Protest Music: Forthcoming Gigs by Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers, April to June 2018

It’s been some time since I last posted about the activities of my band The Four Fathers, so here’s an update following our most recent appearances — at a protest against the proposed redevelopment of Walthamstow’s main square, on February 24, and as part of the Telegraph Hill Festival, with our friends the Commie Faggots, on March 16, a wonderful and very well attended protest music double bill.

Since I last wrote about the band, people have, we’re glad to note, continued to listen to us on Bandcamp (and we’ve even sold a few CDs!), and our video of ‘Grenfell’, the song I wrote after last June’s entirely preventable fire in west London, in which over 70 people died, has now had nearly 1,650 views on YouTube and Facebook.

We’re planning to record it soon, along with our anti-Brexit anthem, ‘I Want My Country Back (From the People Who Wanted Their Country Back)’, and we’ve also been working on new material — new songs about the history of the counter-culture, and about so-called “affordable” housing, and a positive anthem about solidarity and resistance — and some covers, with Aswad’s ‘Not Satisfied’ inching closer to a public outing. I was also recently interviewed for an article about protest music in Artefact Magazine, produced by students at London College of Communications, following up on another protest music interview, for the Icelandic website, Shouts!

If you haven’t yet heard it, below, via Bandcamp, is our new album, ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?‘ Feel free to have a listen, and if you like it please consider buying a CD or buying it as a download.

So below is some information about forthcoming gigs. We hope to see you out and about somewhere over the next few months, and if you would like us to support a worthy cause, and/or to play at a festival, a pub or a party, do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

This Saturday, April 7, guitarist Richard Clare and I are playing at Protestival, a one-day festival at the Crown and Anchor, 15-16 Marine Parade, Eastbourne BN21 3DX, running from 3-10pm. It’s £15 for the day, but the entertainment will be non-stop, so we reckon it’s pretty good value. Dave Randall (ex-guitarist of Faithless) will be there talking about his hit book, ’Sound System’, about protest music, plus street activist Charlie X talking about his long history of silent protests dressed as Charlie Chaplin, and much, much more. Tickets are available from Pebble Records and the Facebook page is here. It’s organised by Eastbourne People’s Assembly, with proceeds going to the Matthew 25 Mission for their work in supporting some of the most vulnerable people in Eastbourne.

On Sunday April 29, bassist Mark Quiney and I are playing in Old Tidemill Garden on Reginald Road, Deptford, London SE8 4RS, the lovely community garden whose destruction — and that of the block of council flats next door — was approved by Lewisham Council last September, and recently confirmed by London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, despite him promising that there would be no further estate destructions without ballots. Grass-roots resistance to this proposed destruction is ongoing, with the council urged to come up with new plans that spare the garden and the flats. Mark and I will be playing (hopefully with members of the all-women ukulele group Ukadelix) as part of a day of short films about the housing crisis — with music — as part of the New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival. The event page is here.

On Monday April 30, I’m also attending a screening of ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, a new documentary film about the housing crisis, which I narrate, in Sanford Co-Op, also as part of the New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival. The event page for that is here, and the Facebook page is here.

On Saturday May 12, The Four Fathers are playing at the Hither Green Festival Food & Craft Fair, in the bandstand in Mountsfield Park, Stainton Road, London SE6 1AN, from 3.10-3.40pm. 
This is the opening day of the Hither Green Festival, which has previously taken place by the Clock Tower in the former hospital site that was converted into housing next to the park. We played last year with a number of other bands and had a great time, and I hope that there’s a lot of delicious food available from all around the world as there was last year. Check out the website here.

On Sunday May 13, The Four Fathers are playing a ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ benefit gig (£3 entry) that I’m organising at the New Cross Inn, 323 New Cross Road, London SE14 6AS, which runs from 7-11pm, with the Commie Faggots, Ukadelix, local poet Jazzman John, rapper Asher Baker, 18-year old beatboxer The Wiz-RD (fresh from his role in the 5-star Battersea Arts Centre show ‘Frankenstein’), and the Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir. ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ is the group I set up in November to provide a focal point for the various campaigns to protect social housing and community space in the London borough of Lewisham, and this is a fundraiser for the campaigns — against the destruction of Achilles Street estate in New Cross, as well as Old Tidemill Garden and Reginald House in Deptford, mentioned above. The first gig, a great night of bands, rappers and spoken word artists, was at the Bird’s Nest in November.
The Facebook page for the New Cross Inn event is here.

On Friday May 25, The Four Fathers are heading to east London, to Clapton, to play at the Royal Sovereign, 64 Northwold Road, London E5 8RL, with the Commie Faggots, who have a monthly residency there. We’re really looking forward to it! 8pm start, we reckon, but we’ll probably be on more like 9.30 or 10, as our drummer Bren will have to get into town from Surrey and then get his kit halfway across London!

On Saturday May 26, The Four Fathers are playing at the Arts Cafe, Manor Park, Lewisham, London SE13 5QZ, from 3-4.15 pm, as part of the Hither Green Festival. We’ve played many times before at this lovely community arts cafe run by Fred and Banu, and look forward to returning for the first time in 2018, as part of a whole line-up of fringe events. Our set is followed by The New Crusaders, playing instrumental versions of the songs of the Crusaders.

On Friday June 8, The Four Fathers are playing at the Chandos, 56 Brockley Rise, London SE23 1LN, from 8pm to midnight, as part of the Brockley Max Festival, with beatboxer The Wiz-RD and the Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir.

And finally, for now, on Saturday June 9, The Four Fathers are playing at Art in the Park in Hilly Fields, London SE4, also as part of the Brockley Max Festival. Music runs all afternoon, and we’re not sure yet when we’ll be playing, but it will, as always, be a great afternoon so long as the rain stays away — and even then, of course, we’d work out how to have a good time anyway! UPDATE May 13: We’ve just heard we’re NOT playing Art in the Park, apparently.

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 music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (click on the following for Amazon in 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), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from six years of bike rides around the 120 postcodes of the capital.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of a new documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London.

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, The Complete Guantánamo Files, 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.