Our 10th Year Anniversary!

Happy New Year from the Busketeers

The year 2025 is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. Christmas lights are back in boxes under the stairs, your tree is likely stored in the attic or being mulched, and now we brace as a nation to endure January and February—like the two in-laws who overstay their welcome at Christmas—until March finally arrives and drives them back to Knutsford.

Many people like to make ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ at this time, such as doing the ketogenic diet, partaking in ‘Dry January,’ or training for that marathon you keep telling yourself you’ll do. This is understandable, as January is simply too much fun already, and, thus, measures must be put in place for the sake of cardiovascular health. An interesting bit of trivia about New Year’s Resolutions is that, on average, most are broken by January 10th. So if you’re reading this after that date, well done—you’ve exceeded the average! Alternatively, if you’ve already broken yours, don’t worry—so have most of the nation.

Perhaps your New Year’s Resolution is to see more live music. In that case, we’ve got some dates for you this month. Also, as briefly mentioned in our previous blog post, 2025 is quite significant for The Busketeers, and we’re excited to share some of our plans for the year ahead.

Upcoming Gigs

January can be dry for many things, but here at The Busketeers, we like to keep our gig whistles wet (that’s one of the stranger sentences I’ve written recently, but I’m going with it). On January 17th, we’ll be at the Thistle Park Tavern in Plymouth, which I believe is a new one for us, so it’s always fun to break new ground. Following that, on the 24th, we’ll be at the one and only B Bar, a personal favourite of ours and one that’s always a joy to return to. If you haven’t been, it makes for a lovely evening out: they serve great Thai food, there’s live music, and afterward, you’re right on the Barbican for a nightcap. Finally, we’ll be playing at the Colebrook Inn in Plympton on the 25th. They serve smash burgers and have Director’s Bitter on draft, so I mean… absolute winner.

January is obviously a quieter month for everyone, but if anyone is feeling up for venturing out into the cold this month, it would be a pleasure to see you at any of these venues.

The 10th Anniversary of The Busketeers

As mentioned, 2025 marks ten years since Luke, Matt, and Olly first met busking on the streets of Plymouth and ultimately formed the band we now know as The Busketeers. There were deliberations about the band name—at one point, it was going to be ‘The Price of Engle Park,’ though I think we can all agree that The Busketeers is more memorable. The true history of the band’s formation is actually somewhat in dispute: Matt and Luke are adamant that they were busking outside Sports Direct when Olly asked if he could join. Olly, however, insists that the scenario was inverted, and it was Matt and Luke who approached him for a slice of space on that Plymouth High Street pie. Unfortunately, the passage of time often obscures memories, and we may never truly know which of these accounts holds true merit. Consequently, if anyone asks, it’s probably best to say The Busketeers were hatched from eggs laid by Ken in a glacial crevasse in Alaska.

Anyway, we could sit here and argue about who came out of whose eggs, but I digress. To commemorate the occasion, we’re excited to announce… ahem… The Busketeers 10th Anniversary Tour. We’ll keep you updated on a monthly basis, of course, but this will essentially be a series of gigs across March and April at various venues—some of which hold significant relevance to the journey of the band, and others are brand new, which we’re excited to get involved with!

This all kicks off with a bang on March 1st. We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be doing an official launch for the vinyl edition of our first full-length LP. This will be held at the Book Stop in Tavistock and will feature us busking the entire album just outside the storefront in conjunction with Tavistock Market. Afterward, we’ll head down the road to the Stannary Brewery that same evening, where we’ll crank up the volume and kick off the first of many official Anniversary gigs of the tour. It promises to be an undoubtedly awesome day, and we sincerely hope any and all of you can make it—we’ll make it an absolute belter!

Please stay tuned for more dates and details of the tour in the coming weeks. This project is close to our hearts, and it would be an absolute pleasure to have as many of you involved as possible. Quite honestly, it’s thanks to all of you that we’re fortunate enough to organise and put on events like these in the first place.

Happy New Year and take care,

Ken, Luke, Olly and Matt

A Busketeers Christmas Carol

By Charles Dic(Ken)s

Feliz Navidad, buskers! It’s that time of year again. That time of year where everyone has a strange combination of seasonal excitement and perpetual fear of planning upon their faces. The time of year where you spend far more time than you’d care to admit looking for the end of the Sellotape. The time of year where it’s okay to pour a sherry before midday and watch Die Hard before even getting in the shower. I refer, of course, to the ancient Pagan festival of Saturnalia… or Christmas, to use the trendy word.

