the band came to Spiers and Boden while the duo were in a traffic jam on tour. The longer they sat in traffic, the more friends they thought to invite to join. This led to the formation of a ten-piece band, with Benji Kirkpatrick, Rachael McShane, Paul Sartin, Pete Flood, Brendan Kelly, Justin Thurgur, Andy Mellon and Giles Lewin completing the initial line-up.

Before they had time to rehearse, the fledgling band were invited to play the first Oxford Folk Festival in April 2004, earning critical approval.

In 2004, the band independently released a five-track EP, publicised as "English World Music", called E.P.Onymous, which generated positive reviews.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bellowhead", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.