Fire In Your Heart Folk Club

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters working in the UK today. His songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, from folk legend Roy Bailey to acclaimed cabaret diva Barb Jungr, & he enjoys a similarly diverse spectrum of critical acclaim – “a modern-day Dostoyevsky” said the US’s Dirty Linen, Mojo made the double CD Gentle Men Folk Album Of The Month, while The Daily Telegraph made it their Folk Album Of 1998, & Tony Benn says Johnson’s “Winter Turns To Spring” is his favourite song.

He has played pubs, clubs, pavements, pickets & benefits, arts centres & festivals, local radio, BBC Radio 3 & 4, Belgian Radio 1, Nicaraguan TV & Channel 4, the Albert Hole in Bristol &, as part of Roy Bailey’s 1998 concert, the Albert Hall in London. In February 2006 Robb appeared at the Barbican as part of the prestigious BBC “Folk Britannia” series, where “for the encore, Robb Johnson leads all the artists (and the audience) in the World War I song (‘Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire’)” (BBC Folk Britannia website) in a concert that was screened later that month on BBC4. Earlier this year Robb was the featured guest on Andy Kershaw’s Radio 3 programme. Robb also plays extensively in Belgium, Holland & Germany, & he has toured Britain supporting Chumbawamba, & the US with David Rovics.

Robb has worked with a variety of bands, with friend & fellow songwriter Leon Rosselson, as well as solo. In 1997 Robb wrote the song suite Gentle Men, an ambitious family history of the first world war for the Passendael Peace Concert, where the musicians were a jazz combo led by Belgian jazz legend Koen De Cauter, & he subsequently toured it successfully in Britain too. Robb’s album Metro (released in September 2005) featured piano accompaniment by the late Russel Churney, who had previously worked with Julian Clary, Barb Jungr & Fascinating Aida). Again, the album received widespread praise in both music & national press: “unquestionably classy… excellent songs (that) show again what a fine, if provocative writer Johnson is” (The Daily Telegraph).

His label Irregular Records has also facilitated releases by a variety of song-orientated artists, including an album celebrating the work of Jacques Brel that has done much to focus a renewed interest in the chanson genre. He has translated several of Brel’s songs & performed concerts celebrating Brel’s life & work. Robb has also co-written Woman, a biography of Yoko Ono, published by Chrome Dreams.

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

Writer, music maker and broadcaster Chris T-T is one of the UK’s most consistently praised underground artists. Active since 1997, Chris has made ten solo albums, including a trilogy about London: The 253 (2001), London Is Sinking (2003) and Capital (2008); influential political protest record 9 Red Songs (2005) and most recently – 10 years on – similarly radical follow-up, 9 Green Songs (2016).

Chris has clocked up more than 2,200 live shows. In 2017 he marked 20 years with a double-album Best Of collection and announced that he was giving up Chris T-T music. His final concerts take place on 2nd and 3rd December in London.

Chris has written for Dark Mountain, Louder Than War, ecnmy.org, NME and New Public Thinkers and for four years wrote a weekly column on the arts for The Morning Star. He has been artist-in-residence with organisations including The National Trust, The Royal Pavilion & Museums, Leeds Beckett University and Arts Residency Thailand. Most recently, through summer 2016 he was the inaugural National Trust Creative Fellow at The Workhouse, Southwell.

Chris has spoken at TEDx Brighton, Louder Than Words (Manchester), Great Escape Convention, War Of Words (Norwich), SOAS, Boring Conference (London), How The Light Gets In (Hay), Brighton Digital Festival, Interrogate! (Dartington Hall), AIM Music Connect, Leeds Uni, Falmouth Uni, Middlesex Uni and others.

Chris also presents and produces weekly late-night folk music radio show Midnight Campfire broadcast Tuesday nights on Juice 107.2 (FM / DAB in Sussex, UK) and archived online at TotallyRadio.com (worldwide).

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

With a personal invite from Billy Bragg to play Glastonbury, sessions on 6 Music and Radio 2, five star reviews and a feature in The Guardian; the voice and piano songwriting duo of Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow is regarded as ‘one of British folk’s mightiest combinations’ (Mojo). Their latest album, Shadows has earned them a place in Mojo’s Top 10 Folk Albums of 2016 for the third time (Silent June, 2010, The Hum, 2014) and their third BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nomination for ‘Best Duo’.

Having the originality and skill to invite comparison with the most celebrated harmony duos, from early Simon and Garfunkel to the iconic Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Belinda and Heidi’s powerful, deeply moving, and soulful performances are infused with an honesty and empathy that will disarm the hardest of heart.

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

South London-born singer-songwriter Maddy Carty is an ex-BRIT School student who went on to study at Leeds College of Music. After graduating, she headed back to London to form her own band, and record her debut album, Come And Get It.

Drawing her inspiration from artists such as Tracy Chapman, India.Arie and Van Morrison, Maddy writes all her own material.

She has supported Norman Jay and Madness at House of Fun Festival, played The Brooklyn Bowl with Maxi Priest and performed at venues such as Ronnie Scott’s, The Troubadour and The Scoop for More London Festivals.

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

Gavin has written for and performed on BBC Radio 4 and Resonance FM. He has done gigs with poet-songwriter-comedian John Hegley, toured with Tellison and Encyclopedia, toured Australia and ended 2008 at a sold out Hammersmith Apollo alongside Jarvis Cocker, Malcolm Middleton and comedians Stewart Lee, Ricky Gervais and Robin Ince. This year, Gavin will be touring the UK, performing three new story shows with the award-winning Daniel Kitson in Regents Park, doing a run of shows at the Edinburgh Festival and will return to the Latitude Festival.

Influenced by everyone from Loudon Wainwright III to R. Kelly, Gavin has written this press release himself and, much as with online status updates, is a little uncomfortable talking about himself in the third person. If you bought ‘In The Twee Small Hours’ (his first record) you’ll know what to expect. If you didn’t, this is going to blow your tiny minds.

The traditional folk club is dying out. Fire In Your Heart is a new monthly folk night for Leicester, bringing together elements of the old and new to both celebrate and renovate the time-honoured tradition of gathering together to share stories through songs.

Grace Petrie is a folk singer, songwriter, and activist from Leicester, UK. She first exploded on to the national protest scene in 2010 with the emotive anthem Farewell to Welfare, which captured perfectly the spirit of the new wave of dissent in austerity Britain. Since then, she has written, recorded and toured relentlessly. Her unique takes on life, love and politics, and the warmth and wit with which they are delivered have won over audiences everywhere, and she has quietly become one of the most respected and prolific songwriters working in the UK today.