The Demon Barbers are looking for a freestyle breaker to perform as part of their shows at The Astrolabe Theatre Tent, Glastonbury this year.

As an extra to their high energy live music and dance extravaganza The Demon Barbers will be hosting a short beatbox and hip hop jam

3 dancers from their ‘Disco At The Tavern’ show will also take part in the jam along with Finn Barmer (Beatbox) and members of the Demon Barbers band.

We have 1 free ticket available for an extra dancer to join us this year. The ticket will give full entry to the festival along with access to camping in the Theatre & Circus artists area, backstage facilities & bar!

Dates are Fri 24th, Sat 25th, Sun 26th

If you fit the bill and would like to perform at Glastonbury Festival this year please get in touch ASAP!

Contact: laura@thedemonbarbers.co.uk 

 

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Leeds Rapper sword team ‘The Wardrobe Outlaws’ are looking for enthusiastic dancers to join them at Cleckheaton Folk Festival on Saturday the 2nd of July where they will be performing alongside us and many others. Lead by hip hop & rapper dancer and choreographer Bobak Walker, he will be putting you through your paces and creating a fun filled dance guaranteed to wow the crowd!

Workshops will take place on:

Sunday the 19th June 10 – 5pm
Sunday the 26th June 10 – 5pm
Monday the 27th June 6 – 9pm

Venue: Leeds TBC

 

If you are interested in this exciting project, please contact laura@thedemonbarbers.co.uk.

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It’s an exciting time for the Demon Barbers and Breaking Tradition dance company. We’re currently working on; ‘The Lock In Christmas Carol’ – A Christmas version of our hip hop and folk dance extravaganza, ‘The Sleepover’ – A magical music and dance show for children and families, and we’re constantly developing our XL show that we perform at venues and festivals all over the UK. With so much going on, our troop of clog dancers needs to expand. If you’re interested in taking part, then please get in touch with laura@thedemonbarbers.co.uk. All we need is your name, location and a short CV of your experience in performing. Happy clogging!

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We are very excited to move our offices to Kala Sangam, a vibrant, intercultural arts centre in the heart of Bradford. Kala Sangam houses many exciting events and artistic companies. They also provide an Academy of language, dance and music; performances in their theatre space; available function rooms and rehearsal spaces for hire; regular networking events; outreach work in schools and communities as well as a lively café that leads straight on to the beautiful Bradford cathedral.

Photo 2 for blog 3-6-15 Kala Sangam

Kala Sangam has recently received funding from ACE Capital Grant to completely refurbish St Peter’s house. They hope this grant will help build on their already successful arts centre by reducing energy costs and working towards a more sustainable and resilient organisation.

We hope this move will bring new opportunities and partnerships for The Demon Barbers and the Breaking Tradition dance company and we look forward to experiencing what this great space has to offer!

If you are interested in working with us on any of our music and dance projects, please contact our Artistic Director Damien Barber on damien@thedemonbarbers.co.uk or just drop in and say hi!

Please use the following address for any future correspondence:

Breaking Tradition
Kala Sangam Arts Centre
St Peter’s House
1 Forster Ct
Bradford
BD1 4TY

 

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The Demon Barbers are looking for singers to take part in a project with Cleckheaton Folk Festival and Creative Scene, an arts project that commissions, programmes and produces projects in North Kirklees, West Yorkshire.

Our fiddler player and vocalist, Bryony Griffith, will be running 4 workshops on Tues 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th June to create a small repertoire to perform at the festival on Sat 2nd July.

The workshops will be open to all intermediate & advanced singers and will be held in Cleckheaton at 7.30pm (please arrive around 7.20pm)

St John’s Church
Church St
Cleckheaton
BD19 3RN

The group will join up with singers from Batley Community Choir for two performances at 2pm and 9.30pm on Sat 2nd July. The afternoon performance will be informal with the evening performance being part of the official Festival concert which will also feature The Demon Barbers XL.

Please contact damien@thedemonbarbers.co.uk if you would like to take part!

logo

Creative Scene Full Colour

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The Sleepover

Arts Council England award The Demon Barbers & Breaking Tradition dance company funding for a new children’s Folk & Hip Hop Dance extravaganza!

Inspired by The Nutcracker and following the success of the UK’s first Folk & Hip Hop dance extravaganza, The Lock In, the Breaking Tradition dance company comes together again for a magical fusion of music, dance and comedy suitable for all the family. With music provided by the BBC award winning Demon Barbers along with clogging rag dolls, sword dancing soldiers and Jack in the Boxes bursting with break beats, The Sleepover is guaranteed to have children bouncing on the edge of their seats while catapulting them into a magical world where all dances are equal.

