Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Play Three London Gigs in New Cross, Deptford and Brockley on Nov. 27, Dec. 10 and 17

Following the recent release of our new song, ‘Close Guantánamo,’ my band The Four Fathers have three gigs forthcoming in London in the coming weeks, and if you’re around we’d love to see you.

The song was featured in a video (on YouTube and Facebook) for the Close Guantánamo campaign, launched last week, just after Donald Trump’s unfortunate election victory, which, sadly, makes it seems less, rather than more likely that Guantánamo will be closed unless, before he leaves office in January, President Obama can fulfill the promise to close the prison that he first made on his second day in office.

As the last verse of the song states:

Obama promised to close the prison for good
On his second day in office
But Republicans resisted his plans
And he lacked the political will to do it

But as the years drag on and on
And the men still held get older and iller
Endless imprisonment without charge or trial
Is what it always was — a form of torture

On Sunday November 27 at 7.45pm, we’re playing at the New Cross Inn, 323 New Cross Road, SE14 6AS, supporting Jake & the Jellyfish, a punk-folk band (with a touch of ska) from Leeds, who have “toured extensively in a beat up old post office van bringing an energetic atmosphere and drunken sing alongs to venues across the UK and mainland Europe.” They’re on at 10.15, preceded by “playful” singer-songwriter Gecko at 9.15 and the rootsy, rock and ska-influenced Dem Bones at 8.30. Preceding us are Sweater Songs at 5.30, The Lone Groover at 6.15 and Asher Baker at 7pm — all for just a fiver. The Facebook page is here.

As well as playing ‘Close Guantánamo,’ we also intend to play other songs from our forthcoming second album — ‘Riot’ and ‘London’, about the need to stem the greed that is eating away at our society, ‘Equal Rights and Justice for All’, about the importance of habeas corpus, and ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’, asking how much black lives, Muslim lives and foreign lives are worth to the warmongers of the western powers (and the US police). We’ll also play live favourites ‘Fighting Injustice’ and ‘Tory Bullshit Blues,’ so we hope you can join us.

On Saturday December 10, from 7pm, we’re playing at Vinyl, 4 Tanners Hill, Deptford, London SE8 4PH, supported by teenage beatboxer and spoken word performer, The Wiz-RD. Entry is free. December 10 is Human Rights Day, celebrating the UN’s ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, so we’re planning first to jam on the theme of the UDHR at 7.30 (feel free to come and join in!), followed by The Wiz-RD at 8pm, and The Four Fathers at 8.30. We’ll play a similar set to the New Cross Inn, but with a few love songs also thrown in for good measure. The event page on Facebook is here, and please also check out Vinyl here. This will be our fourth appearance at this very cool record shop — see here, here, here and here for our earlier shows.

On Saturday December 17, we’re playing at the Brockley Christmas Market, on Coulgate Street by Brockley Station, London SE4. The market, organised by Brockley Cross Action Group, and with dozens of stalls selling food, drink and arts and crafts, runs from 12-6, although times for the various performers have not yet been established, but it’s worth coming along for the afternoon. Entry to the whole event, of course, is free. This will be third time we’ve played at the Christmas Market — check out our earlier appearances here, here and here — and we’ll be playing three or four songs.

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.