The Bad Shepherds

TROY DONOCKLEY            ADRIAN EDMONDSON               ANDY DINAN

Photo by David Angel

NEWS:

TIM HARRIES

Tim Harries (Bill Bruford's Earthworks, Steeleye Span) will be playing double bass for us on our new album and on the forthcoming tour. This is excellent news.

THE FATEA MAGAZINE AWARDS

Fatea Magazine have listed us as '2nd Runner Up' in their awards for 'Live Performance of the Year 09'. Imelda May came first - which is fair enough!

THE FOLK AWARDS

We've been nominated for a Folk Award in the 'Best Live Act' category. Bloody Marvellous! We're very chuffed! We're performing at the awards show as well.

NEW ALBUM

We're going into the studios in February to record our second album. It'll have the more recent songs we've been playing in the live set, including 'Friday Night, Saturday Morning', 'Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)' and 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' - along with the Ramones Medley.

TOURING IS OVER FOR 2009

79 gigs, 16,000 miles, 40,000+ people played to. It's been a great first full year as a band. We've finally got the sound we want and we're really enjoying ourselves. Thank you to everyone who came along to see us. There are some 'awards' and a few choice photos on the blog.

TOURING for 2010

The gig book is filling up. We start gigging around mid April and go through to mid June. Then a few festivals over the summer, and another big October Tour.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

You can see the video to 'All You Need Is Love' for Children In Need here. We pop up every now and then...

ANDY'S NEW FIDDLE

Andy's new fiddle is made by Bridge Violins. It is a thing of rare beauty and sounds fantastic, both acoustically and through the PA. Learn more about Bridge Violins here. Andy's busy in the studio at the moment making a solo album.

iTUNES

Our album 'Yan Tyan Tethera Methera!' is now available on iTunes in the UK, EU, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and Japan. You still buy the physical CD here.

Photo by David Angel

LITTLE BOXES

In early September we went to Abbey Road studios to record a track for a forthcoming Children In Need album. We recorded Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds. It's a great song made popular by Pete Seeger in the 60's. It's since been covered by the weirdest list of people; Linkin Park, Regina Spektor, Englebert Humperdinck, Elvis Costello, Billy Bob Thornton, Death Cab For Cutie and Kate & Anna McGarrigle - to name but a few - and now us...

We also sang along to All You Need Is Love with a few old rock stars and a flock of well known female singers. A flock? A gaggle? A claw? A handbag? I told Nick Mason that his cymbals were very shiny, and he said that was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to him.

We recorded Little Boxes live - just the three of us round a bunch of mics - four takes and we were done. Then to Ronnie Scott's where we came out rather poorer than we went in.

TROY'S NEW SOLO ALBUM

'The Madness Of Crowds' is Troys new hair-raising and hallucinogenic fusion of classical/ambient Celtic vibes. 'A glorious rush of pastoral influence and high folk art...' says Simon Jones in fRoots. 'Fuck me!' says Adrian Edmondson. Find out more here.

ELLA EDMONDSON

Ella Edmondson, who was our support act through much of 2009, has been nominated for an award - she's on the long list for 'Best Breakthrough Artist' in the Festival of the Year Awards. Find out more about her here.

OUR DEBUT ALBUM CAME OUT APRIL 2009:

'An inspired choice and approach that fuses the best of both musical traditions'

Rock'n'Reel

'If The Bad Shepherds new treatment of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight isn't up for a Folk Award next year, there's no justice.'

fRoots

Full album reviews here. Buy the album here. Live reviews here.

WHAT ARE THE BAD SHEPHERDS?

The Bad Shepherds play punk songs on folk instruments. Not as a gag, but because we really like the noise. We think the songs are better than people remember. We love folk instruments. It works. We do songs by The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stranglers, The Jam, Sham 69, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, The Ramones, The Specials, Talking Heads, Squeeze and others, even Kraftwerk! Alright, they're not all punk, but they come from roughly the same era. We've mostly given the songs a kind of Celtic feel, and we've stuck in the odd reel and jig here and there. But occassionally we just thrash! I've always thought the excitement of a reel taking off is the nearest thing to the excitement of watching punk live in the 70's.

I love the songs of 76 - 82. I was 19 in 76 when punk arrived. Those songs were the soundtrack to my life as I went through Uni and started pretending to be a comedian. I loved the noise, the faces and the attitude. I love making music. Got my first guitar when I was 13 and along the way I've picked up ten other guitars, a banjo, a ukelele, two trumpets, a banjolele, a mandolin, an autoharp, a charanga, two pianos, a tenor guitar, a triangle and even made myself some Coconuts (strangely enough - from a coconut). I also love folk music, I love the noise - at its live best its the most exciting music to be in the same room with. It occured to me that punk was the folk music of its day.

I decided to form a band to reflect all of the above. It would be great if you came along for the ride.

Cheers, Adrian

Photo by David Angel

If you still don't know what The Bad Shepherds are about, here's me yakking on about it in an interview with the BBC back in October 2008.

And here's a video clip of us performing at The International Folkwoods Festival near Eindhoven in Holland during August 2009. (You have to select the clip from the list on the right).

And here's a pic of one of my ancestors (probably):

'The Bad Shepherd' by Pieter Brueghel the younger.

OUR INSTRUMENTS

We get a few enquiries about our instruments and who makes them:

ADE'S MANDOLINS: Paul Hathway www.paulhathway.com

ADE'S OCTAVE MANDOLA: Thomas Buchanan www.folkmandolin.co.uk

TROY'S BOUZOUKI: Fylde Guitars www.fyldeguitars.com

ANDY'S BANJO:

FLIGHT CASES:			Scott Dixon	www.scottdixoninc.com