El Pony Pisador

A Tolkien inn sign in Barcelona

El Pony Pisador came together in Barcelona in 2014, with roots a year earlier, and took their name from The Prancing Pony, the inn at Bree in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The reference set the register early: a group that treats traditional repertoire seriously while refusing to be solemn about it. Their own label describes the result as Tolkien crossed with Monty Python, which is closer to the truth than most band taglines manage.

The line-up has been stable. Ramon Anglada sings and plays guitar and accordion; Guillem Codern handles banjo, harmonica, Galician bagpipe, launeddas and Tuvan harmonic singing; Miquel Pérez plays fiddle, viola and percussion; Martí Selga covers recorders, whistles and electric bass; Adrià Vila plays mandolin, mandola, bodhrán and spoons, and takes the falsetto and the yodelling. All five sing. The official site also credits Josep Puigdollers as the percussionist responsible for the group's groove.

The spread of instruments is not decoration. It is what lets a single set move from a Catalan corranda to a bluegrass break to a Georgian-style harmony passage without a change of personnel, and it is the reason their press copy keeps reaching for lists of techniques rather than a genre.

Seven records, and the one that travelled

The discography starts with Yarr's i Trons! in 2016 and Matricular una Galera in 2019. Then came two 2021 releases that pulled in different directions: JAJA Salu2, and It's never too late for sea shanties, which arrived in the year that shanty singing briefly became a mass internet pastime and put the band in front of an audience that had never heard a word of Catalan.

That opening led directly to the record that still defines their reach abroad. The Longest Pony, a 2023 collaboration with the Bristol shanty group The Longest Johns, won best folk album of 2023 in the popular vote at the Premis Enderrock, announced on 15 March 2024 — a Catalan industry prize handed to a half-British record about ships.

Ocells followed in 2024: eleven songs, sung entirely in Catalan, built around birds, and ranging from medieval stories to jokes to material aimed at children. It carries guests in Jonatan Penalba and the vocal duo Tarta Relena. When the 2025 Enderrock prizes were given out at the Auditori de Girona on 6 March 2025, the folk awards went elsewhere — Alosa took the popular vote for Oh, lai l'om, and Tarta Relena, Ocells' own guests, took the critics' prize for És pregunta.

Across the catalogue the band now count more than six million streams.

Vatua l'Olla! and the smaller pony

The newest release is Vatua l'Olla!, out on 11 February 2026 through Guspira Records, and it is not a conventional seventh album. It is credited to El Pony Menut — the little pony — a parallel project for family audiences.

Miquel Pérez framed the intent in an interview published on the day of release: the band had written a new set of songs that are not exclusionary towards children, rather than songs only children would want. The six original tracks were composed the way the band compose anything else, then trimmed to a shorter, more direct shape that matches how children actually listen. The material runs through steam trains, old fairs, circuses and pirates, with asides into science and history, over old-time, bluegrass and swing.

The project also split the band's working week in two. Family dates come in two forms: public shows with families in the room, and closed sessions inside schools, which are shorter, broken up more often and lean harder on interaction. Those run alongside the ordinary late-night El Pony Pisador shows, which have not changed.

Where they stand, October 2026

The current standing is best read off the calendar rather than the chart. February and March 2026 were spent in Australia: a free show at the Enmore Hotel in Sydney on 26 February, the Cobargo Folk Festival from 27 February to 1 March, Smiths Alternative in Canberra on 3 March, Tumut River Brewing Co. in New South Wales on 4 March, the Lomond Hotel in Melbourne on 6 March, and then the Port Fairy Folk Festival on 7 and 8 March, in the festival's 49th year. That followed a sold-out six-show Australian run in 2023, a slot at the Hozo festival in Vietnam in late 2023, and selection for Folk Alliance International in Kansas City in February 2024.

August 2026 put them on a far larger stage: Lowlands, at the Walibi site in Biddinghuizen in the Netherlands, on 23 August. The autumn was Iberian — Terrassa on 26 September, Vilagarcía de Arousa on 10 September, Teatre Kursaal in Manresa on 15 October, La Paloma in Barcelona on 16 October, and Kutxa Kultur Kluba in San Sebastián on 23 October. Over the course of 2026 the band have also played Portugal, Norway, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy.

Britain is next, and it is the densest stretch of the year.

Nine nights in Britain

The British run opens at Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal on 31 October, then goes to Hangar Farm Arts Centre near Southampton on 1 November, Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury on 2 November, Bury St Edmunds on 3 November, Westbourne Community Hall in West Sussex on 4 November, Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham-by-Sea on 5 November, London on 6 November, The Jam Jar in Bristol on 7 November and The Crescent in York on 8 November. One further York date was cancelled.

Prices sit where mid-size arts-centre folk sits: £20 to £21 at Ropetackle, £22.50 plus booking fee at Westbourne, where doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start and the listing warns that seating is limited and the night is mainly standing. Ropetackle gives the running time as 120 minutes.

Ramon Anglada, speaking before the Southampton show, said the band like playing in Britain and that the crowds are always good, and pointed to the obvious connection: they have recorded and toured with The Longest Johns. None of the British listings advertise a support act, which suggests the quintet are carrying the full evening themselves.

The set, as logged

The most detailed recent record of what they actually play is the Barcelona show at La Paloma on 16 October 2026: doors at 7pm, music at 8pm, and thirteen songs logged by audience members, opening with El guisote del Tio Benito and taking in Gran manual per identificar ocells from the 2024 album, the shanty John Kanaka and L'Havanera del Raier.

That mix — a new Catalan song, a shanty sung in English, a habanera — is the shape of the thing. Across all the setlists filed by audiences, the song they have played most often is La noble vila de Su, with El meu pare és un formatge and Tot és part de ser un pirata close behind, which says something about how much of the night is comic narrative rather than instrumental display.

The family shows follow the same logic with the running order loosened: the new record plus older songs, and spoken cues telling the room when to put hands up and when to dance.