Our first headline gig, at the wonderful Thunderbolt, thanks to Auricula Events Management. 

£5 in advance, £6 on the door, but let us know if you are coming, there may be a "cheap list".

(Descriptions of support bands below from Auricula, with links pasted in by us)

CORMORANTS

Cormorants are Ellen Morgan and Wolfgang Küchler. Brought together by the harbour, we played our first gig in the spring of 2017. We carry a flame for old school new wave songs, we hope with a bit of punch. Songs about prams, being in the stocks, and a lot of counting. Wolf plays acoustic, Ellen ("powerhouse") electric, now with magical midi box. Both of us sing, in our own fashion.

FABRIC

Fabric

Influenced superficially by artists such as Pink Floyd, Stevie Nicks, Portishead, Massive Attack and Garbage, Fabric use this melting pot of sound and style to create music that is familiar and accessible while being totally unique. Anna and Simon first met at City of Bath College in the late 1990's where they started writing and performing together with the band Plastic Eyes and then as Parry:Matthews. And now nearly seven years after their critically-acclaimed album ‘The Wait’, the Bath-based 5 piece return with their fourth release – ‘ComeDownCalmDown’.

50 YEAR STORM

50 Year Storm 

Described as electronic rock with a dark, heavy edge, 50 Year Storm are an unsigned three-piece from the Cornish coast.

Mixing up rock, emo and dirty blues into a stormy blend of ear busting, pumping music, ready to take down your town with an unforgettable night.

WATERFRONT BUSKERS

Waterfront Buskers

Vocal/ Guitar/percussion trio. Quirky, energetic, fun take on punk/pop punk classics. Guaranteed to get the party started.

ITINERANTS

Itinerants

Itinerants were formed by members of Bristol Samba in 2015. The bands style mixes elements of rock , reggae, highlife and funk. The group played their first gig in July 2015, and have been gigging steadily ever since. The first Itinerants EP was released in June 2017.

Bristol Alt Rock project borne of a collaboration between local Musicians Sion Rain, Arthur Cauty & Heather Taylor and Isle of Wight musician Pete Starr.

Wit...h music featuring political themes and strong creative undertones, the concept album due out in 2018 will tell a story of love, loss, the downfall of civilization and post apocalyptic recovery over 3 epochs spanning 3000 years.
Laurence Howell – Singer/Songwriter/Producer/Poet

Laurence has had several projects spanning over a decade including Sonic Rock act Weapon of the Orchid which sold album copies reaching America and featured on BBC introducing: "I've been listening to a lot of Weapon of the Orchid lately.. they're a great band..sound like they come from the future.."

Doors Open: 7.30pm Admission: £5 on the Door

Tickets: £4 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, High Street, Bristol Tel 0117 9299008 www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

The Soft Fruits - 4 piece Acid Punk from Bristol with gruffalo vocals and groove. They are neither here not there but will always be remembered. Come and see the show. 

Band page - https://www.facebook.com/SOFTFRUITSBAND/

Doors Open: 7.30pm Admission: £5 on the Door

Tickets: £4 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, High Street, Bristol Tel 0117 9299008 www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

Bizarro Promotions Presents -

The Jazz Butcher Quintet is the latest manifestation of Pat Fish’s shape-shifting musical perpetual motion machine, with keyboard player Nick Bandy joining the pre-existing Quartet. The result is lush, sometimes verging on the louche. From the near-cabaret stylings of the venerable “Partytime” or the much more recent “Melanie Hargreaves’ Father’s Jaguar”, through the township vibrations of “Living in a Village” to the full-on psychedelic funk of “Shirley Maclaine” and “Solar Core”, the Jazz Butcher Qunitet cover a lot of ground in their lengthy live set, but remain, at heart, a soulful, spooked combination of classic song-writing and authoritative, inventive musicianship.

“Pat Fish, the Jazz Butcher, is one of the most brilliant, incisive songwriters that the UK has produced since the glory days of Ray Davies and Pete Townshend.”
Alan McGee, Creation Records

“London-born, Northampton-raised, Oxford-educated Pat Fish is like a modern day Noel Coward, blending sharp social commentary with his gift for wit and sentiment. He’s a one-off to be cherished.”
Tim Cooper, Louder Than War

“The Jazz Butcher is an incomparable genre-bending act.”
Stephen Wyatt, Under the Radar

“Bloody marvellous.” 
Andy Cowan, Mojo

"Along with Alan Moore and Rockingham Castle, Pat Fish remains a Northamptonshire institution. Boozer, intellectual and troubadour, Fish has released an entire canon of Jazz Butcher albums since the early eighties and has intermittently reformed the JBC to critical plaudits.” 
Erik Morse, Spacemen 3 & the Birth of Spiritualized

"Even an average cut of Butcher beats the prime of lesser mortals." 
Trouser Press Record Guide

Special Guests

The Would-be-goods Two:  Jessica Griffin and Peter Momtchiloff (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly) of the Would-be-goods, will be playing a stripped down set of songs old and new.  A very rare opportunity to see this cult, indie, act in Bristol.

