Penny for the Workhouse

Livestock Festival Part 4

Penny for the Workhouse are all that is good with new music.  Deliciously quirky, wonderfully witty with a style of music that somehow manages to capture the east end music hall and make it fresh.  

I'm a London girl, and our very own musical heritage seems to almost embarrass us, there is an appetite for the reworking of celtic folk songs something that the bad boys and girl of folk, Skinny Lister, do so well; sea shanties are fair game, but the east end of london with all its cockney swagger and good humour has as yet gone largely unreconstructed.  We need Penny for the Workhouse and their 'Rock & Roll with a dash of folk'

The band works brilliantly, the majority of the vocals taken by Mel and Nathan, but with all of the band; Jess, Tom and Sam I think, adding vocals at key moments like a delicious, cockney Greek chorus.  

I love The Ballard of Seamus Fink.  Who hasn't seen him propping up the bar in a hundred different pubs and Penny for the Workhouse gives him a voice. It's sad and clever and holy crap there's even an "OI".   It left me with the mother of all ear worms.  

Where was I?  Where was I?

And 'Old' is my kind of love song. 

A pigeon hole doesn't exist with their name on it and that's going to confuse a lot of people, but I am a Penny for the Workhouse fan, They are doing something different in a wonderfully roguish way.  

They look great, they sound great, they are funny and clever and jolly nice people too.

Find Penny for the Workhouse on 

twitter @the_workhouse

Facebook PennyForTheWorkhouse

Then sell your granny and get yourself to their next gig.  

We'll see you there.