Well it’s getting very close to festival season for the Bounty Hounds now, with our first outing to the Rochester Sweeps Festival just over a week away! We’ve been keeping very busy throughout the Winter months playing lots of gigs and barn dances, learning new material and generally honing our skills. We’ve even managed to produce a CD with the help of Will at Sonorous Studios, Alpheton. That boy’s a genius btw! We’re hoping to have a limited number of these available to purchase at Rochester with more to come soon.

“Tales of the Land and Songs of the Sea” is an eleven track album containing the very best of the Bounty Hounds’ songs & tunes. We hope it will be enjoyed by many people as we trek off to festivals & gigs this Summer.

Talking of festivals, we are thrilled that our promotion work has paid off and has yielded several bookings at some choice folk festivals this year including Ely, Suffolk, Sellindge, Moira Furnace & Swanage - woo hoo! The Bounty Hounds on tour!! It’s gonna be great fun to reach new audiences and to enjoy travelling to such far-flung places.

If you’d prefer to catch us a bit closer to home, our gig listings should help and don’t forget the St John’s Street Fair in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday 19th June - a day of family entertainment in this beautiful, independent shopping street, with Samboomba samba band, Benson Blake’s BBQ, live music, fairground rides and much, much more!!!

Look forward to seeing you there!

On Thursday 26th March 2009, the Bounty Hounds ventured forth on a new exciting adventure to the BBC Radio Suffolk studios in Ipswich…

Bounty Hounds at BBC Radio Suffolk

We recorded five songs - Eyes of Flame, Against the Run of Play, Tale of James Turner, Bonny Ship the Diamond, and High Germany with tunes. These songs will be broadcast on Steve Foster’s show sometime late April/early May …. will keep you posted.

Bounty Hounds with David at BBC Radio Suffolk

The Bounty Hounds are thrilled to announce the arrival of new drummer, Shaun Finch! Following the departure of our previous drummer, Steve, we have been extremely fortunate to find a fabulous replacement via a relatively painless process. We had a couple of enquiries initially, and decided to hold trial rehearsals. We didn’t get past the first one! Shaun turned up, with his lovely Tama kit, and brought a brand new energy and enthusiasm we couldn’t ignore. Job done!

Shaun’s lovely drum kit

We’d just like to thank him for wanting to play with us, as much as we want to play with him. It’s a completely new musical direction for Shaun, coming from a drumming background of pure rock. However, there are strong folk connections within his family and our varied style seems to float his bounty boat!

So now we’re working hard to prepare our set in time for upcoming gigs in November, which brings me neatly round to the exciting news that we will be joined, on the 1st November at the Weeping Willow, by none other than Rob Longfoot, original Bounty Hounds drummer back from the days of Slow Roasted Duck! Rob left the band a year ago to have a baby (!!) and is just back from getting married in Cyprus. Congratulations Rob & Amy!!

Rob has kindly agreed to dep for one night only, and I’m really looking forward to it - I’m sure the old slow roasted magic is still there!

Thanks also to Steve for coming this far with us. Hope to see you, Mel and the pups at one of our gigs in the future.

So exciting changes, new blood and old.
If you fancy checking us out, our gig list is here …

This coming weekend will see the Bounty Hounds on a “double whammy” tour of two fantastic local pubs, and we just can’t wait! Our final rehearsal on Thursday will give us chance to run through some of the set and add that extra polish to our brand new material before embarking on the exciting adventures ahead.

On Friday night (8th August) you will find us at the Crown & Castle pub in Risby, just outside Bury St Edmunds. The evening’s events kick off around 7pm with a BBQ and rodeo bull - yeeehaaa! The Bounty Hounds will be playing from 8 - 11pm so there’s plenty of time to catch our set and, although we’re hoping for good weather so we can play outside, if it’s wet we’ll be in the bar. This is a lovely little country pub in a beautiful Suffolk village setting, so well worth turning out for an evening of fun, food, beer and rocking folk rock!

If you come along and love what we do, or if you’re busy on Friday with some really pressing engagement, never fear, because we’re playing again on Saturday (9th August), just down the road at the Greyhound Pub in Flempton. This will be our second appearance at this friendly local pub, following our fantastic reception back in May. We’ll be kicking off about 8.30pm, and Rob & Maggie will be happy to serve you food and drinks whilst the Bounty Hounds serve up a tasty set of foot tapping tunes and a healthy portion of rock!

