Monday 17 February 2020, 8 pm - The Paul McKenna Band

Scotland’s Paul McKenna has long been ranked among our finest younger singers and songwriters, armed with a powerful yet intensely emotive voice and passionate social conscience, often expressed through his songs, a combination that’s brought frequent comparisons to the great Dick Gaughan.

He and his band – comprising Robbie Greig (fiddle), Conal McDonagh (pipes/whistles), Conor Markey (banjo/bouzouki/guitars) and Ewan Baird (percussion) – draw on both Scottish and Irish roots, in a dynamic, full-bodied array of original and traditional material. 

Paul McKenna has long been ranked as one of the finest singer-songwriters of modern times with the New York Times hailing his band as ‘the best folk band to have come out of Scotland in the last twenty years’.  Breathe is the fifth studio album from The Paul McKenna Band and after a couple of years hard at work on it, it is finally ready to see the light of day.  The Paul McKenna Band are indeed one of the best bands to emerge in the last twenty years and Breathe is one of the most compelling albums of the last decade.

“The best band of their generation” (The Living Tradition)

Monday 16 March 2020, 8 pm - The Trials of Cato

The remarkable rise of award winning trio The Trials of Cato on the UK folk-scene has been the subject of massive critical attention. Dubbed "The Sex Pistols of folk,” (J Davis) they pay clear homage to the tradition whilst twisting old bones into something febrile and modern, with stomping tunes and captivating stories, a combination that has taken them in three years from busking out of the back of their Transit van to a BBC Folk Award.

Back in the UK, they set to performing tirelessly up and down the country, leading to BBC Radio 2’s Mark Radcliffe hailing them as “one of the real discoveries on the folk circuit in recent times.” The reception of their debut album, Hide and Hair, has been overwhelmingly positive. The album gained attention in national publications, receives repeated national airplay on BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music, and won Best Album at the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. The year following the release saw the band win Best Emerging Artist at the inaugural Wales Folk Awards, and since then the group have been touring the UK extensively as well as making their Rirst appearances is the USA, Canada and Europe.