Every Christmas, The Busketeers ponder the efficacy of writing a successful enough Christmas song that would allow us to retire before 40 years old and just sit back and collect that sweet, sweet quarter-of-a-million in royalties every December. However, this train of thought always ends with the conclusion that nobody can now permeate the monopoly that Mariah, Bublé, Wham! and the rest of them have on the Christmas song landscape… a pox on them all! (Apologies – that wasn’t very Christmassy.) But who knows – perhaps we’ll give it a shot one day.

To thematically fit the holiday season, as well as just for a bit of a laugh, this month’s blog will follow the major story beats of A Christmas Carol. Grab a mulled wine and let’s kick it off…

The Ghost of Busketeers Past: A Year in Review

Another very busy year. Over 100 different gigs from weddings to private functions to bars and clubs – just how we like it. But without a doubt, this has definitely been the year of festivals for us; in fact we’ve played more festivals in 2024 than in 2023 and 2022 combined (I was about to pull up a histogram, but decided this was a bit overkill)! We hit some of our favourites like Rattler Fest, Tunes in the Park, and Kingsbridge Festival, but also got the opportunity to play some new ones as well! A particularly memorable experience had us venturing up to Derbyshire to play Bearded Theory, a multi-award-winning creative and performing arts festival set in the grounds of Catton Park in the heart of the National Forest. But my word… it was muddy. Very muddy. So muddy in fact that we had to abandon our vehicle and proceed on foot, carrying with us all our instruments and equipment. We just about made it with 15 minutes to spare, managing to smash out a set despite being notably flustered, covered in mud and crop-dusted with marijuana smoke.

Another cool festival was Beautiful Days, which was founded and headlined by The Levellers. We had such a good time and got to catch some legends like The Damned, Cast, Fat Freddy’s Drop and, the man himself, Richard Ashcroft. And, of course, we’d be remiss not to mention the opportunity to play at Boardmasters for the second year in a row which… I mean c’mon, man – it’s Boardies! We feel very fortunate to have these opportunities; I don’t think any of us envisioned that we would one day be on stage at these festivals we started going to when we were 17. Here’s hoping for many more to come!

The Ghost of Busketeers Present – New Years Eve Excitement!

But enough reminiscing – we’ve got an awesome gig coming up this month. We are very happy to announce that we will be playing at Steel Brew, Royal William Yard, this New Years Eve. If you’ve not already made plans and are looking for a great place to put on a party outfit and grab a brew, this is a fantastic venue for it. The festivities kick off from 7 p.m. and tickets can be bought online, meanwhile, we will be primed and ready to bring out our signature artillery of bangers from across the decades. We would love to see every single one of you there and cannot wait to welcome in the new year with a Busketeers bang!

We are also very excited to be supporting the legendary Mad Dog Mcrea at Carnglaze Caverns on December 20th. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Mad Dog’s brand of whiskey-soaked Irish rock, this event is absolutely going to turn into a pre-Christmas party. And what a cracking venue too – it’s literally underground!

The Ghost of Busketeers Future – A Big Anniversary on the Horizon…

Next year is quite a significant one for The Busketeers, as it marks the 10th anniversary of when Luke, Matt and Olly first started going busking and playing gigs under the moniker. At the risk of sounding cryptic, we’d like to save some of the specifics for an announcement in the new year, but we can confirm that we are planning a ‘Busketeers 10th Anniversary Tour’ (that’s only a working title!) across several months, where we will be performing at some significant venues relative to our journey and also some new brand-new ones. At these events we will be selling some exciting new merch yet to be announced, as well as our first full-length LP on vinyl. 

Speaking of which, any collectors of physical media may be excited to know we will be hosting a release event for our vinyl in Tavistock at the start of March. Once again, please stay tuned for more details via email in the new year.

We wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year; hopefully we will catch you at a gig very soon!

Ken, Luke, Matt and Olly

This Autumn - A Series of Matt Mishaps...

Ah, Autumn. One of the cosier times of the year, with a distinctive orange hue to everything. Whether it be pumpkins on porches, the crisp leaves on the ground, or Ken and Matt’s facial hair (they’re actually both gingers in disguise if you look closely). For The Busketeers, this time of the year establishes the gentle slope down of wedding gigs before the winter, and is characterised by more events in firelit pubs and taverns, along with drives that always seem to be in the dark. That being said, however, the last few weeks have still featured many outdoor festival-stage gigs, all complete with their inevitable share of funny stories, mild disasters and great memories.

