Bellowhead play their Burlesque 20th anniversary tour, with support from Seckou Keita, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.
Bellowhead play the Cambridge Corn Exchange on Thursday 19 November, as part of their Burlesque 20th Anniversary Tour. They're an eleven-piece folk outfit that formed in 2004, and they've spent the years since carving out a bit of a niche for themselves in British music. They describe their sound as wild, joyous, perverse, bold and mostly big, and they've got the numbers to back it up: more than twenty instruments shared between them and six vocalists fronting the whole thing. The music pulls from folk, jazz, classical, disco and world music, all woven around English song and cabaret.
This tour is built around Burlesque, their full-length debut from twenty years ago. It's the record that first put them on the map, and it's where songs like 'London Town', 'Frog's Legs', 'Dragon's Teeth' and 'Rigs of The Time' come from. It also set the tone for what they'd become known for: a blend of traditional English folk and a modern big-band sound. That first album was followed by four more studio records, over a quarter of a million copies sold, two silver discs and eight BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, before the band called it a day in 2016.
They didn't stay away for long, though. A record-breaking online stream during the pandemic brought them back together, and sold-out tours in 2022 and 2024 reaffirmed their place as one of the biggest and most in-demand folk acts in the UK. This anniversary run is the next chapter, with the debut album taking centre stage.
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Opening the night is Seckou Keita, so you'll get two acts on the bill. The Bellowhead set starts at 19:30, and tickets are £38 to £58 including the booking fee.
