Things are hotting up now in preparation for the Bounty Hounds’ next performance at the 4th Suffolk Folk Festival at Elmhurst Park, Woodbridge on 1st June ‘08. The festival comprises a full weekend of folk dancing, pub sessions, beer festival and live bands on the Sunday afternoon.

The band line-up for the Sunday in Elmhurst Park looks like this:

12.00 to 12.50pm - Kiss the Mistress
1.00pm to 2.00pm - Cruel Folk
2.10pm to 3.10pm - Bounty Hounds
3.20pm to 3.50pm - Triangle
4.00pm to 5.00pm - The Simon Hopper Band

Maybe we’ll see you there? We have a great set lined up with lots of up-tempo, bouncy, sunny day songs and tunes, and along with all the other top quality folk bands, we plan to have the place rocking all afternoon!

I’ve got my tent ready for camping, my fiddle ready for playing and my shoes ready for dancing. All that remains is for the sun to shine and it’ll be a jolly nice weekend! Even Matty’s getting in the mood…

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 : )

Oh my word! The Bounty Hounds’ first gig of the season went down a storm last night at the Greyhound Pub in the sleepy village of Flempton, nr Bury St Edmunds.

It was our first time out with new drummer Steve, playing a tiny venue with lots of new material, yet our apprehensions turned out to be unfounded. The experiment with the electronic drum kit (shhh!), the “cosy” conditions, combined with the hottest night of the year so far, became a totally successful warm-up gig with positive feedback from all our lovely audience and an invitation to play there again due to the fact that “we were really very good!”

Well … actually we all made loads of mistakes, but Steve didn’t drop a stick, I (Jo) didn’t turn to jelly, we didn’t get thrown out and the neighbours didn’t complain! So I reckon it’s quite a result. We managed to cover the mishaps in a truly professional style and left the punters shouting for more.

The set list included old favourites such as High Germany, Raggle Taggle Gypsies, Flying Dutchman’s Inn, Matty Groves and Fast Lane Driver. New additions from the Levellers and Waterboys, along with a couple of new (to us) traditional tunes, and a rather random version of King of the Faeries, made up a varied set covering all bases from Folk to Rock - which is basically what we do!

Our next gig is at Woodbrige Folk Festival on Sunday 1st June - we’ll be folk rocking about an hour of songs & tunes - bring it on!