News:

Here are the most up-to-date news items from the Leatherat camp!!

Date	Title	Details
15/08/2010	CROPREDY NEWS SPECIAL!	"Well... it's only 'posh-Quo', but bloody hell these boys can play" - Rick Parfitt, Status Quo "...Banbury's own Leatherat who gave the performance of their lives on their Cropredy debut. The band's brand of hard-rocking folk was made for the Cropredy stage and they defied their mid-afternoon slot - and a brief but torrential rainstorm - to attract a significant, very enthusiastic, crowd." - Banbury Guardian (look up the beginning of their quote for yourselves!) In fact, various glowing reports from Mr. Leslie, Mr. Pegg, Francis Rossi, John Tams... to name a few. Where do I begin to tell you just how amazing this weekend has been? To say the crowd were magnificent on Thursday would be an understatement. I felt so proud; a loyal, faithful, hopeful and expectant following stood in front of us, as did thousands more potential new friends. By the time we were 2 songs in, the crowd seemed to have quadrupled in size and density as people flocked to the stage. Never before and never again will any of us experience such high emotion. THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING OUR DREAM COME TRUE! Then of course there was the signing experience! 45 mins were allocated... it took us an hour and a half to clear the queue! I have to thank the Fairports once again, Gareth Williams, Dave Pegg, Chris and Linda Leslie... thank you for putting your faith in us and offering us the most wonderful opportunity. Saturday saw a soggy audience at the Brasenose, but an audience all the same! And WHAT an audience. Once again, our faithful friends didn't let us down even despite the awful weather. I just hope we made you proud, happy and sweaty in the same way that you made us so proud, so happy and pretty sweaty :) More accounts of the weekend will follow as they occur and as soon as we have photo's/video's we can share, we will totally refresh the gallery page for you all to enjoy. In the meantime, if you've come to visit and buy some merch, please read on to the news article below.
15/08/2010	Leatherat Web Shop	A question Leatherat often get asked is "Why is your web shop so rubbish?". Well I'm here to explain! We're musicians you see, not web-designers and as such, we can't be expected to provide hard-rockin folk AND a web shop that's easy, intuitive and reliable to use :o) So in seriousness - yes it's a little clunky but it's not broken. You'll find that 9 times out of 10 all you need do is select the "settings" menu in your internet browser and set the security settings down to low. This enables "cookies" .... mmmmm cooookieess... which in non-foodie terms means the shop can deal with your order! So, please do try it for yourself! And if all else fails, simply send the money via PayPal to shop@leatherat.com and make a note of what you'd like us to send and we'll take it from there :) GOOD LUCK!
05/08/2010	Leatherat Status Report:	The current state of Leatherat as of 11:45 on August 8th 2010 is as follows: Pete, Jem, Jim and Ollie (our trusty road manager and good friend) are on a boat from Harwich to Holland. Leatherat are playing in Amsterdam on Saturday night so the boys have filled the tour-bus (Pete's ex-ambulance/camper conversion) ...with ALL the gear the band need to put on a show for a few hundred dutch chopper-club-types and are halfway through the road trip. Jono is at work, writing this status report! He is preparing to fly out to Amsterdam on Saturday evening to meet the rest of the boys there. Anticipation of the 'big gig' next Thursday haunts every waking and sleeping moment! Excited and petrified all at the same time! Hugh is also at work and also plans to fly out to Amsterdam on Saturday; thus completing the line-up and the magic required to rock-em-out! Ah yes, as previously mentioned, there is just one week to go now until we grace the dusty boards of the main stage at Fairport's Cropredy Convention. Thanks SO much to all of you that have sent us kind messages of support and to everyone that's been ordering last-minute T-Shirts and stuff! Good on ya. We've been working hard to ensure the set is at it's best for you and I can reveal in advance that we'll be treating you all to a completely brand new song! We only get 55mins on stage so cramming in all your favourites is a pretty tall order... we hope you'll be happy with what we've come up with :) Over and Out - See you in Croppers next week! Come see us at the signing tent immedately after the performance end (18:15). HUZZAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
21/05/2010	NEW MERCH! & GIGS	Hello Leatherat Lovelies! We have exciting new merch to plug, in line with our busy 2010 gigging schedule. OK, so we don't go out as much as you'd like but in the words of Bilbo Baggins when he was in a band... "We don't gig half as much as we should like, and we like gigging less than half as much as you deserve!". Or some such nonsense :) Anyway - we love playing and to celebrate 2010, we've had a nice batch of "Short Time on Tour" T-shirts, hoodies and vest tops made up. They are exactly the same as our Short Time on Earth shirts with the (fast becoming iconic) sun/silhouette image on the front and feature our 2010 gig schedule on the reverse. Beautifully modelled in widescreen mode by me here... These will be available from this weekend at all our gigs (starting with Acoustic Festival of Britain, which starts today)! Please come and buy one, wear it loud & proud and tell teh people where you've been by wearing a T-shirt ;o)