The company will be researching & developing ideas for the new show in early April with a showing of a 20-minute pilot at Yorkshire Dance, Leeds on Friday 15th April at 1pm. The showing will be open to arts organisations & practitioners, venues and family audiences.

Following the performance of the pilot there will be a 30 min feedback session followed by practical workshops for children in clog, rapper sword, morris and Hip Hop dance.

Those wishing to attend should contact Yorkshire Dance on 0113 243 8765. Places are limited so please book early.

 

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Thanks to everyone who voted for us at this year’s Folking Awards!

Best Album 2016 ‘Disco At The Tavern’

Produced by Grammy Award winners Donal Hodgson and Kipper

And you can buy a copy direct from us (via Paypal) for only £12 inc p+p!



🙂

Or please send a cheque made out to The Demon Barbers:

PO BOX 467
Haworth
W.Yorks
BD22 8WS

Listen here (clips of 3 selected tracks, Ranzo/May Song/Bitter Withy, in right hand column)

 

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The Demon Barbers XL is now taking bookings for Festivals in 2016

This year they’ve captivated capacity crowds at Festivals like Glastonbury, Cambridge, Warwick, Shrewsbury, Sidmouth and more with their original, dynamic, high energy music & dance extravaganza ‘Disco At The Tavern’.

If you would to find out more about booking them for your festival then please get in touch with Damien direct damien@thedemonbarbers.co.uk

If you’re new to the Demon Barbers then please check out our promo video!

 

 

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The Demon Barbers XL is coming to Birmingham Town Hall on Thu 22nd Oct and we’re currently looking for dance groups to display outside the venue prior to the show at 7.30pm

These displays have been very successful over the past few years with around 150 dance groups with more than 2000 dancers displaying before and after our shows. A great opportunity to recruit from a sympathetic audience!

If you are interested in your team or group dancing then please contact laura@thedemonbarbers.co.uk

Any dance genre welcome!

Discounted tickets available to the show for all dancers.

Hope to see you there!

Damien

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‘They’re like a folk analogue of Ian Dury & The Blockheads, who had their own form of music subversion and made dance music perfectly acceptable to the rock/pop/punk community in the late 70s’

fR383 REVIEWS PAGE 61_blownup copy

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“Not so much that veritable melting pot, but a cauldron of cauldrons, an alloy of more precious metals than you can poke a stick at…..just fabulous throughout!”

You can almost hear that din! That’s the sound of the Folk Police in frantic pursuit of Damien Barber, his Demon Barbers, and an absolute multitude of cohorts, that is! Their crime? Nigh on an hour of audacious musical subordination! Rules broken, re-invented, and smashed to smithereens…..almost every conceivable genre and sub genre of music made to embrace and forge a musical alliance……it’s actually easier to list the forms not engulfed than those that are….so here goes! There’s no death metal or Tuvan Throat-singing evident, but that may well appear on the next album….seriously don’t be surprised if it does!

‘Disco at the Tavern’ is a ‘celebration of fifteen years of mayhem’, and what a celebration it is. Main vocals as you would expect are courtesy of Damien himself….other than that, it’s a free for all…..musical Twister! A melee of guitars, fiddles, keys and piano, melodeons and concertinas, bass, sax, and as you would expect on a ground breaking folkathon such as this, scratching and samples, and of course hip hop beatbox! Not so much that veritable melting pot, but a cauldron of cauldrons, an alloy of more precious metals than you can poke a stick at…..just fabulous throughout!

The album contains predominately traditional works, though rather than resting on their laurels and keeping tradition (like so many others do) breathing with the help of some ramshackle life support machine, The Demon Barbers have taken these songs firmly by the scruff of the neck, shaken them from their induced coma, and given them a good hard talking to, a firm kick up the backside and forced them to welcome with open arms their very distant cousins…..it works, it works very well, and there is genuinely not a single lull in the entire fifty seven minutes and sixteen seconds…..

So should the aforementioned Folk Police have anywhere near enough energy to apprehend this villain of the peace, well fear ye not! Lock them away and throw away the key they may, but such is the ingenuity of this crew that every thrash, crash, thump and bash of their certain bolt for freedom is likely to be recorded, chopped, played in reverse to form the basis for some future reconstituted masterpiece….chuck in a hip hop beat, a concertina, Damien’s assured vocals and of course an eighteenth century tale of seafaring woe…..and there we have it! Yep, it’s a keeper! It’s a grower too! It’s, as it says on the back cover, ‘a celebration of fifteen years of mayhem’……so what did you expect for goodness sake?!

