Home town gig for Show of Hands

Steve Knightley, one of the British folk roots scene’s biggest names, brings his  “All At Sea” UK tour back to his Devon home town this month when he appears at Topsham’s Matthew Hall (Saturday, February 20).

Show of Hands’ acclaimed BBC award-winning frontman has been rated “one of England greatest singer songwriters”. His song Walk With Me (When the Sun Goes Down) on the brand new Show of Hands album, The Long Way Home (released January 15), is currently playlisted on BBC Radio 2. www.bbc.co.uk/music/records/n3f39j

He set out on a mission in 2014 - to play as many village halls and “untapped” grass roots community venues in England as he could muster. His two hugely successful Grow Your Own Gig tours saw him performing at a bedrock of intimate rural venues, playing from his treasure trove of songs of the English countryside, with some organisers staging gigs in their community for the very first time.

Two years on – and 160 solo “Grow Your Own” gigs later – he is turning his attentions from the countryside to the coast with the brand new “All At Sea” tour of nearly 30 maritime venues around England and Wales – all within sight and sound of the sea or riverside. A new limited edition All At Sea CD will accompany the tour.

See Steve performing Downbound Train/Country Life www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F7b7gmuzDk

The multi BBC award-winning Devon-based singer songwriter has for 21 years played key venues all over the UK with his Show of Hands’ bandmate Phil Beer, topped with no less than four spectacular Royal Albert Hall sell outs.  But between January 15-April 1, 2016 the ‘All at Sea’ tour will find him playing in a rich variety of performing spaces from seaside halls to an Elizabethan Fort.

Steve says “As a Westcountry songwriter I have written so many songs of seafarers and wreckers, travellers and traders, pirates and smugglers. Now I‘m going to be able to sing them in perfect waterside settings - I can’t wait!”

The unique tour will start in his home county of Devon, at the fishing town of Brixham, and takes in such intriguing venues as the Norwegian Church at Cardiff Bay, Pevensey Bay Sub Aqua Club, Cley Marshes Visitors Centre in Norfolk, and Portsmouth’s 15th century Square Tower, one of the oldest parts of the naval town’s fortifications. Aptly named theatres range from Shoreham on Sea’s The Ropetackle, Suffolk’s The Seagull and Barton-on-Humber’s Ropewalk.

Knightley, who won Best Original Song at the 2010 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards for his biting, banker-baiting Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed has a prolific back catalogue of inspired songs including the anthemic, award-nominated Country Life (about the demise of rural living) to Tall Ships ( set in a West Country fishing village) and Roots and crowd pleasers like Santiago and his “historical” Cornish miners’ song Cousin Jack. 

Steve’s solo albums include Cruel River (2007), Track of Words-Retraced (2009) and Live in Somerset (2011).

Event details:

Saturday, February 20 7.30pm – Matthews Hall, Topsham, near Exeter.

Tickets £16 on (01392) 879107 or online at www.wegottickets.com/event/335913