Kate Rusby - Holly Head (2019)

Forever proud to call herself folk singer, Kate Rusby’s beautiful, expressive vocals never fail to connect the emotional heart of a song to that of her audience. Famously down to earth, for over twenty years Kate’s engaging personality and sharp Yorkshire wit have further endeared her to concert goers everywhere.

And it is in her special Christmas concerts that all these elements combine to exquisite effect.

Indeed, after over fifteen years of enchanting audiences up and down the land, Kate’s Christmas tour – so wondrously captured on her 2013 Live At Christmas concert DVD – has, for many, become as much a part of the festivities as Christmas pudding itself! Warm and inviting, spicy and sparkly she and her marvellous band – joined as ever by a sublime brass quintet – embody the sounds and joyous spirit of the best Christmases ever!

Kate’s band of merry musicians this December will comprise of;

Damien O’Kane on guitar, electric tenor guitar and banjo
Steven Byrnes on bouzouki
Nick Cooke on diatonic accordion
Duncan Lyall on double bass and moog
And not to forget the fabulous Brass Boys.

A Kate Rusby Christmas concert perpetuates the tradition of Yorkshire carols, which means that each show evokes the spirit of a crowded pub. Kate sat in the corner of that crowded pub when she was a child, so the songs she brings to these shows are in her bones, a deep seam of personal experience to be mined. For over two hundred years, from late-November to New Year’s Day, North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire communities would congregate on Sunday lunchtimes, in their local public house, to belt out their own versions of familiar carols, carols that were often frowned upon by the church in Victorian times as ‘too happy’

Kate’s happiness, her humour and her storytelling are a feature of her live shows. Each auditorium becomes her pub or her front room, and we are her welcomed and well-cared-for guests.

To date, Kate has released four albums of songs and carols from this marvellous Yorkshire-inspired tradition and this year’s Christmas tour will mainly showcase tracks from her new 5th Christmas album Holly Head release date 29th November 2019.

Hugely spirited but undoubtedly family affairs, Kate’s concerts celebrate what makes Christmas so special and so much fun as she and her fellow musicians perform fabulous songs brimful of the goodwill and spirituality of the season and in doing so put smiles on faces and joy in our hearts.