Cleckheaton Folk Festival to celebrate 25 years (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Cleckheaton Folk Festival to celebrate 25 years

11:00am Thursday 31st May 2012 in Spen

Hundreds of performers will be heading to Cleckheaton in July for the town’s 25th folk festival.

Topping the bill at the opening night concert on Friday, July 6, will be singer-songwriter Vin Garbutt, who has been entertaining festival audiences for more than four decades.

Headlining the Saturday concert are Coope Boyes & Simpson, three men who have been singing together for the past 20 years on stages throughout Britain, Europe and the US, performing a mixture of self-penned and traditional numbers in harmony.

Bringing the weekend to an end as stars of the Sunday concert are Nancy Kerr on fiddle and James Fagan on guitar accompanying their own vocals. The pair have already won two BBC Folk Duo of the Year awards.

One of the festival organisers, Jim Saville, said: “These three acts, good as they are, are only a minor part of the line up which contains dozens of singers and musicians, dozens of street entertainers, a handful of storytellers and poets and more than a dozen full dance teams, as well as many many amateur performers in the sing-a-rounds and instrumental sessions throughout the weekend and a rare performance by the iconic Hammer and Shears Theatre Company.”

Among the other acts will be Copper Kettle, who have been to almost all of Cleckheaton’s previous 24 festivals, singer-guitarist Russ Hughes and musician, singer and humourist Bruce Michael Baillie.

Folk rock group Blackstone Edge, ceilidh band Heretique and their caller Ron Darnborough and local singer-songwriter Philip Cockerham accompanied by bass player David Bowie Jnr are all from the local scene.

From further afield comes a trio of Hartlepool youngsters, The Young Un’s, who are taking the shanty and folk music world by storm.

For young visitors and the young at heart there will also be lots of street entertainers including Mark Mark productions with a new act guaranteed to go with a bang and larger than life characters known as Chicks on Sticks, together with the Wizard from Pendle.

To find out more about what’s on over the festival weekend, go to cleckheatonfolkfestival.org.