Lancaster Music Festival // Sunday

BLUES BLUES BLUES

Street food & 20 craft beers outside

Bands inside

Afterparty Upstairs

All free of charge

Lancaster Funk Club

Lancaster Funk Club is part band, part jam session and part meeting place for musicians who share a love of groove. A long-standing feature of Lancaster’s grassroots music scene, Funk Club brings together local players for live sessions rooted in funk but open to soul, jazz and improvisation. Its jam-night format means line-ups and musical directions can change from one performance to another, making interaction between musicians central to the experience. The project has appeared in Lancaster Music Festival programmes for many years and continues to stage sessions in the city. At its heart is a simple idea: put good musicians in a room, establish a groove and see where it goes.

Bop Gun

Emerging from Lancaster’s jazz community, Bop Gun are a five-piece band who combine jazz musicianship with the more visceral rhythms of funk and rock. They create a sound built around deep grooves, improvisation and big instrumental solos. Their arrangements use impressionistic drumming and rich keyboard harmony as a platform for electric-guitar leads, giving their music both the freedom of a jazz ensemble and the punch of a funk band. Bop Gun are at their best when stretching a groove!

Automated

Automated are an experimental act from the Lancaster region whose music occupies the atmospheric space between hip-hop and dark electronic music. Their sound combines smoky, understated hip-hop influences with ambient electronics, ethereal vocals and the unexpected addition of a horn section. Rather than following conventional band structures, Automated build texture and mood, allowing beats, electronics and live instrumentation to overlap into something cinematic and slightly unsettling. Their approach makes them a natural fit alongside artists working in psychedelic, experimental and genre-blurring music, and appearances around Lancaster have established them as one of the area’s more unusual emerging projects. Expect atmosphere, low-end weight and arrangements that resist easy categorisation.

The Out and Out Blues Band

The Out and Out Blues Band – also known as The Out and Outs – are devoted to full-blooded blues and boogie. Their repertoire stretches from Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson through B.B. King, Bobby Bland and Taj Mahal to Rory Gallagher, alongside the band’s own contemporary blues material. Hammond organ and Leslie speaker, harmonica, electric guitar, bass and drums create a classic blues-band sound backed by more than 150 years of combined musical experience. The group is led by James Mackie, whose career included keyboard work with The Selecter and Madness. Heartfelt when required and ferocious when necessary, this is blues designed to be experienced live.

Zopa

Ulverston’s Zopa specialise in upbeat funk, blues and soul, creating groove-led live music designed to get an audience moving. The Cumbrian group are regulars on the South Lakes and North-West live circuit, appearing at festivals, pubs and independent events and developing a following for energetic performances rather than overly polished studio presentation. Frontman Reuben Tighe is also active as a solo performer, while Zopa allows the songs to expand into a full-band setting with more room for rhythm, instrumental interplay and improvisation. Lancaster Music Festival describes them simply and accurately as “funk-blues and soul” – a concise summary of an act built around feel, groove and live interaction.

Tantrum

Lancaster blues-rock trio Tantrum draw on a broad lineage of blues and classic rock, with influences ranging from B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan to Led Zeppelin, Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, Rage Against the Machine and John Mayer. The band combine the direct punch of a power trio with blues improvisation, giving Walker’s guitar playing plenty of room to stretch out.