People who make new year's resolutions are just boring, aren't they? What's wrong with being happy with who you are, with what you are, right now? What's wrong with embracing your favourite thing, not searching for something new? What's wrong with looking back, not forward?
At Downend Folk & Roots this month it's, very much, a case of New Year, Old Favourites.
UK Americana superheroes THE BLACK FEATHERS have played here three times in the last ten, or so, years and a packed room is delighted to welcome them back again.
Sian Chandler and Ray Hughes have, clearly, decided that there's no need for resolutions either. This might be the first show that they've played in three months but they are just as glorious, just as heart-wrenching, just as perfectly imperfect as ever.
Down by the River is taken from their 2016 debut, Soaked to the Bone, and has lost none of its ability to wrap you up in the Black Feathers world. There are wonderful harmonies, the lazy strum of an acoustic guitar, the shadow of melancholy cast by the Country sun and a tune that gently lodges itself into your psyche. It might be ten years old but, when things are this good, why bother with anything else?
The same goes for Hurricane (from 2022's Angel Dust & Cyanide) and Strangers We Meet (from their very first EP); they are old friends that you simply wouldn't want to do without. These are songs where the emotions are right on the surface, barely kept in check by two voices working together beautifully.
Don't go thinking, though, that there's nothing new here. Tonight marks the first time that they have played a cover of Adele's When We Were Young. Hughes reckons he's “terrified” but it doesn't show, instead it becomes the sort of thing you could find on the soundtrack from one of those John Hughes movies from the '80s. Chandler's voice is gravel-dipped-in-honey while Hughes replaces Adele's lachrymose piano with delicate, sensitive acoustic guitar and an effortless foundation.
It is this symbiosis that makes The Black Feathers so remarkable. There is no doubt that Chandler's voice is an astonishing thing - part heart-broken Country, part Soul stirring sister, part evangelist abandonment - but when she sings on her own she turns the dial down. Sometimes it sounds as though she's singing in another room, she's vulnerable, hesitant. It is when Hughes joins her that you catch your breath. It's as though she just needs a hand to hold, a ledge to lean on. Then, she blazes.
On Goodbye Tomorrow she adds steely strength to a classic chorus, on Perfect Storm she plumbs the depths of misery while Hughes shimmers and twinkles. The two make a perfect whole, you need them both.
A new song, probably called Return to my Trees, encapsulates all of this. Chandler is exposed, halting, struggling with the weight of melancholy as the song begins. Perhaps it is because it's new, perhaps because they've barely ever played it live but her voice catches, is uncertain... until Hughes joins her. Then there is power and colour and an incredible sense of balance. If this is where the new album is going to take us, it's going to be so good.
There are, of course, a couple of brilliant cover versions in amongst all of the Country-got-Soul beauty. Portishead's Glory Box continues to be a sassy stomper in the hands of Chandler and Hughes. Less a smoky noir-ish femme fatal, more a technicolour Hollywood tempt-er-ess. Spirit in the Sky is performed off mic for the well-deserved encore, and has the fervour of a Pentecostal revivalist meeting, Chandler testifying with the best of them. With a couple of Munsters’ finger clicks they are gone and, inevitably, you can't wait to see them again.
If The Black Feathers show us the value in remembering old friends, then HANNAH WOOD represents an exciting new year's resolution for most. A Bristol-based singer-songwriter, she is a seriously good teller of tales. There's a delicious spookiness to The Ash Tree, all Victorian lace and flitting shadows, while Sweet Reprieve has a chorus that is almost hymn-like and a tune that relishes its Old Grey Whistle Test folkie vibe. Fundevogel is inspired by one of Grimm's Fairy Tales and has echoes of Suzanne Vega in its word-y swoops; it is delightfully complex and wonderfully clever. The title track of Wood's latest EP, Rabbits, sways gently, her voice as clear and pure as a crisp January day. It casts a shaft of sunlight across the melancholy.
In 2026, if you must make a resolution, make it this - remember your old friends but make new ones too. Downend Folk & Roots will help you.
Words: Gavin McNamara
Photos: Barry Savell
Photos: Barry Savell
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A duo who have become firm favourites of South Gloucestershire’s music lovers return for a fourth visit, due to unprecedented demand, as they headline our first concert of 2026.
If you were of the belief that THE BLACK FEATHERS are named because of their love of dark humour and the smooth blending of harmony, you’d be wrong.
If you were told that the name is more concerned with recognition of their gentle souls, a predilection for dark clothing and the sonic tumult of the plethora of (mainly US) progressive-metal bands doing mega-business around the world in the 1990s and beyond, you might doubt those who said so, but they would be accurate.
You’d be wrong as to the name, BUT you would be utterly correct that the sonic architecture of their lyrics and musical composition takes its imperious scope from a love of blended vocal harmony and idiosyncratic guitar shapes.
Americana to some, folk to others, The Black Feathers have those qualities in expansive quantity. Sian Chandler’s soaring, dramatic, melodious but powerful voice is a perfect counterpoint to Ray Hughes’ piquant vocals and his sparkling and occasionally spicy guitar motifs. This is a duo who love what they play and play what they love with panache, humour, delight and rather a lot of commentary on the downside of being a human.