31/03/2010	The season approacheth...	Less than a month to go before Leatherat hit the road for a "Short Time on Tour"! What can I tell you? Well, the band have already been working on new material to include in the summer set list. We're really pleased with what we've created so far and can't wait to try it out on you! You will most definitely require your dancing shoes :o) As well as all the gigs we have listed on our gigs page (left), we are currently negotiating a weekend of shows in the Netherlands. More news as it breaks. Some of you may have noticed that the Leatherat Forum has been 'down' for some weeks. This is a temporary measure we've had to take due to the volume of spam-registrations we have been suffering with. Sadly, the minority once again ruin it for the majority but given we have been getting more 'genuine' traffic across our website recently, it's only right that we protect people from the nasty types out there who want to sell you viagra and infect your computers with viruses. We've received so many kind words on email from you guys, looking forward to seeing us at one festival or another. THANK YOU for your support. We're enjoying ourselves immensely and for a bunch of lads enjoying a hobby... well it just wouldn't be possible without the support we receive so we owe you all big time and I hope we can keep making you're lives a little brighter with the music! Take care for now and we'll see you VERY soon. In the meantime, have a happy Easter and enjoy the picture below :o)
11/02/2010	LEATHERAT CONFIRMED FOR CROPREDY 2010!!!	... AND SO A DREAM BECOMES TRUE FOR 5 INDIVIDUALS, 1 BAND OF BROTHERS (in folk!) I have the very great honour of announcing that today, Mr. Dave Pegg of the legendary Fairport Convention confirmed that Leatherat will take part in their annual reunion at Cropredy, Oxfordshire. We've only gone and bloody done it!!! That's right 'at fans... Leatherat are coming to Fairport's Cropredy Convention 2010 :o) You can see us on stage on Thursday eve (17:00 - 18:00 ish), 12th of August 2010. I'm off to drink some Champagne!!! MAKE MINE A LARGE ONE!!!
27/01/2010	GIGS GIGS GIGS!!!	Yup, we're filling up fast with lovely, yummy, gigs! Jan 30th - The Woolpack, Buckingham April 24th - The Boiler Room, Guildford (with True Deceivers supporting) May 1st - The Battle of Naseby (Civil War re-enactment) May 8th - Bloxfest (nr. Banbury) May 14th/15th - Bearded Theory Festival (New Model Army, King Blues, Dreadzone and many many more!) May 21st/22nd - Mayfest, Uttoxeter Racecourse (Levellers!!! 3 Daft Monkeys, Little Johnny England and many more!) June 10th-12th - The Shires Show, Shropshire (Levellers!!! Dr.Feelgood, Anubis and many more!) June 19th - Party in the Park, Adderbury Jul 3rd - Music @ the Crossroads, Hook Norton (The Hamsters headline!) Aug 14th - The Brasenose, Croppers! AGAIN! (Bring back the trailer stage ) Aug 20th-22nd - Rhythm Festival, Clapham (With Ade Edmundson and TBS, amongst others!) Sep 4th/5th - Weyfest, Farnham (Seth Lakeman, Focus, The Zombies, Wishbone Ash, and many more!)
13/01/2010	HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!	HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!! Before I go any further with updating you on Leatherat's latest news, the band want to say a GARGANTUOUS THANK YOU to everybody that braved the elements to come to the Christmas show at the Mill theatre on Dec 22nd. We were truly blown away by how many people came to support us and enjoy the evening. When we booked the date with the Mill (the last turkey in the shop) we were really concerned with it being a Tuesday evening… not a very rock'n'roll night for a big gig! But you turned out in droves and made our Christmas! We were buzzing for days afterward and I hope you were too. Once again, thank you all SO much for your support on the night and thanks to everyone who came to see us through 2009. 2009 was a great year for Leatherat. Admitedly we were a little quieter on the gigging front than in previous years but we spent so long trying to 'perfect' "Short Time on Earth" that we really did not find time to book many gigs. That, and the induction of one Mr Jim Bennion (virtuoso guitarist and all 'round brilliant guy!) meant we didn't see as many outings as we had hoped to. NOT SO FOR 2010!!! 2010 is shaping up to be a very busy year indeed! We've got a number of confirmed festival bookings already and some pending. I can also tell you that in the summer, you will have the opportunity to watch Leatherat and The Levellers perform on the same stage over the same weekend!!! We can hardly believe it and are so excited; I can't put that excitement into words! At this stage, I'm unable to share any more detail with you but suffice to say that as soon as we have the green light we will be sure to let you know more. As if that wasn't exciting enough, you will be able to catch Leatherat at "Bearded Theory" festival, with New Model Army and Dreadzone also on campus! We'll be at the "Acoustic Festival of Great Britain". We'll be at "Ryhthm Festival". We'll be back at the fantastic "Weyfest" and like I said, there's more in the pipeline… you just need to keep checking in here to find out all the latest :o) In the more immediate future, we're playing a local(ish) gig at The Woolpack in Buckingham on Saturday 30th of Jan. We very much hope you can come along and we'll kick-off 2010 in the way we hope it will continue! So until then… stay safe (especially in al this snow) and we'll catch you very, very soon! Jono :o)