Bonfire Radicals, Birmingham’s “exhilarating and exuberant” six-piece contemporary folk band, return to the Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, this July as part of a 15-date UK tour celebrating the release of their new album, Spaghetti Junction, out in September.
“A serious powerhouse of a performance… foot-stomping and adrenalin-powered and came on like folk music played by ravers.”
The Artsdesk ★★★★
For Bonfire Radicals, a return to the Hare & Hounds is something of a homecoming. The band have previously sold out the legendary Kings Heath venue, alongside UK appearances at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Boomtown, Folk East, Towersey, Broadstairs and Moseley Folk & Arts Festival.
Known as one of Birmingham’s most adventurous folk acts, they are gloriously hard to pin down: joyful, fierce, raucous, heartfelt and full of sudden turns. Their live show delivers the audacious variety of intense tunes and powerful rhythm section that has come to be expected from Birmingham’s adventurous six.
Built around an all-female front line of recorders, fiddle, clarinet and vocals, powered electric guitar, bass and drums, with musical influences stretching from the British Isles to the Balkans, their sound fuses pounding grooves, virtuosic instrumentation, rich vocal harmonies and moments of spellbinding a cappella. This is a band where “anything goes, with twists and turns that sometimes even take us by surprise” (Katie Stevens).
Their new album Spaghetti Junction takes its title from Birmingham’s famous tangle of roads – a fitting image for a band whose music races through traditional tunes, original compositions, unexpected detours and the occasional musical pile-up, before somehow arriving exactly where it needs to be.
Like the road interchange itself, Spaghetti Junction is a network of musical journeys that cross boundaries of geography and genre. The album brings together traditional tunes and original material shaped by Ilias Lintzos’ Greek heritage, Pete Churchill’s love of Bach, and the time Sarah Farmer, Katie Stevens and Emma Reading have spent travelling, learning and absorbing music in Shetland, Bulgaria and Brazil. These many routes come together in the hands of six musicians who thrive on connection, collision, and the happy accidents that happen when styles are allowed to sit beside one another without behaving too politely.
At its heart, Spaghetti Junction is also a Birmingham record. The band have all made the city their home, and the album reflects a place where people, cultures and musical traditions meet, overlap and exist alongside one another. Like all big cities, Birmingham embraces both rootedness and rootlessness, and Bonfire Radicals dedicate the album to anyone still searching for a place where they feel safe and can belong.
This sense of place has long been part of their work. Their 2022 album The Space Between included Mary Ashford, telling the story of a young Birmingham woman murdered in the city in 1817, with the band describing a passion for Birmingham’s history and a desire to “tell the stories of those who have lived and breathed here.”
“We are so looking forward to our show at Hare and Hounds in July,” says recorder player Michelle Holloway. “We last played here in 2022 and it was such a brilliant party. There is absolutely nothing like the energy of a hometown crowd! Come and get your copy of the new album ahead of its official release in September.”
“Bonfire Radicals are a proper folk melting pot, a hot, simmering six-piece whose banging and crashing rollercoaster of sound is alive with possibility and thrills… wholly unpredictable and astonishingly eclectic.” – KLOF Magazine
“Complex and contemporary, edgy and exploratory” – Irish Music Magazine
Bonfire Radicals – Spaghetti Junction UK Tour
Hare and Hounds – Birmingham
Wed 8 July 2026
Tickets: https://bonfireradicals.com/gigs
Spaghetti Junction is released in September 2026, available on CD & digital platforms.
| Michelle Holloway: recorder, flute, vocals Katie Stevens: clarinet, flute, vocals Sarah Farmer: violin, vocals | Emma Reading: electric guitar Pete Churchill: bass, accordion, vocals Ilias Lintzos: drums |
www.bonfireradicals.com
@bonfireradicals