Music: Bellowhead

Jeff Hemmings talks to Andy Mellon
An 11-piece folk and brass band regularly playing venues of 1-3,000? Bellowhead are one of those bands who have surprised almost all by becoming a regular staple of the festival scene, and a popular live favourite; their shows an energetic and enthralling spectacle. The band play more than 20 instruments between them and six members sing, led by Jon Boden.

Formed by Boden and John Spiers, they famously worked out the band and its line up whilst sitting in a traffic jam one day. “Yes, that’s true,” says Andy Mellon, trumpeter with the band. “But also, Pete’s (Flood, drummer) mum was working with Jo Boden’s mum in a charity shop in Winchester, and they did that thing that mums do: ‘our sons really must work together at some point’. I had gone to university with Pete, Jon started talking to Pete, Pete knew the horn players, Jon and John (Spiers) knew the folkies.

“I remember our first meeting together, on a Sunday in Oxford; we did a photoshoot, we rehearsed and we recorded and then we did a little pub session. It was a very packed Sunday! We all left a little punch-drunk; ‘what was that, will that work?’ And it has.”

Remarkably, the line up has stayed very stable; nine of the original members are still with the band. Their third album, Hedonism, went on to become the highest selling independently released folk album of all time, catching the attention of Island Records, who released their Revival album earlier this year.

“It’s a massive coup for us to be signed to Island. We somehow managed to keep it a complete secret, kept it from social media, and we wrote and recorded it in complete secrecy. Then we announced it at the Royal Albert Hall on our tenth birthday. It was part of the drama of it all.

“The album was a lot of intensive work, and was recorded in a different way from the past where we’ve tried to be as live as we could; we would all be in Abbey Road, Studio 2, and play it through until the producer, John Leckie, was happy with it. With this one, it was done in sections. The rhythm section went to a recording studio in Wales, we (the horns) were on an island in the Thames during the floods, the strings went to a chapel in Lincolnshire, the vocals here and there. It was forensically recorded, we’d do things again if not exactly right. We’ve now got a highly produced, polished and tight recording which we’ll have to replicate. We’ve created a rod for our back!” laughs Andy.

“It has been amazing, we have to pinch ourselves. It’s not been an overnight success; it’s been over ten years, which helps. We’re also a cynical bunch. We can’t quite believe our own press, and like a normal family we don’t want anyone’s head to get too big, either. That’s kept us quite grounded.”

Concert Hall, Brighton Dome,
Tues 18 Nov, 7pm, £26/21

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