A night of a cappella sea shanties from the Cornish folk group Fisherman's Friends at The Hexagon Theatre.
Fisherman's Friends are playing The Hexagon Theatre in Reading on Sunday 25 April 2027, starting at 6:30pm. It's a night of a cappella sea shanties, so no instruments on stage — just voices. They're a Cornish folk group who've been singing old sea songs together on the Platt, the harbour front in their Port Isaac hometown, since the mid-1990s. They were arguably the first modern group to bring shanty singing back into the mainstream, and they've stayed with that same sound ever since.
Their rise was a bit of a story in itself. In 2010, they signed a million-pound record deal with Universal, a move that shifted them from their lives as fishermen and coastguards into the national folk music spotlight. Their album Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends went Gold, and they became the first traditional folk act to land a UK top ten album. The whole thing was later told in the feel-good movie Fisherman's Friends, released in 2019, and since then they've played huge festivals, including the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, toured regularly and starred in a musical.
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What they do is straightforward: they sing old sea songs in harmony, without any backing. They describe the show as a night of joyous harmony, infectious folk songs and more than a barrel o' laughs. Tickets start at £32.45, which includes the booking fee, and the set kicks off at 6:30pm at The Hexagon.
