The Amy Winehouse Band

The band behind the records

Bassist Dale Davis was Winehouse's musical director for most of her working life, and the group that tours today is built from the players who were in the room with her. Guitarist Hawi Gondwe held the chair from 2007 to 2011. Trumpeter Henry Collins and saxophonist Dave Temple made up the brass, Ade Omotayo sang behind her, and Nathan Allen drummed. The line-up carried her from early pub bookings through to the touring that followed Back to Black, released in October 2006, and they were with her at the 2008 Grammy Awards, where the album took five prizes including Record of the Year and Song of the Year and made her the first British woman to win that many in a single night.

Davis has described watching her draw a crowd out of nothing in those early years: within half a set, he said, a square had completely filled up, and "she didn't need a band because her voice was so powerful." He has since worked as a musical consultant on the 2024 biopic Back to Black, which starred Marisa Abela.

Forever Amy, and the doubts that came with it

The touring project began after the 2015 documentary Amy, when Davis was approached about putting the band back on stage behind an Amy-style frontperson. It launched as Forever Amy and was later renamed The Amy Winehouse Band. Davis has been candid that he was uneasy about it. At one of the group's early shows in 2016, with an Italian singer performing as Winehouse, the whole thing unsettled him.

What changed his mind was the audience. He has recounted an attendee telling him that their dying mother had come to the show to have a Winehouse experience before she died. That, by his account, settled the argument about whether the band should exist. The framing he uses now is that the shows honour both Winehouse and the songs themselves, and that the group's direct link to the artist puts it somewhere other than the tribute circuit.

Two singers, no wig

The band's regular vocalist is Bronte Shande, who Davis chose himself. She had been studying Winehouse's catalogue since she was eight, and she was 28 when Davis discussed her in a 2024 interview. The deliberate point is that she does not imitate: she does not dress as Winehouse and does not attempt the voice as mimicry. Davis's summary is that she sings in a way that reminds him of Winehouse in the early days, which is a different claim from sounding like the records. Beth Morris also fronts dates — she sang the Bexhill show in December 2025 — so the night depends somewhat on which vocalist is billed.

Davis has argued the format needs its own category. "I think we need to create a new genre as there are a lot of people passing and the band is still going out," he said, reaching for Queen's work with Adam Lambert as the nearest comparison. The group as listed by its own management runs to twelve players: Davis on bass, Gondwe on guitar, Allen and Stuart Anning on drums, Xantoné Blacq on keys and backing vocals, Omotayo on backing vocals, Temple and Frank Walden on saxophones, Collins on trumpet, and Shande and Morris on lead vocals. Booking goes through Neil O'Brien Entertainment.

Back to Black at twenty

The anniversary tour was announced in mid-February 2026 and is the biggest thing the band has attempted. The plan is to play Back to Black in full, with a selection of other Winehouse material around it. The first leg runs from 22 October 2026 in York through to December, taking in seated halls including Sage One at The Glasshouse in Gateshead on 23 October and the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on 30 October. It finishes with a homecoming night at the Roundhouse in Camden on 18 December 2026, billed as the band alone with no guest vocalists.

A second leg carries into 2027. The promoter lists 23 dates across England and Wales between 11 February and 20 March 2027 — Buxton, Hull, Sheffield, Harrogate, Colchester, Watford, Swansea, Bristol and Leicester among them — with Scottish shows in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dunfermline and Dumfries in March, the run closing in Dumfries on 28 March 2027. Summer festival dates in Europe sit alongside it. Taken together the tour passes fifty shows, which makes it a far longer campaign than the 2024–25 run that included a Glastonbury slot and a pair of nights at Koko in Camden on 20 and 21 December 2024.

The band is also at the centre of a separate one-off. On 21 October 2026, two days before an expanded Back to Black reissue arrives with unreleased demos, rare B-sides and a 2007 Paradiso Amsterdam recording, the Roundhouse hosts an all-star night with the Amy Winehouse Band playing the album and guest singers taking the vocals: Corinne Bailey Rae, Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas, Yebba, Jessie Reyez, FLO, Baby Rose, Nia Smith, Sasha Keable and Skye Newman. Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, who produced the original, put the programme together with Davis as musical director. Ronson's line on it was that he was honoured to be asked to celebrate Winehouse "alongside Salaam and some amazing artists worthy of singing her songs". BBC Two carries it in late October and Radio 2 broadcasts it on 26 October between 7pm and 9pm on Jo Whiley's show.

What the recent shows have been like

The December 2025 date at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill ran to twenty songs and was split cleanly in two: a first half weighted towards Frank, where the jazz-soul end of the writing sits, then a second half built on Back to Black. Know You Now, Stronger Than Me, Back to Black, Rehab and Valerie all featured, and the room was dancing by the back end. The reviewer's verdict was that the band does a tremendous job of keeping the music alive in a live setting and that the show is well worth seeing.

Some dates go out with a string section. At Lighthouse Poole on 15 November 2025 — the band's third outing with an orchestra — Shande fronted a near-full house that included her old music teachers. The set opened with Tears Dry On Their Own and worked through Back to Black, Love Is A Losing Game, Rehab and Valerie, with the strings adding weight under the soul-jazz arrangements and a trumpet-and-sax pairing the reviewer singled out. Omotayo's dancing pulled the crowd to its feet in the second half. The write-up gave it four stars out of five and called it a night of toe-tapping soul and jazz with hauntingly powerful vocals.

Where it stands now

The commercial shape of the thing is mid-size regional theatres and concert halls rather than clubs: 7.30pm starts, all-seated, an interval, tickets in the £34 to £42 range at Gateshead and Manchester, rising to £44.95–£51.28 before fees for the Roundhouse finale, where doors are at 7pm and curfew is 11pm. Several venues were already flagging limited availability well ahead of the autumn.

What the anniversary does is give the band a fixed piece of work to play rather than a greatest-hits sweep, and the BBC broadcast in late October puts the players back in front of an audience that has mostly encountered Back to Black through the reissues and the film. Davis's own line on the anniversary is unfussy: "It's still an honour, pleasure and privilege to be performing these songs, from this timeless classic."