MAN THE LIFEBOATS
Man The Lifeboats play raucous, upbeat folk music, they craft songs with big choruses that tell stories. Songs with straight- up lyrics, pounding bass lines, lilting mandolin and fiddle melodies and stomping beats,
Man The Lifeboats have cultivated a sound that would not be out of place at a party at the end of the world.
JESS SILK
Jess Silk is a guitarist, singer and songwriter from the Black Country. Her shouty but melodic brand of folk/punk music often has her being likened to a female Frank Turner or Billy Bragg, and it gets people sitting up and listening. Armed only with an increasingly sticker-covered acoustic guitar and a distinctive, gravelly voice that many don’t expect, Jess plays to audiences up and down the UK and has shared stages with many well known names among the folk/punk scene.
Jess released her debut album, Break the Bottle, in May 2018 with a packed out show at her spiritual home of Katie Fitzgerald’s in Stourbridge. Since then she’s shared a number of other releases including two live EP’s with tracks taken from shows at Katie’s and HMV Merry Hill. 2020 saw the world shut down and Jess release two (almost completely) self produced EP’s, the first of which, If We’re Damned, was put together from songs that had been gathering metaphorical dust on her harddrive, and the second, There’s A Bar At the End Of the World, a collection of songs written between March and August taking their inspiration from the events of the year.
Jess continues to tour around the UK and at the end of August 2021 released her second full-length album Blitz Spirit.
Jess is joined by multi-instrumentalist Ewan Stevens, playing mandolins and other stringy things. Having toured extensively across Europe as part of punk-rock stalwarts Bleeding Hearts, Ewan is still probably best known as the keeper of Olly, the Festival
ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER
Launched into public consciousness by legendary Radio One DJ John Peel in 1982/83, he has spent 35 years touring the world as a self sustaining DIY one man cottage industry, performing well over 3000 gigs in 24 countries and releasing 40 LPs/EPs/CDs and 7 books of poetry.
JOE SOLO
Joe Solo is an award-winning musician, writer, poet, activist, broadcaster and washing machine engineer from Scarborough. His musical odyssey began in 1987 fronting a bash-em-out band at school, and has seen him play nine countries either as lynchpin of pop-punk upstarts Lithium Joe or hammering out his unique brand of Folk, Punk and Blues in his own right.
On top of releasing twenty one albums since 2004, Solo has written a series of children’s books for Unison on social justice and equality; runs a research project on the Hull Pals Battalions in the First World War; hosts a weekly Monday night radio show; has had one of his poems used in an international campaign to educate on dementia awareness; co-runs ‘May Day Festival of Solidarity‘ an annual event bringing together voices from music, poetry and politics to celebrate International Worker’s Day; and has still found time to open for the likes of Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott, Billy Bragg, Chris Wood, TV Smith, Louise Distras, David Rovics, Grace Petrie, Attila the Stockbroker, Otis Gibbs, Robb Johnson, Edgar Broughton, Naomi Bedford & Paul Simmonds, Emily Portman, Pete Wylie, and The Blockheads; whilst his songs have been played by John Peel on Radio One, Mike Harding on Radio Two and Tom Robinson on BBC6Music.
