Four London Gigs for Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers, Promoting Songs from Forthcoming Album, How Much Is A Life Worth?

Over the month of July, my band The Four Fathers have four gigs in south east London, and we hope that, if you’re around, you’ll come and see us — and even if you’re not around, we hope that you’ll check out our music, and even buy a download or two!

In the last few months, we’ve been releasing songs from our forthcoming second album, How Much Is A Life Worth? — Close Guantánamo, which I wrote for the Close Guantánamo campaign, and with a new verse dealing with the menace posed by Donald Trump, Dreamers, a song about friendship and parenthood, which I wrote for a friend’s 50th birthday, and, most recently, two of our hardest-hitting political songs, Riot, which warns politicians about what to expect if the poorer members of society are relentlessly exploited and treated with contempt, and London, a love song to the city that has been my home for the last 32 years, in which I reflect with sorrow and anger on how the UK capital’s wildness and its relentless and persistent state of dissent in the 80s and 90s has been tamed — or bludgeoned — by greed over the last 20 years, and how, sadly, the recent disaster at Grenfell Tower in west London is the most distressing outcome of this institutional disdain for the poor.

Other key songs we play live include our anthemic anti-austerity song, Fighting Injustice, our cover of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War (from our debut album, Love and War), the folk song Rebel Soldier that I put to a reggae tune in Brixton in the 1980s, and other songs not yet released — How Much Is A Life Worth?, about how white people perceive the value of their lives against those of (i) the victims of our wars, (ii) refugees and (iii) in the US, black people killed by the police, and Equal Rights and Justice For All, about the importance of habeas corpus. A recent addition is Stand Down Theresa, our updated version of the Beat’s classic protest song, Stand Down Margaret. A rough but energetic version of Stand Down Theresa is on video here.

We intend to release the album, How Much Is A Life Worth? on CD in autumn, and if you have an idea about where to launch it do let us know. Likewise, do get in touch if you want us to play — at a festival, a pub gig, a community event or a party — or just to say hello. Also let us know if you’d like to be on our mailing list. We can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Below is a list of the gigs:

Friday July 7, 7pm, £3: New Cross Inn, 323 New Cross Rd, London SE14 6AS
We’re on at 8pm, playing a 45-minute set in this legendary live venue, with its great sound system. Also playing: Norell & the Dub Factory, Operation Offbeat and the Skamonics. See the Facebook page here.

Saturday July 8, 12.50pm, free: Lewisham People’s Day, Stage Bus, Mountsfield Park, London SE6 1AN
It’s an early start, but do come along if you can to the borough of Lewisham’s biggest annual event. The sound quality is excellent on this stage, and there are plenty of food and craft stalls, and lots more live music to keep you and your family entertained all day. Check out the Stage Bus line-up here.

Wednesday July 12, 8pm, free: The Five Bells, 155 New Cross Road, London SE14 5DJ
This is our first gig at this long-standing boozer in New Cross, which has recently begun focusing on up and coming live music. We intend to properly rock the place with our rock and reggae militancy!
Support from two talented locals — singer-songwriter Asher Baker, who was on the same bill with us at the New Cross Inn last November, and beatbox poet The Wiz-RD — my 17-year old son Tyler, who is part of the BAC Beatbox Academy at Battersea Arts Centre, and is on Facebook here.
The Facebook page for The Five Bells is here.

Saturday July 22, 4pm, free: Arts Cafe, Manor Park, London SE13 5QZ
A one-hour set outdoors at one of our favourite venues — the lovely Arts Cafe in Manor Park, a beautiful little park by the River Quaggy on the border of Lewisham and Lee run by Banu and Fred. Given that it’s in the afternoon, and in a family-friendly venue, we tend to play some mellower material at the Arts Cafe, which we’ve played many times before, so expect our love songs (like this and Dreamers), our cover of Bob Dylan’s Forever Young, and our unexpected cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive as well as our political songs. The Facebook page for the Arts Cafe is here.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.