Fulford Arms – charleshutchpress

October 21, 2025October 21, 2025

Bradford blues guitarist Chantel McGregor to play solo acoustic gig at Fulford Arms

Chantel McGregor: Solo acoustic gig at Fulford Arms

BRADFORD virtuoso blues rock guitarist Chantel McGregor will play a solo acoustic gig at the Fulford Arms, Fulford Road, York, on December 8.

This multiple British Blues Award winner, 39, will be showcasing her third studio album, May 2025’s The Healing.

At 14, Chantel was told by major labels that she had a “great voice, but girls don’t play guitar like that”. Wisely ignoring such comments, she enrolled at Leeds College of Music (now Leeds Conservatoire), becoming the first student there to achieve a 100 per cent pass mark, with 18 distinctions to boot.

She left with a First Class degree in Popular Music and a coveted prize, the college’s musician of the year award.

Early in her career, she was invited to perform with Joe Bonamassa on two of his British tours. In 2011, she released her debut album, Like No Other; in 2015 came her second, Like Control, again produced by Livingstone Brown, this time full of gothic imagery. In December 2018, she launched her podcast.

Over the past 15 years, guitarist, singer and songwriter Chantel has been a reliable presence on the British gig circuit, traversing the length and breadth of the country and appearing at major festivals.

It would be easy to presume that we know what makes her tick, but The Healing has blown such preconceptions clean out of the water, revealing a new side to her in both a musical and emotional sense.

“This is definitely a rock album, not a blues album,” emphasises Chantel. “It’s heavy and dark and it introduces elements of prog-rock, which is a form of music I absolutely love.”

First single Broken Heartless Liar, for example, is a raw, defiant rock anthem about finally seeing the truth and taking back your power. “It captures the moment you realise the person you loved never really valued you, just took what they could while giving nothing in return,” she says.

“The song moves from heartbreak to clarity, shifting from the pain of betrayal to the strength of walking away. It’s about breaking free from the lies and emotional wreckage and choosing empowerment over staying trapped in something toxic.”

Equipped with a driving riff, a blistering guitar solo and a chorus that sticks in the mind, Broken Heartless Liar “will connect with anyone who has ever had to fight their way out of a bad relationship and come out stronger on the other side”. Watch the video at https://youtu.be/eqnJQ3sXxuY.

Alongside McGregor, The Healing features regular band-mates Colin Sutton on bass and Thom Gardner on drums, a pair of players with whom she has developed a form of musical telekinesis.

Where things depart from the norm is the presence of two newcomers, guitarist Oli Brown as co-producer and his fellow member of The Dead Collective, Wayne Proctor, who handled production mixing and mastering.

“I’ve known Oli for donkey’s years, but when I heard the work he was doing with his band The Dead Collective, I really wanted to see if we could do something together,” says Chantel.

In another break with McGregor tradition, Brown and Proctor were involved heavily in the songwriting process too.

Tickets for December 8’s show are on sale at ents24.com/york-events/the-fulford-arms/chantel-mcgregor/7337879. Doors open at 7.30pm. The Healing is available on CD and black vinyl at chantelmcgregor.com.

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021

Native Harrow close in on Fulford Arms concert with new single Do It Again out now

*Native Harrow’s Stephen Harms and Devin Tuel*

PENNSYLVANIAN folk/rock duo Native Harrow are on the final leg of their tour travels showcasing their beautiful fourth album, Closeness. Close at hand is their York gig, booked for the Fulford Arms on December 7.

Now re-located to Brighton, guitarist-singer Devin Tuel and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms have just completed a string of European dates supporting American country singer Courtney Marie Andrews.

Native Harrow’s autumn concerts are accompanied by a new single, Do It Again, a song conceived during the sessions for Closeness, the album they released in September 2020 on Loose Music

Without the possibility of touring to support their most expansive record to date, Tuel and Harms elected to return to the studio where they had made Closeness to continue living in that world, if only for a few more days.

They recorded six new songs, again in tandem with drummer/engineer Alex Hall, and Do It Again emerges as the second and final single to be issued from the sessions. Tuel and Harms next will turn their focus towards a new sound, a new direction and the next era of Native Harrow.

*Native Harrow’s artwork for September 2020’s album, Closeness*, *on the Loose label*

“As much as someone could say this one speaks for itself, I don’t think it’s that simple,” says Tuel. “Yes, it could be only about the pandemic, but quite honestly this is how I felt before all of this unfolded.

“I am typically drawn to hiding away and being lost in my own dreamland; living for moments with nature and quiet. I read the news and see the lack of understanding going around, which has been accelerated by the utter state of chaos wreaking havoc on the world.

“The brains turn off and we seem to just putter along, ‘en routine’. We tell the same stories, each time embellishing upon them a little more. You still love the storyteller, but we have to have a sense of reality.”

