hillbillytroupe
told ya we was cultured...Love Hull...Love Music
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"It's all folk music – after all there ain't no horse music..." (Louis Armstrong)
The Hillbilly Troupe must be the happiest accident in Hull's – if not the world's – cultural history. Sometimes they're a seven piece, sometimes nine, sometimes more, sometimes less...but they can always counted on to be entertaining.
With a combined 287 years at their core (the seven-piece) they range in age from 24 to 68. They have been described as a cross between the Pogues and Lonnie Donegan. One wag described their work as 'mucky skiffle' – but the Troupe will not be defined... they are too busy being musical, having fun and bringing that all home to you to be bothered with labels.
They are now in their fourth year – and not entirely sure how they met. But they certainly are glad they did...and you will agree. They put a unique edge on all apsects of their performances be it folk, Americana, indie, roots, blues, grassroots, bluegrass. They are lifelong activist, encyclopaedic singer and vocal powerhouse Mick McGarry, banjoist and vocalist Lloyd Dobbs, who with his brother Grant on drums are ex- The Paddingtons, one the city's most successful bands. Musician and academic Dave Gawthorpe on guitar, joins Andy Swift on bass, Steve Frost on lead guitar, Mick Murphy on vocals/percussion. Together they provide an electic range of muscial genres with their own, inimitable, adaptable way...they even have "honorary" Troupes like Martin "Mad Dog" Jones on trumpet, string-driven thing Les Ward and extra drummer, Joe "chief" Brodie. They are making history come alive through their work and making the present historic with their energy. Don't define 'em, or try to refine 'em. Just get into what they do. It's impossible not to.
A workers' un-cooperative who won't be pigeon-holed
Band on the ruin – the Hillbilly story
Four long years ago, milliomaire socialist and lifelong tee-total Christian fundamentalist Michael Q McGarry III, was selling The War Cry in a Hull public house known as the Pave. It was there was there he fell upon the Brothers Dobbs, who appeared in a state of sobriety. Mistaking them for one of his own kind he engaged them in conversation. Within seconds he realised the Brothers Dobbs were only sober due to running out of money. It would appear that the boys – who left home four years earlier for some fags, got waylaid by Indie Record Guru Ally McGoo, who took signed them up for a five-album deal and put them on tour, before they could tell their Mam – who had their tea ready and everything. Three world tours and two albums later the Brother Dobbs were back in Hull and still had not got the fags for which they had first set out to buy. Precisely 13mins into their Pave conversation with McGarry, the latter forsook his hitherto sober and industrious life and went on the drink. During a rather rumbustious version of Onward Christian Soldiers, the Brothers Dobbs decided to enlist him on a whole new crusade – Hillbillyism. In this they were joined by a troupe of acrobats and comic singers consisting of Messrs Frost, Gawthorpe,Murphy, Brodie and Swift, who as fortune would have it, were in the very gutter adjacent to the pub from which McGarry and the Brothers Dobbs were being ejected. Fortune smiles on the brave – but it has a right laugh at the drunk – the rest is hysteria.
The Headstrongs met the Armstrongs and dat's how the Hillbillys got born