Short Stories: The Short Stories are a band from Somerset, UK, buzzing like bees through a sequestered field of punk, post-punk, and indie flowers, searching for the still-floating pollen of the Velvet Underground. Founded in 2007, the current two-piece line-up looks fixedly forward, presenting new songs in an open, semi-acoustic approach that tries to make conversation rather than performance out of the music.

Live sightings are few and far between, recordings even less so; like day-lilies you have to catch them when they’re in bloom

Tickets - £10.00 in advance/£12.00 on the door  https://www.bristolticketshop.co.uk/eventdetails.aspx?e=18056

Battlemoose charity gig. All profits going to Paul's Place Charity.
http://www.paulsplace.org.uk/

Battlemoose are a Rock/pop cover band, Bristol, UK who play some mighty floorbangers!

Andy Ventham - Guitar, Keys, vocals
Ben Squire - Guitar, vocals
Mark Fryer - Drums, vocals
Stuart Papworth - Bass, vocals
Advanced tickets: £2.50 (Please follow link below to Bristol Ticket Shop)
Tickets available on the door: £4.00

THE LIBERATORS: After nearly 3 long years, WE ARE BACK! For our relaunch show the lovely guys down @ The Thunderbolt Bristol have offered to host your boys for a night of rock and most certainly fun. 

Supports-
Third Ace -influenced by Steel Panther & Guns n Roses http://thirdace.com/
Hollow Trees:Classic Rockers making their Debut Gig !
Jess & James:Duo part of the band Twin Arrow

Billy Driscoll - Great Bristolian singer/song writer –https://www.facebook.com/billydriscollmusic/

Admission: £5 on the Door

BAND OF HOLY JOY 2018
The Band Of Holy Joy 2018 model is a sleek beat outfit that owes as much to Indie music in the proper sense of Indie as it does to the Brechtian connotations of past Band Of Holy Joy incarnations. They have lineage but never dwell on it preferring to forge forward. They have a history too but never let it drag them back. For the past few years they have been quietly growing and gestating and now they have emerged fully reborn with renewed purpose of sound and vision. They have signed to Tiny Global (which is probably the best label in the world at this present moment in time in terms of roster and vision and general empathic discernment towards both band and listener) and have just released an album FUNAMBULIST WE LOVE YOU. They are a six piece of drums, bass, guitar, visuals, sixties organ and vocals, I couldn’t tell you who they sound like, but they love The Subway Sect, The Jefferson Airplane, Mary J Blige, Gray, Funkadelic and the like, and when they play they possess the stage and make a beautiful racket, tell passionate tales and fill the room with light and wonder, they same to be on a mission of some sort, a mission of intent and possibilities, of old punk sensibilities honoured, and glamour in age portrayed. On a Friday night they put out a radio show called BAD PUNK which has nothing to do with any kind of new wave but is a beautiful strange mix of soundscape and poetry, very arch, sometimes a bit too sensitive, but on the stage they are a different beast, on stage they blow and howl, they they make musical bows to Funk and Soul at times and are wont to throw the odd Vincent Gallo cover version in to their set. Classically minded songs suddenly billow out into intense noise work-outs. They are quite traditional in set up but oh how the lyrics reflect these wyrd modern times we live in. That’s all I can say really, other than forget old notions of what you think Holy Joy may or may not have been, whether they were any good or just terminally bad, if you like crooked style and sentient smiles, if you see the beautiful in the ugly or the happy in the sad still and just love a band intent on playing a great strange different kind of song come and see this band. 

Support

MICKO & THE MELLOTRONICS

Micko Westmoreland, actor, musican, programmer and soundtrack creator, was once described as being “half stuck in a timewarp"....
You might know him from the movie Velvet Goldmine -in which he played the character Jack Fairy.... or you might know his ambient electronic music as the Bowling Green - but get to know him now as leader of the Mellotronics - four piece art-rock band who feature one Jon Klein on guitar ( ex-Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Specimen and, for those with very long memories, late 70's Bristol favourites, The Europeans) 
http://landlinerecords.com/artist/micko-westmoreland/

BUSH & FEY

Steve Bush and Fran Fey, have been writing, recording and gigging together for well over a decade now. Their first album,´Row of Ashes', was released in November 2008, with the follow up, ´Earl Grey and Leather´ released in November 2016. Steve Bush first stepped out in Bristol with Essential Bop - one of the city´s seminal new wave bands. His reputation for intense stage performances and ascerbic lyrics has not diminished since. In 2001, after many years in London, Steve – having just returned to Bristol - released the acclaimed ´Blossom Freak´ album. Fran hails from Wales. Proficient on guitar, mandolin, zither and ukulele, Fran has played all over the world, including jamming with Arab Musicians in Kuwait and playing echoing space music atop the Himalayas.
www.facebook.com/groups/1496440087319686/

Tickets are on sale at Bristol Ticket Shop, http://www.bristolticketshop.co.uk/eventdetails.aspx?e=18349  and it's £8.50 in advance and £10.00 on the door.

