Letchworth Music Shop

The Bookshop Band write songs inspired by books, and will be playing in independent bookshops and literary festivals in the UK between June and July 2012. To rejuvenate traditional ‘author evenings, the band would read the forthcoming author’s book in advance and write two songs based upon it, to be performed at the start of the evening. Their performances are inextricably linked to the books themselves, as the members of the band take it in turns to describe where the inspiration for each song came from.

After the band recorded and released their first CD, Travels From Your Armchair, they were picked up by radio DJ Tom Robinson who played them on his national Introducing show on BBC 6Music. More recently the band had a 10- minute feature on Kirsty Lang’s culture show, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, and the band appeared on BBC 1 as part of a news feature on Britain’s independent bookshops They have completed 18 author events, and written 36 songs inspired by 21 diverse books, from Andrew Miller’s “Pure” (2011 Costa Novel of the Year) to China Mieville’s acclaimed science-fiction novel “Embassytown” and from Edmund De Waal’s multi-award winning “The Hare with the Amber Eye” to “Death and the Penguin” by the master of post-Communist Ukrainian satire, Andrey Kurkov.

 The Band:  Beth Porter has played with Peter Gabriel and currently tours with Eliza Carthy. She has also recorded for Newton Faulkner, The Unthanks, and Maximo Park. Ben Please is part of indie-folk band Urusen, who have recently recorded an album at Peter Gabriel’s Realworld Studio with platinum-selling producer Steve Osborne (KT Tunstall, The Happy Mondays, U2, Doves). Poppy Pitt is an artist and sculptor, and tours with her own band, Poppy and Friends. The Bookshop Band also produce music for films, most recently with Ben writing, and Beth involved in recording, the orchestral score for a short animation called The Eagleman Stag, which won the 2011 BAFTA for Best Short Animation.