A genre-defying live music night celebrating the legacies of David Byrne and Robert Burns, with supergroups performing Talking Heads classics and Burns poetry recitals.
Byrne's Night comes to Chalk on Thursday 21 January, as part of a 2027 UK tour. It's a night that celebrates two Scottish icons at once: the poet Robert Burns and the musician David Byrne. The whole thing was started by Dundee native Lola Stephen and Maddy O'Keefe, and it's built around a fairly specific format: supergroups of musicians from across the indie, punk and experimental scenes get together to play Talking Heads and David Byrne classics and deep cuts, with recitals of Robert Burns' poetry interspersed between the songs.
It began back in 2023 as a one-off show at Hackney's MOTH Club and quickly became one of London's most talked-about live music events, selling out in days and amassing a four-figure waiting list. This 2027 tour follows a sold-out four-date run earlier in the year and festival appearances at Green Man, Wide Awake, All Together Now and Latitude. It arrives as the 40th anniversary of Stop Making Sense coincides with the show's growing fame, which explains why the Talking Heads material is such a big part of the night.
Because the bands are put together for the occasion, the line-up changes from show to show, and the set mixes the well-known stuff with the deeper cuts. The poetry recitals are woven in between, so you get the music and the verse running side by side throughout the evening. It's a bit of an odd pairing on paper—the 18th-century poet and the art-pop frontman—but that's exactly the point of the night.
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Chalk is at 13 Pool Valley, Brighton, BN1 1NJ. The night runs from 18:00 to 22:00, and standard tickets are £22.50, though that's a guide price and subject to change.
