Bellowhead

Conceived in a traffic jam

Bellowhead started as a conversation between Jon Boden and John Spiers, who worked the idea out while stuck in traffic on tour in 2004: take the fiddle-and-melodeon repertoire the two of them already played as a duo and hand it to the forces of a big band. The group made its debut at Oxford Folk Festival in April 2004 as a ten-piece.

That first line-up set the template — Boden on fiddle and lead voice, Spiers on melodeon, Benji Kirkpatrick, Rachael McShane and Paul Sartin across strings, reeds and harmony, Pete Flood on a percussion rig of his own devising, and a brass and wind section of Brendan Kelly, Justin Thurgur, Andy Mellon and Giles Lewin. The material was mostly traditional English song and dance tune, arranged with the weight of a brass band and the rhythmic drive of a dance act rather than the restraint of a folk club.

The format came with an obvious cost: eleven musicians, something close to twenty instruments, and a touring economy that only works in concert halls.

Five albums, and a chart line that kept climbing

Burlesque arrived in 2006 on Westpark Music — thirteen tracks and roughly an hour, with The Outlandish Knight, Death and the Lady, London Town and Frog's Legs and Dragon's Teeth among them. It was the record that fixed the band's sound in place. Mojo gave it four stars in its November 2006 issue, in a review by Colin Irwin; AllMusic rated it three and a half.

Four studio albums followed, each charting higher than the last. Matachin reached number 73 in 2008, Hedonism number 57 in 2010, Broadside number 16 in 2012 and Revival number 12 in 2014. Hedonism and Broadside were both certified silver — unusual territory for an English traditional act working without a major label.

The awards tracked the same curve. At the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards the band won Best Group in 2007 and again in 2011, and Best Live Act five times over their twelve years; promoters now put the total at eight Radio 2 Folk Awards and two silver discs. The live prizes are the telling ones, because the records were always a document of what the band did in a room rather than the other way round.

The farewell that held for four years

In 2015 the band announced they were finishing, and released Pandemonium: The Essential Bellowhead as a summary. They played their last gig at Oxford Town Hall in May 2016, in the city where they had first appeared twelve years earlier. The members scattered into solo projects and smaller groups, and for four years the answer to the standing question about a reunion was no.

What changed was a lockdown. On 5 December 2020 the eleven reassembled for a single streamed concert marking the tenth anniversary of Hedonism, recorded by Stabal and watched worldwide. The recording was released as Reassembled through Hudson Records in June 2021 on CD, double LP and digital. The band have been explicit that none of this was a re-formation; what it did was establish that there was an audience waiting, and a workable shape for returning — one anniversary at a time.

Two returns, and two losses

The first proper return came in 2022: an eighteen-date tour marking ten years of Broadside. It was overshadowed before it began. Paul Sartin, a founder member whose oboe, fiddle and arrangements were central to the band's sound, died of a heart attack on 14 September 2022, aged 51. At the Royal Albert Hall that November the band opened with Byker Hill under a backdrop of the Broadside sleeve, and kept Sartin present through his arrangements and pre-recorded vocal parts.

They went out again in November 2024, nineteen shows across Britain, with The Longest Johns opening. The touring line-up by then was Boden, Spiers, Kirkpatrick, McShane and Flood alongside Sam Sweeney on fiddle, Brendan Kelly and Jim Bulger on brass, Sally Hawkins on strings and Ed Neuhauser on helicon. Will Sartin, Paul's son, guested at Sheffield City Hall on 16 November. One Glasshouse performance was livestreamed and remains available on demand through FolkScape Live.

Neuhauser, who played that whole run, died in 2025; the band's website carries a tribute to him, 1973 to 2025, and donations in his name went to the Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain. Two founding or long-serving players lost in three years has given the recent tours a double character: a dance band and a memorial at once.

Where they stand now: Burlesque at twenty

The current campaign is the twentieth anniversary of Burlesque. The band are touring it through November 2026, opening at De Montfort Hall in Leicester on 10 November and running to the Ipswich Regent on 1 December, by way of the Glasshouse in Gateshead, the Bridgewater Hall, Harrogate Convention Centre, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Brighton Dome, Torquay's Princess Theatre, Bristol Beacon, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, Sheffield City Hall, the New Theatre in Cardiff, the Forum in Bath, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, Portsmouth Guildhall, the Royal Festival Hall on 27 November, Aylesbury Waterside, Venue Cymru in Llandudno and the New Theatre in Oxford. Official listings show 7pm starts on most nights; Symphony Hall on 25 November is advertised at 7.30pm with tickets from £40 to £60.

The kora player Seckou Keita is the special guest across most of the run, with Sons of Town Hall also billed. Alongside the tour, Burlesque is being pressed on vinyl for the first time, as a limited double album in solid white and black.

The band's own note on the tour promises London Town, Frog's Legs and Dragon's Teeth and Rigs of the Time from the debut, set among the other live staples — which suggests an anniversary framing rather than a full album play-through, consistent with how the Broadside tour was handled in 2022.

On stage

The 2024 tour is the best available guide to what the 2026 shows will look like. At the London Palladium on 18 November 2024 the band were on from 8.30pm to 10.15pm — an eighteen-song main set plus two encores, opening with Let Her Run and moving through Gosport Nancy, Fire Marengo, the Hudson's Hornpipe and Parson's Farewell pairing, Prickle Eye Bush, Rambling Sailor, Greenwood Side, Haul Away, Rosemary Lane, Roll Alabama and Lillibulero to New York Girls, then returning for Roll the Woodpile Down and Frog's Legs and Dragon's Teeth.

The staging had been rebuilt for that run: strings of lights, steel rails and raised platforms, replacing the nautical dressing of earlier tours. Reviewers covering three nights of it described a first half that works the crowd up through the shanties and a second half designed for continuous dancing, with Haul Away stretched into a five-minute carnival and Sweeney repeatedly leaving the stage to work the front rows. The verdict from that stretch was that Manchester's Bridgewater Hall on 25 November was the strongest of the three, the audience energy feeding back into the band.