The Looe Weekender and Toilet Incarceration

Looe has always been a hive of musical activity, and the Looe Weekender is a shining example of the town’s commitment and evident passion for supporting live music performance. It’s a completely free festival across the weekend wherein the numerous venues in Looe host dozens of talented local acts – if you’ve never been, we highly recommend checking it out next year! We were fortunate enough to play on both the Saturday and the Sunday, at the West Quay Stage and Hannafore Kiosk, respectively.

The weather was glorious on Saturday. The beers were flowing and the crowds were dense; the vibe couldn’t have been better really. We were backstage doing our usual thing of discussing what the setlist could be and whether everything was in tune, when it suddenly came to our attention that Matt had been in the toilet for quite some time. The Busketeers are fairly familiarised to the average length of one of Matt’s bowel movements and this, without going into further detail, notably exceeded that length. It was then that we checked our messages and saw one from Matt: ‘stuck in the toilet!!’.

Bewildered, we rushed to the gents and, sure enough, found a door with a jammed lock and the somewhat muffled voice of a Matthew on the other side. This was not at all ideal – we were literally minutes away from having to be on stage and playing – but the inconvenience of the situation was markedly dampened by just how unbelievably funny it was. Olly immediately attempted to jimmy the lock with a set of car keys, while Ken was bent double with laughter, thinking about having to explain to a crowd of festival goers that we couldn’t play just yet because one of the members was imprisoned in the latrine. Thankfully, with the help of one of the stage crew, we were able to get the door open and save Matthew Gordon Brilliant (that’s what Ken calls him) just in time to get on stage and rock out a set! The crowd were brilliant and the reception was, as always, hugely appreciated.

The following day we were back again,  this time treated to a much more intimate vibe and the Hannahfore Kiosk – a very warm and welcoming stage with rows of comfy deck chairs and the smell of good food in the air… they even had fresh crab sandwiches! It was a lovely gig, though on smaller stages like this, it does mean we have to exercise our ability to chat a bit in between songs, and we’ve always considered ourselves better at singing than talking. Still, the reception was once again very flattering and, with that, we proclaimed the Looe Weekender an all-round success.

Salcombe Live and the Attack of the Pathogen

The first weekend of October, we were gearing up to play at Salcombe Live. Much like the Looe Weekender, Salcombe live is an absolute banger of a town-wide festival that we are always so keen to be a part of. It’s once again hosted across the various venues in the town and is always brilliantly organised – we couldn’t recommend it more!

However, an obstacle presented itself in the early hours of Saturday morning, and not a fun kind of obstacle like a kissing gate or a cow in the road. Matt had unknowingly become host to a viral intruder, rendering him bed-bound with flu-like symptoms (as I write this I’ve just realised this month heavily features Matt in peril… but I digress). There is, of course, not much that can be done in situations like this other than to crack on and do the best we can under the circumstances. While Matt’s presence was sorely missed we managed to play a belter of a set at the Devon Rum Bar Saturday evening. The crowd were WILD, and we finished wearing sweat-drenched t-shirts and big smiles. We recommend checking out the Devon Rum Bar if you’re ever in Salcombe!

It's fair to say the three of us were all feeling it a bit on Sunday, likely due to the incredibly rowdy set the previous night, and the fact we were a man down. In honour of our missing member, we decided to throw together a makeshift Matt scarecrow to join us on stage, comprised of a disused microphone stand and a Busketeers t-shirt. We had the pleasure of closing Salcombe Live at the Ferry Inn, a privilege we’ve enjoyed for the last two years and where the atmosphere is second to none. It would of course have been better if we had our fourth member with us, but we feel that the Salcombe Live performances went as well as they could have done, and we were thrilled so many people enjoyed it.

A Few Quick Announcements!...

We sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s blog; before you go, we have some key future events we’d like to highlight.

Firstly, we are pleased to announce that on New Year’s Eve we will be playing at Steel Brew, Plymouth. This is an awesome, very spacious venue with a phenomenal craft beer and ale selection – we’ve played some more stripped-back Sunday sessions there and they’ve been a blast. Please stay tuned for more details as they arrive; we hope to see you there to usher in the New Year with a boogie!

However, if you already have plans for New Years (or just simply can’t wait that long!) we will be smashing out a set at Annabels, Plymouth on November 9th which is a Saturday night. It goes without saying this is always a wild ride and great fun – hopefully catch some of you there.

Thank you so much as always for all the love and support; have a great day and take care.

Ken, Luke, Matt and Olly