The Farm would like to thank you all for your support in 2015 and wish you a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.
We played some memorable gigs this year including headlining Farmfeast in June and Fuzzfest in July. We also played an acoustic gig at the legendary Jazz Café in London that went down brilliantly.
In August once again we were part of the superb Liverpool International Music Festival and were involved a night that looked at the roots of Liverpool music called ‘Routes Jukebox’ put together by producer Steve Levine. We covered 1960s classics ‘How Do You Do It’ and ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying’ as well as playing some of our own material.
In the autumn, the full band played the excellent Shiine ‘Weekender’ Festival at Minehead with an assorted bill including Peter Hook, The Inspiral Carpets and The Happy Mondays. It was a truly emotional experience to see 7000 people singing All Together Now at the top of their voices.
Crowd at Shiiine Weekender 2015
We also celebrated the 25th anniversary of our singles Stepping, Stone Groovy Train and All Together Now. To mark the anniversary of All Together Now we visited some of our old haunts in Soho and were joined by some familiar faces.
Kevin Sampson and Suggs
Group of friends in Soho for 25th Anniversary
In November completely out of the blue we received a phone call from Simon Moran the MD of SJM promotions asking us if we fancied doing the Pastures Old and New album complete with the brass section. Simon had been a big fan of those songs and wanted to hear them live again. Two gigs were arranged one for Leeds (a 1980s stronghold when the album was released and of course Liverpool).
Ben Leach makes a welcome return for the With Love from Liverpool Concert in aid of Syrian Refugees
The plaque dedicated to The Farm at The Casa
After an intense rehearsal schedule we played two memorable gigs that we really enjoyed. We hope to get into the studio in 2016 as we have new material to record and we also might take a look again at some of the tracks from Pastures Old and New that went down so well at the gigs.
Fundraisers in 2015
In April 2015 we took part in a sellout fundraiser at the Philharmonic Hall for the Casa Liverpool organised by the journalist Brian Reade – after a night of music and entertainment from the likes of John Bishop, Mark Steel, Neil Fitzmaurice, Chris Cairns and John Power we ended the proceedings. We were very proud that a few weeks later a plaque was put up in the Casa to recognise our contribution in keeping this valuable community resource open.
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/merseyside-stars-perform-casa-solidarity-9070366
A special thanks to Leigh Mullin who has helped us with our social media and website and to Pete & Peasy at Porcupine Management.
All the best
Peter Hooton