Doors open at 7.30pm for Native Harrow’s 8pm gig (originally booked for March 1 until Lockdown 3 intervened). Box office: seetickets.com/event/native-harrow/the-fulford-arms/1471604.

September 15, 2020September 17, 2020

REVIEW: Songs Under Skies, Kitty VR and Boss Caine, NCEM, York, 9/9/2021

Kitty VR: Playing her first gig for seven months at the NCEM churchyard. Picture: Neil Chapman/Unholy Racket

REVIEW: Songs Under Skies, Kitty VR and Boss Caine, National Centre for Early Music churchyard, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York

THE inaugural Songs Under Skies season of open-air acoustic concerts in the NCEM churchyard resumes with Polly Bolton and Henry Parker tomorrow, concluding with Elkyn and Fawn on Thursday (both nights sold out).

Alas the skies were so sodden for the opening night that Amy May Ellis and Luke Saxton had to scurry indoors for their show, but the great British weather was on best behaviour for double bill number three, Kitty VR and Boss Caine last Wednesday, co-hosted by the NCEM, The Crescent and the Fulford Arms under the campaigning umbrella of the Music Venues Alliance.

At least a couple of sets of gravestones were not obeying social distancing, but this was a Covid-secure event in every way, from the requirement to sanitise hands on arrival to the one-way system in operation for entering and leaving the NCEM church building (wearing masks when inside too).

Audience members were seated in pods – or perhaps “God pods”, because we were in a churchyard – as a full garden gathered, full of the joy of being able to watch Kitty VR live, rather than in VR in that virtual reality hinterland of Zoom that has substituted stoically in lockdown and beyond.

Gravestones at the NCEM: Standing out from the social-distancing measures at the Songs Under Skies concerts

Kitty nearly came a cropper before the start, falling in an unseen hole as she carried her box of CDs, but thankfully not disappearing like Alice into Wonderland.

Once on stage, Kitty cut a composed, quietly spoken, contemplative figure in familiar singer-songwriter mode, a la Laura Marling, so much so that her spectral electric guitar would never have said Boo to any passing acoustic music wardens or below-ground churchyard inhabitants for that matter.

In her first concert since lockdown, Kitty introduced new song Wisteria, rhyming that butterfly of short-lived flowers with hysteria, rather than listeria in these pandemic times, unless the Hutch hearing was failing, and revealed a predilection for single-word titles – Dimensions, Whirlpool, Slumber – and single-speed compositions in life’s slow lane.

Closing with an acoustic rendition of Release on a stool, her sunsetting set was the balm before the country, blues and even rockabilly storm of Boss Caine, aka Daniel Lucas, the stalwart sentinel of the York gig scene for so long in his rapscallion role as the city’s grizzled answer to Tom Waits.

Boss Caine and stand-up bassist Paddy Berry playing Songs Under Skies after rehearsing remotely. Picture: Neil Chapman/Unholy Racket

He has been creative in lockdown, writing sleepless nocturnal songs for Bandcamp premieres and EPs and now airing them live, as darkness descended and lighting picked out the churchyard trees’ frameworks as subtly as watercolours.

“We’re going to be brave and play a completely new set,” said Lucas, who had rehearsed remotely with stand-up bass player Paddy Berry and would now be playing together for the first time. All the more reason to love to this troubadour tornado.

“If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die high,” he sang defiantly…“I could use a little chemical sedation”… “I’ll even put your secret into one of my songs”… “Take me out like a Kennedy”…the memorable lyrics kept a’coming.

“No-one will be offended if I use a Conference League swear word, will they?”, he said, more as a statement, rather than seeking permission. Lucas has always been a master of the banter too.

Kitty VR closes her set by playing an acoustic version of Release, taking to the stool after her guitar strap broke the day before. Picture: Neil Chapman/Unholy Racket

“You keep going for the song,” he reasoned for not caving in to the stultifying impact of Covid-19, before a self-deprecating finale flourish. “This is a song about people having complaints after Boss Caine gigs,” he announced.

Too much that, not enough this, they say. Wrong, wrong, wrong, on all counts. Instead, in his concluding words, Boss Caine will always “Burn on bright, burn on bright again”: York’s torch-bearer for why live music at its best will always be a thrill, a rush, like no other.

Kitty VR, by the way, has contributed a haunted solo rendition of Colour Me In, Phil Grainger and lyricist Alexander Flanagan Wright’s finest composition, to The Mythstape, the North Yorkshire duo’s gradually emerging mixtape of recordings by their favourite artists of songs from their two-hander shows Orpheus, Eurydice and Gods Gods Gods.

The Howl And The Hum’s Sam Griffiths has applied his golden brush to Tumble Down, from Eurydice, now floating high on angel’s wings. Watch this space for news of more Myth making…

…Oh, and Phil, could you please deliver on your sort-of promise to record your own versions too. Make that particular myth come true!