So no excuses really - two great country pubs, food and beer at both, live music from yours truly - see you there!

Getting quite excited now and looking forward to our next gig coming up on Saturday. We’ve been asked to return to Fornham All Saints village green to perform in front of all the good residents, many of whom must have encountered us last year at the Scarecrow Festival. I wish I had photos of all the scarecrows but, suffice it to say, it was an outstanding event and you should have been there!

This time round it’s just a plain out and out excuse to have a party on the green following on from an Open Gardens event the prevous weekend.

I must say, however, from a performance point of view, it was probably one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m pretty new to the world of gigging and it’s been a pretty steep learning curve over the last year and a half. So to find myself on the back of a small flat-bed truck, in front of an entire village, with disco lights shining in my eyes and inadequate monitor feedback (I basically couldn’t see or hear anything!), was disconcerting to say the least. What I didn’t realise at the time was that loads of people were dancing and having a really great time! Remember, we couldn’t see them, but they could certainly see us!!

Fornham Scarecrow Festival 2007

Anyway, despite the technical difficulties, we have been invited to return and, weather permitting, I reckon it’ll be another great gig! And I will try to remember those famous words …. “Don’t Panic!”

So, the solstice is nearly upon us and the longest day is certainly not going unnoticed round these parts!

The Bounty Hounds are revving up for a massive street gig this Saturday 21st June, at the St John’s Street Fair in Bury St Edmunds. This annual event is organised by all the traders in this fabulous independent shopping street, and promises to be another successful day in the St John’s Street calendar . The road will be closed to vehicles from 8am until 6pm, making room for all sorts of family fun and entertainment, including the famous Benson Blakes BBQ, street stalls and a bouncy castle for the kids.

The running order of events is as follows:

10.00 - County Upper School 60s Band
11.30 - Green Dragon Borders Morris
11.30 - Fighting Fit Martial Arts
12.00 - Bury Starlets Baton Twirlers
12.30 - Green Dragon Borders Morris
12.30 - The Floozies
13.00 - Fighting Fit Martial Arts
14.00 - Bury Starlets Baton Twirlers
15.00 - Westley School Choir & Signing Choir
15.00 - The Bounty Hounds
16.30 - Hardstock 2 - Ten City Nation & Audacity

Let’s hope the weather is clement and that everyone has a brilliant time!
See you there!

2007 St John’s Street Fair with Samboomba

The Bounty Hounds!
Great band name or what?
Well, we like it and that’s what we’re finally called!

I say “finally” because it’s been a pretty long road to finding a name that suits us all in terms of the band’s personality and the music that we play. A bit of a shame that our first time in print, for the recent Greyhound gig, we were billed as the “Blood Hounds”, and have already been referred to as the “Stray Hounds”, “Reservoir Dogs” and various other canine references…. hey ho! They’ll soon learn!

Anyhow, it’s not easy coming up with a band name - and don’t we know it? The Bounty Hounds originally formed in the Autumn of 2006 but it was Summer 2007 before we had our first gigs, so thinking of a name for the band wasn’t exactly top of our agenda when there were so many new songs and tunes to learn - which surely takes priority?

However, one pint of shandy in the local pub prior to our fist gig, and our brainstorming session had reached the heady heights of reading the restaurant menu for inspiration! Thus we became, somewhat indirectly and certainly not unanimously, “Slow Roasted Duck”!!

Hmmm! Not exactly conjuring up images of searing fiddle solos or rocking good songs, and definitely not something with which to be seen out in public, the name still stuck - mainly because we couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t come up with anything better!

Well, it stuck for a while at least. Thankfully, following the arrival of our new drummer and the start of a new gigging season, the “issue of a real band name” reared it ugly duckling head again!

We needed a proper name and fast! Much brain ache, various suggestions, and rigged elections later, we finally settled on the “Bounty Hounds”.

Personally, I like it a lot (it was my suggestion after all!) and some of the logic behind it is this: our repertoire includes shanty style & seafaring songs - ref: the Bounty (get it?), and one of John’s songs is about Black Shuck, a fearsome Fenland dog of legendary fame - ref: the Hounds (get it?), and we’re a bunch of greedy dogs - no not really!!

Anyhow, we think it sounds good and gives an insight into our style of music and we’re all quite happy now that we can get back to learning more songs and tunes, and not worry about our name anymore : )