Ferocious Dog

Warsop, and a band that kept restarting

Ferocious Dog come from Warsop, a former pit village in north Nottinghamshire, and the band's paperwork is messier than most. Reference listings date the group as currently constituted to around 2011, when the first self-titled EP appeared, but the same membership tables run Ken Bonsall's line of succession back to 1988, alongside founding players including violinist Dan Booth, bassist Dave Drury, drummer Paul Newbury and multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Carroll. Bonsall himself has framed it as roughly 25 years on the road. The practical reading is that this is a long-running local band that hardened into a touring act in the early 2010s and then never stopped.

What they built was a Celtic-folk and punk hybrid — fiddle and banjo carrying the melodies over electric guitar and a rock rhythm section — and a touring circuit assembled the slow way, through support slots with New Model Army, The Levellers and The Wonder Stuff and through the UK festival field. Beautiful Days took them in 2014; Glastonbury's Field of Avalon followed in 2015; Bearded Theory and Rebellion became regular stops. The marker they are proudest of is domestic: they are recorded as the first independent act to sell out Rock City in Nottingham across the venue's then 35-year history, which is why the farewell closes there.

Eight albums, and the one that landed

The recorded run starts with Ferocious Dog in 2013 on Weird Sounds, then settles onto Graphite Records: a three-piece acoustic set in 2014, From Without in 2015, Red in 2017 alongside an acoustic reworking of From Without, and Fake News & Propaganda in 2019. Two live albums document the step up in room size — Live at Rock City in 2016 and Live at the Rescue Rooms in 2018.

The commercial peak is The Hope in 2021, which reached number 31 on the UK albums chart and number one on the UK folk chart. That is the record that moved them from festival-circuit reliability into something a wider audience had seen the sleeve of, and its songs still anchor the live set.

Kleptocracy, released on 14 May 2024 through Graphite, is the current album and the first full statement from the rebuilt band. Sam Wood produced it and played most of the folk instrumentation — banjo, mandolin, whistle, accordion, cittern — with Sarah Huson-Whyte guesting on cello and Lizzey Joe Ross on vocals. The writing is unapologetically agitprop: Witch Hunt, Sus Laws, Merthyr Rising, plus a fast, aggressive reading of the traditional ballad Matty Groves. Reviewing it for folking.com, Seuras Og called it the band's sweetest spot yet and credited Wood as an instrumental polymath who gave them a studio presence they had lacked. The band's own framing was that they wanted a record faster and rockier than its predecessors, closer to what the live show actually sounds like.

The line-up that finishes the job

The band playing the farewell dates is largely a 2022 construction. Dan Booth, the founding violinist and for years the visual focus of the live show, left that year; Jamie Burney took the fiddle chair. Bassist Nick Wragg and percussionist Luke Grainger arrived at the same time, and guitarist Kyle Peters returned after an earlier spell between 2010 and 2014. Sam Wood joined in 2021 on banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, acoustic guitar, whistles and accordion. Bonsall, on vocals and acoustic guitar, is the only continuous thread.

A near-total turnover two years before a farewell would normally read as a band running out of road. In practice it produced Kleptocracy and a tighter, louder stage act, and it is the reason the final tour is being sold on the strength of the current six-piece rather than on nostalgia for the old one.

Lee's name on the setlist

The band's charitable work is not decoration bolted onto the music. Lee Bonsall, Ken's son, served in Afghanistan, lived with PTSD and died in 2012 at the age of 24. The Lee Bonsall Memorial Fund has raised money for veterans' mental health ever since, and the subject sits inside the repertoire rather than beside it: Verse for Lee and Lee's Tune appear in the standard running order, and Broken Soldier has become one of the fixed points of the set.

That is also what binds the following, who call themselves the Hell Hounds after the band's 2012 single and travel to shows in numbers disproportionate to the band's chart history. The pit at a Ferocious Dog gig is a reunion as much as a mosh, which is the part of the operation that ends in November and cannot be replaced.

The last dates, and why

The decision is Bonsall's and it is domestic. Speaking to In-Common in July 2026, he said he had promised his wife Karen seven years earlier that he would retire, that the band would disband in November 2026, and that while it was hard he was going through with it. The band's own announcement put it plainly: after the years of noisy folk punk, sweaty stages and late-night drives, 2026 would be the final year, and they would not be bowing out quietly. He has left the door ajar for one-off reunion appearances and named Wickham Festival as the likeliest venue for one.

The festival farewells have already happened. They played Wickham on 1 August 2026 as their last appearance there, Lakefest at Eastnor Castle on 6 August, the Empress Ballroom at Rebellion in Blackpool on 7 August, Tunes in the Park at Port Eliot on 28 August and Shrewsbury Folk Festival on 29 August.

Part two of the farewell tour opened on 1 October 2026 at Shoreham-by-Sea and runs almost to the end of November. October takes in The Drill in Lincoln on the 8th, Lyme Regis, Norwich and Nuneaton across that weekend, then Hull, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Blackpool from the 15th to the 18th, Tunbridge Wells, Bristol and Southampton's 1865 from the 22nd to the 24th, and O2 Academy Islington, Oxford and Bedford Esquires to close the month. November moves through Kendal, Leeds and Newcastle's Boiler Shop, Manchester Club Academy, The Robin in Bilston on the 14th and Milton Keynes on the 15th, before four Dutch dates in Groningen, Amersfoort, Goes and Tilburg from the 18th to the 21st. Settle Victoria Hall on the 26th and the Picturedrome in Holmfirth on the 27th are the last warm-ups. Rock City, Nottingham, on Saturday 28 November 2026 is the end.