"With the exception of the Who, Bellowhead are surely the best live act in the country." The Independent
"Best live band we have. No contest." fRoots
"One of the country’s greatest live outfits: They should be a greater source of national pride." The Mirror
"Visually stunning, musically amazing..." Songlines
"The biggest, rowdiest and quite possibly, best thing to have happened to English music for a long while.." Q Magazine

Winner of 5 consecutive nomination for BEST LIVE BAND, BBC Radio Folk Awards.

The rousing, sharp suited Bellowhead were first unleashed onto an unsuspecting audience at the Oxford Festival in April 2004. A multi-talented group of 11 musicians; friends, or friends of friends quickly melted into a collective capable of playing a plethora of styles from around the world. From big band to soul; jazz-funk to classical strings, with more than a hint of music hall about them, they retain a unique sensitivity to English traditional music.

An instant riotous success, within a few months Bellowhead were voted 'Best Live Group' in the 2005 BBC Folk Awards and audiences had already broken two festival dance floors, such was their enthusiasm. Public demand forced them to release 'E.P.onymous' (a 5-track demo initially produced for promoters) which promptly received a 5* review in MOJO.

2006 saw the release of their extraordinary, groundbreaking album, 'Burlesque', to critical acclaim. Heralded as one of the most "important folk recordings ever made.. its flowing stream of humour, intelligence, meticulous research, and free ranging imagination." had fans and reviewers searching for ever-greater superlatives.

At the end of that year Bellowhead further impressed when performing on BBC's Later with Jools Holland, wowing the global audience and winning a host of new fans including the Black Country's Frank Skinner and the West Coast's Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

The band started 2007 in characteristic style winning 'Best Group' and 'Best Live Band' again at the BBC Folk Awards. After show stealing performances at the re-opening of London's Royal Festival Hall, they were appointed Artists in Residence at London's Southbank Centre, following in the footsteps of chart-toppers, Saint Etienne.

Voted 'Best Live Band' for an unparalleled third time at the BBC Folk Awards they undertook concert tours and headlining festival appearances across the UK, Europe and Canada. The band raised the roof at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall and Proms in the Park to appreciative audiences of 50,000 people.

Their eagerly awaited second studio album Matachin (Ma'ta*shin), released on the Navigator Label in July 2009, went straight into the UK Album Charts at no. 73. The reviews were once again unanimous in their praise, and the Matachin launch tour included a sell out show at the iconic North London venue - Koko's.

Bellowhead began 2009 in suitably impressive style with another three nominations in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards - Best Live Band, Best Group and Best Traditional Track with an additional nomination for 'Album of the Year' in the fRoots Critics Poll.

2009 also saw the release of their first live DVD recorded at another sell-out concert in Shepard's Bush Empire. February 2009 featured a notorious, sell-out appearance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 'A Dirty Weekend with Bellowhead', an alternative St Valentines' night, complete with smut, cross-dressing, Burlesque dancing and a 30 piece choir.

A highly successful three-week festival headlining tour across Canada during the summer of 2009 has won Bellowhead a raft of new fans and admirers including Glen Campbell, who danced side-stage all the way through their Calgary gig.

Bellowhead embarked on an 11-date autumn UK tour including a sell-out show at Shepard's Bush Empire in London and Manchester's Academy and, revealing the incredibly diverse musical backgrounds and interests of the 11 band members, released a 14 track compilation of individual recordings ('Umbrellowhead - Megafone).

During the winter season the band featured on a BBC Four TV special (Christmas Sessions - 17th and 24th December), performed on Radio 3's 'In Tune', recorded a live session on Radio 2's Radcliffe and Maconie Show and made another live appearance, this time 'on the sofa' on BBC Breakfast TV.

Bellowhead rounded off 2009 with a sold-out New Year's Eve spectacular party for over 2,000 people at the Southbank, 'an event that will be talked about by those who were lucky enough to be there, for years to come'.

2010 is continuing to be as successful for this unique, genre-busting band. Bellowhead have recorded their version of The Simpson's theme tune for 20th Century Fox at the invitation of Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, 30 Days).

Even more thrilling than that, the band has confirmed their latest studio album will be produced by the legendary John Leckie (Stone Roses, Radiohead, Buzzcocks) at Abbey Road Studios. The new album will be released to coincide with a major UK tour in Autumn 2010.

Bellowhead have also just won 'Best Live Band' for an incredible fourth time at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and their singer Jon Boden was voted 'Folk Singer of the Year'.

Live Reviews:
The Independent   5 ***** 
The Guardian   4 ****
Financial Times     5 *****  
The Evening Standard   5 *****  
 
BBC Nottingham "Rapturous applause and two encores at the end. This has to be one of the best gigs I've ever seen."

BBC Manchester "Bellowhead are one of the most enthusiastic, euphoric bands you could ever wish to see." 
 
MATACHIN / MA'TA*SHIN REVIEWS

Observer Music Monthly - Best 50 Albums of 2008

Channel 4 Music - Best 15 Albums of 2008

Songlines 5 ***** - "Burlesque, Bellowhead's debut, was so strong that it was always going to be a near-impossible act to follow. They launch into their second album with a flurry of brass, wind and percussion that subsides - along with any doubts - into quiet strings. Jon Boden sings with his distinctive quaver, 'Fakenham Fair' - collected by Peter Bellamy, who has a strong influence here - and you know you're in for a rare treat. The joy of Bellowhead is the sheer rousing noise these 11 musicians generate. 'Roll Her Down the Bay' is one of many shanties of African-American origin, and Bellowhead's version properly acknowledges the source, with its jazzy, jelly-roll feel. Matachin also reveals the bands subtlety. Their arrangements are vibrant, but never overblown. Each of these musicians knows exactly how much to contribute, to rock but not capsize this crowded boat. ...Matachin is appropriately invigorating and theatrical: a friend remarked that it made her think of a drunken Johnny Depp staggering around on the rolling deck of a pirate ship. Which can only be a good thing for an album - especially one that takes a wild sword-wielding masked dancer for its title."