SKATING POLLY: Sister duo from Oklahoma made up of Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse, formed in 2009 after a jam session at the girls’ Halloween party. After recording their debut album Taking Over the World in their living room. Their sophomore album, Lost Wonderfuls, (produced by Exene Cervenka of X and mixed by Kliph Scurlock of The Flaming Lips) was released in April, 2013. Their third album, Fuzz Steilacoom, released March of 2014 was tracked by Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening at Dub Narcotic Studio.

Raised on ‘70s punk and early-‘90s alt-rock, Mayo (age 15) and Bighorse (19) mine inspiration from artists as disparate as Johnny Cash, The Ramones, Nirvana, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Bikini Kill and saturate their own songs with a raw energy reminiscent of their musical heroes. Skating Polly takes a minimalist approach to songwriting, with the two self-taught musicians (Bighorse plays guitar, Mayo plays a guitar/bass hybrid called a basitar, and both girls play drums and piano) crafting super-catchy melodies mainly by “messing around with our instruments and figuring out how to make cool noises,” according to Bighorse. But despite their stripped-down aesthetic, their songs contain a rich emotionalism that’s at turns brutally in-your-face, gut-wrenchingly tender, and irresistibly fun. A critic described their single ‘Alabama Movies’ as “an undeniable piece of work…a knockout punch that pummels your rib cage into shrapnel shards for all its thunderous percussion, palpable tension and Kelli Mayo’s piercing, possessed vocals.”

Along with earning the adoration of Cervenka (whom they befriended after attending one of the X singer’s 2010 solo shows and playing their demos on a cell phone), Skating Polly has found fans and supporters in Rosanne Cash, Kat Bjelland and Lori Barbero (Babes in Toyland), Sean Lennon, Donita Sparks (L7), Kate Nash, John Doe (X), legendary DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and the actor Viggo Mortensen. They have shared the stage with punk legends like Mike Watt, and hit the road with indie heavy-hitters Deerhoof, Kate Nash, Flaming Lips and Band of Horses. The stepsisters typically optimize their travel time by writing songs on their ukulele.

Prolific songwriters who are constantly recording when not on the road, the duo is finalizing two new releases for 2015. In the meantime, they are hitting the road with Perfect Pussy in March. In May, they will play overseas for the first time when they tour the UK with the reunited Babes in Toyland.

Both Mayo and Bighorse are intent on ignoring what’s fashionable and staying true to their passion for challenging music with long-lasting appeal. “The musicians we’re most inspired by are the ones who keep on going and going, who devote their entire lives to coming up with new and different stuff,” says Mayo. “A lot of times at our shows people will come up to us and tell us, ‘Keep on doing what you’re doing, don’t ever stop’ and we’re just like, ‘Yeah—we weren’t planning on ever stopping.”

Power, passion and songwriting excellence.” -Kerrang!

“One of the strongest punk records in recent memory.” -Paste

“A breath of fresh air.” -Upset

“Brilliant!” -Soundlab

“A complex, diverse, incredible record, with so much heart and soul it almost hurts.” -The Punk Archive

“Skating Polly reach beyond their limits - and beyond the limits of punk rock - to achieve an inventive and compelling musicality.” -Gigsoup

“Worthy goddaughters to the original women of grunge.” -Gigslutz

http://www.skatingpolly.com

https://www.facebook.com/SkatingPolly

Doors Open: 7.45pm  Admission:£7 on the Door

Tickets: £6 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, Union Street, Bristol                               Tel 0117 9299008   www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

THE SABBATH YEARS
Black Sabbath Tribute band arrived on the scene in January 2017.
The band formed by Ric Stats in September 2016 it was obvious from the interest generated that ...The Sabbath Years....would become one of the UK's top tribute bands.
The line up has since changed as The Sabbath Years from the Outset was formed 2B as Band that Toured... and not a band that stays within the city limits.
The new line up comprises this time round with highly talented and experienced musicians, who all share a great passion for Black Sabbath's music which results in an unforgettable experience for all who see them perform live.
Ric Stats - Vocals
Adam Healey - Lead Guitars
Sean Love - Bass Guitars
Rodrigo Carelli Silva - Drums & Percussion