Seeing and hearing them will leave you with a smile on your face and a glowing heart of delight. You might not think that is possible when you’ve just spent some time hearing the themes of the songs they lay before an audience but it is testament to their sunny dispositions, infectious laughter and amused self-deprecation that you can only come away from a gig feeling a whole heap better about yourself and life.
Opening the evening’s music will be HANNAH WOOD, a Bristol vocalist and songwriter who draws influences from folk, soul and pop to create dreamy, sometimes haunting, sounds. Melancholic vocals and introspective lyrics mirror and bring comfort to our shared struggles.
Hannah recorded her second EP Rabbits at Sloe Flower Studio and released it in May 2025. Rabbits delivers intricate melodies with nostalgic themes and earthy rhythms that seem to stretch back through time. Blending elements of folklore with personal experience, the EP makes for immersive and emotive listening.
Tickets for the concert, which takes place at CHRIST CHURCH DOWNEND on Friday 16 January 2026, are available online HERE. They are priced at £14 each in advance or £16 on the door. Doors open at 7.00pm and the music starts around 7.45pm. This event is also included in the Spring Season Ticket.
There will be a bar, stocking cider, soft drinks, wine, hot drinks and real ale from Bristol’s HOP UNION BREWERY. Audience members are encouraged to bring their own glass/mug/tankard, as well as reusable bottles for water, as part of the drive to be more environmentally aware; there is a 50p discount for those that do. There will also be sweet treats available at the bar courtesy of Radstock-based THE GREAT CAKE COMPANY, as well as a prize draw, which helps to fund the support artists for each concert.
Will you look at this place? Gorgeous lighting throwing a regal glow up the walls, two hundred friends chatting in the pews, sparkles and smiles all around, mulled wine scents tugging at noses. The Downend Folk & Roots Christmas is, simply, one of the best nights of the year (and not just because it always marks the end of the school term). It has, for lots of us, replaced Noddy's yell of “It's Christmas!!!!” as the festive starting gun.
Entirely fitting, then, that BRYONY GRIFFITH & ALICE JONES are our guests this year. They are as Yorkshire as a good strong cup of tea and are brimming with feelings of fireside and friendship, of harmony and happiness. Griffith plays fiddle, Jones tenor guitar and when they sing together you can feel the crackling warmth of a really good pub hearth.
They are wonderful company, filling the space with stories, poking gentle fun at one another and spreading a festive radiance to all corners. The ‘ollins and the Ivin is a northern take on an old song. It is as honest as the day is long, Griffith’s voice strong and rooted in place. Fiddle and guitar snow-drift around, the thickest, cosiest blanket imaginable. Equally, Hark, How all the Welkin Rings takes the familiar and sprinkles it with Parkin crumbs. Jones’ voice is high, reaching heavenwards, until joined by Griffith when they glide together.
With her tongue, more-or-less, in her cheek, Griffith describes much of their festive album, Wesselbobs, as "full of Yorkshire misery, of children and begging". The Yorkshire Wassailing Song falls, nicely, into all three categories. It might be sombre but it has a strange, kaleidoscopic refraction that those weird, wintery 80s TV dramas had as their soundtrack. Think Box of Delights with added piano-y drones. Time to Remember the Poor also keeps those most in need firmly in mind, although it is accompanied by Jones’ rubber trousered body percussion (she spent the evening dressed as a most spectacular Christmas pudding, complete with remarkable holly head-dress).
There's cheekiness, too, in The Tailor's Britches and Change for a Guinea. Both are wonderfully sprightly, light-hearted and have exuberance spilling out of them, like an over-stuffed pie. The fiddle and their harmonies twirling joy through the church as the foolishness of men is held up for amused ridicule.
The Downend faithful sing buzz-ily on Hagman-Heigh, piling up festive treats into a great throne of goodies, while a gentle guitar ushers in the fuzziness of Christmas. Griffith’s fiddle sounding as though it were being beamed in from a Yorkshire ale-house, from centuries ago.
This is the very essence of a Downend Christmas. There are nods toward the Solstice, to remembering others, to friends and to the spirit of Christmas itself. It is all utterly magical.
The only thing that could possibly make it better is the traditional Downend appearance of Bristol's greatest folk choir, HEARTWOOD CHORUS.
Almost thirty-strong and just as glorious as ever, they sing beautifully. Layers of twinkles dusted across songs that are winter-y rather than simply Christmas-y. They breathe as one for I'd Rather Be Tending My Sheep, three female soloists exquisite but the whole choir purring like a drowsing cat. There just aren't enough superlatives for John Tams’ Snow Falls but it is a beacon of Solstice hope, a heart-bursting glory, while Hail Smiling Morn is just heavenly and comes with the promise of brighter days once the year has turned. No one does Christmas quite as well as Heartwood do, God bless them.
In these days when it feels like almost anything could be called a tradition, the Downend Folk & Roots Christmas show is, truly, the most wonderful time of the year. Merry Christmas everyone.
Words: Gavin McNamara
Photos: Barry Savell
Photos: Barry Savell
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