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Shed Seven to lead all-Yorkshire line-up at Piece Hall, Halifax, but who will join them? UPDATED

First Doncaster Racecourse, now The Piece Hall in Halifax as Shed Seven head outdoors for the summer

YORK’S Shed Seven will top an all-Yorkshire bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax, on June 26.

Joining the Sheds will be Leeds bands The Pigeon Detectives and The Wedding Present and Leeds United-supporting York group Skylights, plus the Brighton Beach DJs.

Tickets for this Futuresounds Events show will go on sale on Friday at 9am at lunatickets.co.uk, seetickets.com and gigantic.com.

This is the second outdoor show announcement by the Sheds in quick succession, after confirming they will be chasing winners as well as Chasing Rainbows at Doncaster Racecourse on August 15, when they play Live After Racing, under starter’s orders at 5.45pm.

“We’re doing this Piece Hall show partly because our 2018 gig at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl went so well,” says Shed Seven lead singer Rick Witter, whose revived Britpoppers drew 8,000 that June day and now will perform in the 5,500-capacity square of the renovated 18th-century Halifax cloth hall that now houses history exhibits and independent shops, bars and restaurants.

The Sheds have just mounted their biggest ever Shedcember winter tour, chalking up their record run of 23 shows between November 21 and December 21, with Leeds First Direct Arena on December 7 at the epicentre.

“After we did the Shedcember gigs, we just fancied doing something similar to Castlefield Bowl this summer, but this time a Yorkshire gig,” says the Stockport-born Witter.

Stockport, Mr Witter?! “I know, but I consider myself a Yorkie now,” says Rick, who attended Huntington School in York.

David Gedge of The Wedding Present, part of the June 26 bill at The Piece Hall, Halifax

“I remember Embrace playing The Piece Hall [Elbow have done likewise], and it’s taken a few months to confirm our gig since we came up with the idea of playing there. We wanted to do an outdoor show, and to do it in such a salubrious setting will be a great buzz.”

As the Sheds look forward to their Halifax and Doncaster concerts, complemented by seven summer festival gigs, with two more to be added, Rick says: “It’s a weird one for us: as the Shedcember tour showed, it seems we’re more popular than ever now. It’s a strange phenomenon but long may it continue.

“Having a new album out [Instant Pleasures, released in November 2017], has definitely helped, because the shows aren’t just nostalgia now; there are new songs too.”

Given that fresh impetus, backed up by October 2019’s gold vinyl re-issue of the Sheds’ greatest hits compilation, Going For Gold, Rick says: “Now we need to do that again: write some more new songs, and as busy as everyone is doing their own thing, there might be room to meet up once a week.”

Definitely new this year will be Shed Seven’s first racecourse concert at Donny. “I went as a guest to see Kaiser Chiefs play at York Racecourse [July 22 2016], and it was a great day out. People love it because it’s a full day out with racing and music. Let’s feel the love that day as everyone makes a big day of it. We can’t wait.”

Tickets for Shed Seven’s Music Live performance at Donny are on sale at ticketmaster.co.uk, with more information available at doncaster-racecourse.co.uk. Gates will open at 11.15am for the 1.10pm racecard,

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Shed Seven to Let It Ride at Live After Racing show at Doncaster Racecourse

Shed Seven: under starter’s orders for a day at the Donny races

YORK’S revived Britpoppers Shed Seven will play Live After Racing at Doncaster Racecourse on August 15 on a day that will combine chasing winners with Chasing Rainbows.

Tickets for this Music Live performance will go on pre-sale for Artist + O2 customers via ticketmaster.co.uk at 10am on Wednesday (January 8), followed by general sale on Friday (January 10) at 10am at ticketmaster.co.uk, with more information available at doncaster-racecourse.co.uk.

The Sheds have just mounted their biggest ever Shedcember winter tour, chalking up their record run of 23 shows between November 21 and December 21, with Leeds First Direct Arena on December 7 at the epicentre.

In June 2018, they played to 8,000 people in the open air at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl. Could Doncaster Racecourse on an August summer’s evening surpass that total? Wait and see!

Gates will open at 11.15am for the 1.10pm racecard; Shed Seven will be under starter’s orders at 5.45pm.

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REVIEW: Shed Seven, Leeds First Direct Arena, December 7 ****

Rainbow chasers: Shed Seven on the road again for December

Shed Seven, Shedcember Tour 2019, Leeds First Direct Arena, December 7

SHED Seven, December 7, and they must be in heaven. Sixteen years after York’s only ever Top Ten band split – a case of Britpop crackle, then snap – they are at a maximum high, playing to their biggest ever indoor crowd down the A64 in Leeds, where Manchester’s Happy Mondays had to settle for the smaller Leeds O2 Academy. You’re twisting their lemon, man.

First re-forming in 2007, going for concert gold again, the Sheds have since made their Shedcember winter tours a regular fixture, this year playing their record run of 23 shows between November 21 and December 21, with Leeds Arena at the epicentre.

This has been the year when “Britpop’s meat and potatoes band” had their Going For Gold compilation dipped in molten gold for a 20th anniversary deluxe vinyl reissue, and frontman Rick Witter enjoyed a November natter and a tipple-tasting session on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. Overdue respect of sorts, first from their former major label, Polydor, who had jettisoned them while the hits were still flowing, High Hopes dashed, and then a long-running chat-and-chomp show.

However, the Shed renaissance is built on their raucous, beer-swilling, body-still-willing, terrace-chant live shows, peaking across the Pennines in Summer 2018 when 8,000 gathered at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl one June night.

By now, their set lists have been bolstered by 2017’s “comeback” album, Instant Pleasures, their first since 2001’s Artful work, Truth Be Told (a record entirely absent from Saturday’s 19-song setlist).

These Shedcember shows are bigger, brighter in their lighting, filmed up close on the video screens, and bolstered in Leeds by boisterous support slots from Birmingham’s The Twang and Sheffield’s Reverend And The Makers.

Shout-out: Shed Seven had a message for Mrs Craig Lilley at Saturday’s gig

Striding on to The Magnificent Seven theme tune, it was T-shirts for Witter and guitarist Paul Banks, Breton-striped top for guitarist and keyboards player Joe Johnson, shirts for bassist Tom Gladwin and high-rise drummer Alan Leach. There is still nothing flash about the Sheds, save for the lightning bolt on Banks’s T and the glistening sheen of the regularly employed brass trio.

They started with the swaggering Room In My House, the instant pleasure from Instant Pleasures, later represented by Enemies & Friends (the night’s one lull), Better Days, an even better It’s Not Easy and knock-out first encore Invincible.

The Shedlist was dominated by fan favourites, from debut single Mark, through exhilarating versions of She Left Me On Friday, Dolphin and Bully Boy, before the one surprise as Going For Gold segued into its distant third cousin, U2’s Angel Of Harlem, on a suitably cold and wet December day, where by now no-one’s feet were touching the ground in the standing zone.

Parallel Lines, a cautionary tale as viewed today from the distance of fatherhood and “day jobs” in the Sheds’ latter forties, assumed its rightful place as the set’s extended closer. The night ended, as it always must, with the riotous Disco Down and all-our-yesterdays Chasing Rainbows, matching the multi-colour lighting chosen to cloak the Arena’s chameleon reptile skin.

Oh, and Mrs Craig Lilley, should you by a miracle be reading this, you were roundly booed after Witter revealed you had made your husband stay in, despite his ticket in his pocket. Rather than the room in your house, here’s where you should have been tonight, both of you.

Charles Hutchinson