BBC award winner’s next up at Nettlebed

LAST year saw Bella Hardy named folk singer of the year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

It was an achievement she followed up in March with her seventh solo album,

With The Dawn — which the

Financial Times awarded five stars and the

Sunday Times hailed as “nothing short of a masterpiece”.



Now she and her band are bringing their live show to Nettlebed Village Club on Monday (October 26).

As Bella tells it,

With The Dawn is an account of one year of her life.

Where previously she had adapted and explored traditional ballads and fables to tell her contemporary folk tales, the stories that inspired these songs are her own experiences: good and bad, happy or sad.

With The Dawn is more intimate and reflective music than before. The arrangements are more instinctive, more reactive, as befits the mind-set that informed the lyrics.

Vivid brass gives way to lonesome piano; choral voices peal; banjos emerge out of beats and blips.

Elements of the initial demos, sometimes recorded into a phone as the thoughts occurred, have been kept. Whatever instrument was nearest to hand was grabbed and deployed whenever and wherever (even on one occasion in the bath), giving

With The Dawn its striking immediacy.

Touring with her new With The Dawn Band, Bella is joined by regular stage companion Anna Massie (Blazin’ Fiddles), the album’s producer Ben Seal (Urban Farm Hand), Tim Lane (The Hidden Orchestra) and Tom Gibbs, in a powerful and evocative collaboration of voice and fiddle, banjo and guitar, piano and keys, electronics and drums.

Tickets for Monday’s show are £13.50 in advance or £14.50 on the door. Doors open at 8pm. To book, call 01628 636620 or visit www.nettlebedfolkclub.co.uk