Observer Music Monthly - 5 ***** - "Bellowhead has grown from a wizard wheeze into an 11-piece behemoth whose debut, Burlesque, was widely garlanded, and whose kick-ass appeal has bust them out of the folk ghetto to light up festivals, become the South Bank's band in residence and bring this year's Proms to it's feet. Quite right too, for if the Proms' flag waving means anything, traditional song must surely be part of all that hope and glory. Bellowhead's take on tradition is on one side pretty strict - though they include their own melodies, their songs are overwhelming sea shanties, broadside ballads and pieces whose origins are deliciously lost in the mists of time. Musically, though, the group like to take liberties, creating accompaniments that borrow playfully from jazz, cabaret and music hall. There's a touch of the circus troupe or New Orleans marching band about their brass section, with its sousaphone bass lines, while their multi-instrumental talents cover more customary folk backings; fiddles, guitar, pipes and squeezebox.

The totality is far more than folk plus horns; the sophisticated, interwoven playing on Matachin is often breathtaking. What's more, as all those live punters will affirm, the band can funk. Matachin remains a triumphant expedition into the past, which for all the antiquity of its songs is also a thoroughly modern piece of music-making - as its title suggests, cutting edge."

MOJO 4**** - "Matachin takes big, confident strides on from its much decorated predecessor. Amid tangential explosions of brass, cascading string arrangements and ebullient rhythms, their sound is bigger and bolder than ever. Jon Boden's splendidly eccentric vocals peerlessly swooping above it all, recounting colourful tales of cholera, curses, whisky and nefarious deeds on the high sea. Musically complex with liberal allusions to morris, jazz and military bands and laced with humorous nuances, it carries its instrumental weight lightly. And when they hit full stomping mode, nobody does it better."

Independent 5***** - "A superb second album from the 11 strong festival band. Jazz, classical, dance, barbershop, rockabilly, folk.... it's all in here, a costume box full of characters raging with unruly life. A Jacobean rock'n'roll that celebrates whisky, haunts lovers and draws a sharp sword."

The Daily Mirror 4**** - Anyone who has had the pleasure of seeing the formidable 11-piece Bellowhead in concert will know they are one of the country's greatest live outfits. Their blend of Big Band folk could only exist in the UK; they should be a greater source of national pride. This second album is a party for old and young alike - rip roaring, musically exuberant, gleefully anarchic, culturally criss-crossing brilliance.

Q Magazine 4**** - The biggest, rowdiest and quite possibly, best thing to have happened to English folk for a long while. Matachin makes an excellent job of bottling their unique live experience.

The Sun 4**** - A talented band that draw on the past but make music that is fresh, vibrant and cool.

BURLESQUE REVIEWS

The Guardian - "1000 Albums to hear before you die."

The Observer Music Monthly - "Best 20 Albums of 2006" (No. 14, alongside Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, The Arctic Monkeys, The Killers)

MOJO - "Best Folk Album 2006"

fRoots - "Best Album 2006"

Songlines Magazine - "Best Album of 2006"

The Sun - "Best Folk Album of the Year 2007"

MOJO - 5***** - "Having taken the festival scene by the scruff of its neck over the past couple of years, Bellowhead, now a modest 11-piece, deliver a startling debut album amid a blaze of brass, outlandish showmanship and cracking songs and tunes. They take outrageous but enthralling liberties...... innovative arrangements, rampant imagination and brazen front. It gobbles up fresh territory without a backwards glance. Extraordinary."

Songlines Magazine - "The most important album of English traditional music since Fairport Convention's Leige & Leif. It's even more significant. Between them, the 11 musicians play more than 20 instruments and six of them sing. The horn section includes a sousaphone, the reeds a bass clarinet. There's a frying pan amidst the percussion, a cello in the strings and, at the core, are the melodeons of John Spiers, Jon Beden's fiddle (one of four) and his vibrant vocals. The arrangements and performances are stunning."

fRoots - "They don't do anything by halves, this lot. Incredibly, given their awards, headlining festival appearances, cover features and reputation as the best live roots band in the land, this is the first proper Bellowed album. Wild, joyous, perverse, bold, crazed, full-blooded, intricate, fearless, funny, epic and most BIG.... Bellowhead don't disappoint. Prepare to be amazed."

Stirrings - "From the opening paradiddle of Rigs of the Time to the last dying fall of Death and the Lady, this is quite simply the album of the century (so far). A thing of beauty and strangeness, of grandeur and hilarity, Burlesque is Ground Zero for a whole new vision of English folk. With the instrumental and vocal resources at their disposal, Bellowhead can seemingly do anything.... and take this in slowly - they're even better live."

Jon Boden     Vocals / Fiddle / Tambourine
John Spiers    Melodeon / Concertina
Benji Kirkpatrick   Guitar / Bouzouki / Mandolin / Banjo
Rachael McShane  Cello / Fiddle
Paul Sartin   Fiddle / Oboe
Sam Sweeney  Fiddle / Bagpipes
Pete Flood   Percussion
Gideon Juckes/ Ed Neuhaser  Helicon
Justin Thurgur  Trombone
Brendan Kelly  Saxophones / Bass Clarinet
Andy Mellon  Trumpet
 

Management - Mark Whyles bellowheadmanagement@mac.com

Press Media Enquiries - Harriet Simms, Glass Ceiling PR - 07958 539951 / glassceilingpr@btconnect.com/ www.glassceilingpr.org.uk