James Cosgrove

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Our very own fiddle player and singer Bryony Griffith’s solo album Nightshade has been nominated for Best Trad Folk Album in The 2015 Spiral Earth Awards! The Spiral Awards celebrate the music featured on the site from January to December 2014. The ‘Trad Folk’ category covers albums that “mix traditional songs and tunes with original compositions and interpretations to create something new and vibrant”.
Nightshade has received 5 star reviews and featured in the Telegraph’s Top Ten Folk Treats. Bryony was a runner-up in The Froots Critics Awards and was also nominated for Best Artist and Best Newcomer in The Songlines Awards.

Voting is open to the public and closes at noon on Tuesday 14 April 2015.

The results will be announced on Wednesday 15 April.

Click here to cast your vote!

 

“Bursting at the seams with a joyful love for English fiddle music. The breadth of experience that Griffith has is pretty mind boggling” – Spiral Earth

“A solo album of great power and magnificence. She sings beautifully and knows how to kick out a song and does it brilliantly. Wow, what a great voice.” – Mike Harding

“Fantastic! Such a lovely style and choice of material” – Norma Waterson

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Disco At The Tavern (2015)

Celebrating 15 years of mayhem!

Our new album by Grammy Award winning producers Donal Hodgson and Kipper.

Launch date 17th April 2015

£12 inc p+p



Or please send a cheque made out to The Demon Barbers to:

Kala Sangam Arts Centre
St Peter’s House
1 Forster Ct
Bradford
BD1 4TY

🙂

Track List

  1. Intro
  2. Wild Goose Shanty
  3. May Song
  4. Bitter Withy
  5. Aye fly
  6. Rambling Rover
  7. Sally Free & Easy
  8. Sir Lionel & The Boar
  9. Three Ravens
  10. Two Brothers
  11. Swimming Song
  12. Chemical Worker’s Song
  13. Disco At The Tavern

Running time approx 57m mins

 

Damien Barber: Vocals, acoustic guitar & English concertina
Bryony Griffith: Vocals & fiddle
Will Hampson: Melodeons and button accordion
Ben Griffith: Drums, vocals, percussion & electric guitar
Matt Crum: Keys, piano & soprano sax
Angus Milne: Bass & double bass

Special guests:

Emlyn Vaughan: Bass on tracks 2, 9, 11
Tim Yates: Bass on tracks 3, 6, 7
Ali Mac: Percussion
The Wilson Family: Vocals
DJ Wax On: Scratching & samples
Finn Barmer: Beatbox

Becky Eden Green: Alto sax
Kipper: Additional acoustic guitar and keys
Laura Connolly: Clogs
Tiny Taylor: Clogs
Sheena McKerrell: Claps

Ali Mac appears by courtesy of Virgin EMI Records

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Over the last few years The Lock In dance shows have been supported by over 150 dance groups, with nearly 2000 dancers, taking part in pre-show dance displays.

We’re now hoping to continue where we left off by inviting dance groups (Morris, Hip Hop, Clog, Appalachian, Street, Sword, Molly…in fact pretty much any style or genre!) to display before The Demon Barbers XL shows in April & May

The Demon Barbers XL is a development of The Demon Barber Roadshow which won ‘Best Live Act’ @ BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2009 and involves a 7 piece band plus some of the Clog, Sword, Morris & Hip Hop dancers from The Lock In

We really appreciate all the support that dance groups have given us over the years and will happily return the favour by promoting your group on a special section of our website and through our social media.

And of course we have also arranged discounted tickets with the venues for groups displaying.

Please check our tour dates to see if there is a venue near you (NB  – not all venues give us the go ahead for displays or offer discounted tickets. Please contact us for more info)

If you would like to take part please contact laura@thedemonbarbers.co.uk

We’re a bit behind on the promotion for these displays due to finishing off our new album ‘Disco At The Tavern’ so please help spread the word!

Thanks!

 

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We’ll be releasing some of our tracks from our new album on this post in the run up to the official launch on Fri 17th April.

Here’s the remix of our promo for the album, this time featuring The Wilson Family!

We’re uploading to Sound Cloud to give you full CD quality and also You tube for sharing. For optimum enjoyment please listen with good quality headphones or through your Hifi.

Copies of Disco At The Tavern are available NOW!

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