The Sabbath Years have a repertoire of 2 plus hours of Black Sabbath classics drawn from Sabbaths 1st to 13th albums, which makes them the UKs Foremost Black Sabbath Tribute.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/thesabbathyears/events

Doors Open: 7.30pm  Admission:£10 on the Door

Tickets: £9 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, Union Street, Bristol Tel 0117 9299008  www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

THIS THUNDERBOLT IS CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE PARTY

‘The master of less is more’ The Guardian

Having released One for the Ghost earlier this year to an overwhelmingly positive response, seasoned and erudite Indie auteur, ex leader of Creation Records’ favourites The Loft and The Weather Prophets, Pete Astor is live at The Thunderbolt. He’ll be drawing together key strands and tributaries in his work over the years, playing timeless guitar pop, brimming with wry lyrical insight and melodic hooks, singing songs from the present, the past and the future

Support to be announced later

The Men They Couldn’t Hang are a British rock band whose mixture of folk and punk is totally infectious. They are still as good as ever after over 30 years of raising hope, hackles and hellfire through the street corners and country lanes of Britain and beyond! Coming together as penniless buskers they played their first show in Camden Town in 1984 alongside the legendary Pogues as both an accident and a laugh – a philosophy that still holds true a lot of the time. Their music is not dissimilar in many ways. Added to that earthy humour and vitality has grown an explosive collision of folk and rock and an implacable social conscience that has seen them thrill and inspire 3 generations of concert goers with their euphoric blend of material.

https://www.facebook.com/tmtchofficial/

Admission: £20 on the Door

Tickets: £18Adv + bf from Bristol Ticket Shop, Union Street Bristol Tel 01179299008 www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

Miles Hunt: The Custodian Tour. 2018

The Wonder Stuff’s Miles Hunt embarks on a solo acoustic tour of the UK in October this year under the guise of The Custodian. With a back catalogue of over two hundred self penned songs to choose from, written over the last four decades, Hunt says that the idea of becoming The Custodian came from a conversation with one of his musical heroes.

“I was in New York a few years back and was invited to guest at a Tom Robinson solo show. Tom has long been an inspiration to me and given the opportunity to perform with him... well, lets just say I couldn’t polish my boots quick enough. During our brief rehearsal together on the afternoon of the show Tom asked me who I felt now owned the songs that I have written over all these years. I answered that whoever the publishing company I signed with probably did, but ultimately, I did. Tom was quick to correct me pointing out that all of my songs now belonged to my audience. Going on to explain that the songs I have written have been part of the sound track to thousands of people’s live and it is those people that now truly own them. He said that my position was now of The Custodian, the person who’s job it is to see that the songs are treated and performed with the respect the audiences deserve. It was an incredibly important thing to have said to me and something I have not and will not ever forget.”

With this in mind Hunt has rehearsed over sixty of his best loved compositions to perform in chronological order on his upcoming UK tour.

“There are a couple of songs from the back catalogue that I just couldn’t bring myself to sing again. Either a lazy or nonsense lyric, or just a rotten set of chords. When you’ve been at it as long as I have I don’t think anyone could expect a 100% strike rate. But really there are only two or three songs I would prefer no to revisit.”

As well as performing songs Hunt will also be reading a handful of excerpts from his three acclaimed books, ‘The Wonder Stuff Diaries’.

“I’m so very thankful to my younger self for keeping hand written diaries during the early years of The Wonder Stuff’s activities. I’m fortunate that I do have a pretty decent memory of what went on in those days, but to have the actual voice from the past, recorded on the page, to tell me straight how things were and how I felt about what was going on, well, I would like to buy that young man a beer for having the foresight to give such a gift to his elder self.”

Doors Open: 7.30pm Admission:£12on the Door

Tickets: £10 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, Union Street, Bristol Tel 0117 9299008 www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

THIS THUNDERBOLT IS CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE PARTY

The Emperials are a long running major force on the UK’s Ska scene with a live reputation for fun, entertaining, professional and very lively shows.
 

With an 8 piece line up; the rock solid drums, pounding bass, skanking guitar and Hammond keyboard provide the basis of the band, with the tightest and most energetic brass section in the land adding the blasting horn lines, all topped off by versatile lead & backing vocals.

With a set consisting of our own take on classic ska songs, from the days of 2tone, Trojan and Studio One, we never fail to fill a venue, get the dance floor packed and the crowds singing, dancing and shouting for more. 

http://www.theemperials.co.uk/

Doors Open: 7.45pm  Admission:£7 on the Door

Tickets: £6 + BF from Bristol Ticket Shop, Union Street, Bristol                               Tel 0117 9299008 www.bristolticketshop.co.uk