THE LEVELLERS

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF ‘LEVELLING THE LAND’

Levellers announce November & December UK Tour 2016 plus special guests Ferocious Dog

Brighton folk punk band Levellers will play their classic album in full plus other hits on a mammoth UK tour supported by Ferocious Dog to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the release of their second full-length, and now classic, album.

Their platinum-selling 1991 album Levelling The Land features the hit singles One Way, 15 Yearsand Far From Home plus The Game, Liberty Song, Sell Out, Another Man’s Cause, Riverflow, Boatman and the incendiary Battle Of The Beanfield.

During the summer of 1991 Levelling The Land redefined the UK’s musical landscape. Levellers provided the soundtrack for a society fed up with the twin evils of Thatcherite politics, and the post-80’s, pre-grunge musical wasteland.

Emerging victorious through the ups and downs of label deals, the spats with the music press and the wear and tear of touring, the Levellers are still going strong after nearly 30 years in the game. They run their own label, have their own studio and their own festival. Love them or hate them: you can’t help but admire them.

LEVELLERS GREATEST HITS ALBUM + UK TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUESTS THE SELECTER

Levellers release their ‘Greatest Hits’ on 29 September via their own On The Fiddle Recordings label. Spread over three formats; the 2CD/DVD set includes all the Levellers’ singles and videos – together on one album for the first time, spanning the bands’ 25 year career.
From the folk punk roots of Carry Me, through the anthemic One Way, Fifteen Years and the chart topping Hope Street, Just The One and Beautiful Day – more recent tracks such as Truth Is, Burn America Burn and The Cholera Well show the Levellers’ mix of scathing political comment and positive DIY attitude to life hasn’t dissipated with age.

Most exciting of all, there are 4 brand new recordings of the Levellers collaborating with contemporary artists re-working some of their classic material. Imelda May is the queen of all time on Beautiful Day. While Bellowhead take on Just The One and the legendary Billy Bragg performs Hope Street. Finally, Frank Turner breathes new life into Julie – bringing us back full circle for another generation of the disenfranchised to discover the Levellers for the first time.
In October and November this year, Levellers will embark on a European wide Greatest Hits tour to promote the album; performing some of these songs for the first time in many years with special guests The Selecter on all UK dates plus solo multi-instrumentalist Laura Kidd aka She Makes War.
Influential and platinum-selling 2-Tone veterans The Selecter returned in 2011 fronted by the original singing duo of the female icon of the 2-tone era Pauline Black and Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson. The dynamic and impeccable duo take centre stage in what is arguably the band’s best line-up since the original one. Their debut album Too Much Pressure, featuring the hit ‘On My Radio’, remains a classic touchstone for a generation of ska lovers and they will perform it in its entirety at the shows.

As well as the Greatest Hits release and huge tour this year for Levellers, a film about their rise to fame in the 1990’s ‘A Curious Life’ had its premiere in June 2014. Told through the unique perspective of Jeremy Cunningham, the band’s bass player and artist, and directed by former Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce, the film focuses on the Levellers phenomenal success between 1988 and 1998 before they disappeared for a time in a train wreck of drink, drugs and creative drought. However, despite reaching their lowest ebb, the band never split up and after a few years in the wilderness they re-invented themselves as a self-managing collective with their own studio, label and Beautiful Days festival and in the process became unexpected survivors of the UK’s famously fickle music industry.