Band Biographies

Hugh Nankivell writes a song a week. He has toured Japan, Poland and the USA with roots band East Whistle. He writes music for the internationally acclaimed puppetry company Faulty Optic. He has played in a Belgian chanson trio, a jazz-rock group in Korea, composed a docu-opera for Opera North, wrote the music for the opening ceremony of Milton Keynes' Concrete Cows and has performed the music of Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Edinburgh Festival. He lectures in improvisation at the University of Huddersfield and lives in a tall house in Huddersfield with Caroline, three children and an axolotl.

Graham Browning writes songs, poems, and stories about fish, shopping, love, time, the afterlife, and naked women in cars. He regards writing lyrics and poetry as an antidote to the more formal writing of reports and articles he does in mental health. He likes Bach, Beefhart, and Bonnie Prince Billy, enjoys very long, cold walks on wet moorlands, and used to live in a place called Netherthong.

James Squire performs with soul big-band Doris and the Dinner Ladies, has co-directed The Small World Band, and featured on stage with RJC Dance Company in their 2002 production J to the R & B which toured the UK and Europe. He has worked on projects with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, The SPNM, Opera North and the University of Bradford. He drove a Subaru with a mystery leak and lives in Halifax, the town of his birth.

Michael Massey grew up in Huddersfield and established himself as a guitarist during the 1980s, in rock and indie bands such as Dead Pan Tractor, and Chappaqua, gigging around Yorkshire and Lancashire and subsequently overseas. He regularly accompanies poets at the famous Albert Pub in Huddersfield, occasionally plays in a jazz trio with Adrian Ingram, and has an alter ego called Jack who is MC in a Working Men's Club. Michael cites his influences as Frank Zappa, Eric Satie and Duke Ellington. He lives with Steph and four cats. 

Jim Pywell currently lives for much of the year in Nairobi, Kenya, where he composes, lectures in music at Kenyatta University, and goes camping with Sally at weekends. He spends the summer months in the UK where he performs, visits Croydon but prefers the beer in Yorkshire, and teaches on the Workers' Music Association Summer School. He has worked as a composer, performer and teacher in England, Africa and Spain. He has composed music for Backbeat Percussion Quartet and BASBWE, in addition to collaborating with mime, theatre and dance artists. For three years he held the post of Fellow in Music at the University of Bradford.