Match-up of the day: New York Brass Band, featuring Elita, from Rio de Janeiro, on bass drum, with Hyde Family Jam accordionist Tom Gill, back row, third from left, and vocalist Will Dreyfus, front left. Picture: Liam Van Hymus
TWO of York’s bounciest party/function musical troupes collide at York Barbican for a co-headline show with a difference on Friday.
Please Please You promoter Joe Coates has decided the four-piece Hyde Family Jam will be on stage first, followed by New York Brass Band in an eight-piece line-up.
“I can see why Joe’s done that,” says Hyde Family Jam vocalist and guitarist Will Dreyfus. “To go on after an eight-piece band, to try to ramp things up even more…no, it’s better to do it the other way round.”
After each combo plays a 40-minute set, rampant folk-rock will meet New Orleans brass head on in a collaborative finale of the same length in a match-up cum mash-up of their biggest hits from wedding, busking and festival engagements.
“We did play together in the golden days of the Post Office Club, where we used to do it once a year, when we got Hyde Family Jam to support us,” recalls New York Brass Band founder and trumpet player James Lancaster.
“But this Barbican gig came about totally by accident. It started with sharing a busking pitch in Parliament Street, when New York Brass Band were trying to flog tickets for our show with my son Charlie’s Heavy Beat Brass Band, which he’d started at the Birmingham Conservatoire, where his final project was to create a New Orleans-style brass band – and they’ve been going for ten years now. The family musical links run deep!
“We ended up doing a few songs together and we thought, ‘OK, there’s probably something in this’. Rupert (Engledow, Hyde Family Jam violinist) and I got talking as the band leaders, and then my son Joe [fellow trumpet player Joe Lancaster] was definitely the driving force behind it.”
New York Brass Band founder James Lancaster with the York combo’s signature French horn
The next task has been “trying to get 12 grown men together in one room” for rehearsals. “We travel a lot for weddings and festivals, so to get everyone together is a challenge but we’ve managed it a few times,” says James, the latest gathering being on Monday.
An element of unpredictability will frame Friday’s climax. “Hyde Family Jam don’t have a drummer, so importing our drummer into their sound could either be a car crash or a success,” says James.
“It’s been quite an eye opener for us,” says Will. “We normally take all our cues from Kai [West], whose double bass playing is so percussive.” Or as James puts it, “Slapping it!” “We’re so used to taking our cues from Kai that it’s been like, ‘oh drums, I remember them,” rejoins Will.
James considers the possibilities for Friday’s joint set. “I’ve been to New Orleans a few times, and there’s a Zydeco element, where I looked where there could be a crossover with Hyde Family Jam’s line-up. Like Iko Iko – we play the Dr John version – just fitted together, with Rupert’s violin, the brass and the accordion.
“We’re both covers bands with a twist. I’m relatively hard-headed that I make my living as a musician, so my bottom line is that it’s about disguising we’re a covers band by twisting it.”
Will recalls seeing Hyde Family Jam in a socially distanced gig in Covid times at The Crescent. “I thought, ‘oh this is a brilliant way to do covers’,” he says. “I had a conversation with Rupert about being a ‘dep’ for John [frontman John Holt-Roberts] when he had acting commitments. I was working as festival co-ordinator for York Mediale and playing solo gigs at the time.
“John and Kai had played in Dead Drummer, basically heavy metal on acoustic guitar and stand-up bass, playing everything at 3,000 miles per hour – it was a sight to behold – so Hyde Family Jam play very fast too. Coming in to learn the set list was very intimidating, though now it feels very settled as I must have done 300 gigs over four years.”
Hyde Family Jam’s 2026 line-up: Rupert Engledow, violin, Kai West, double bass, Tom Gill, accordion, and Will Dreyfus, lead vocals and guitar
Will has been working with theatre-makers Wright & Grainger too, latterly at Latitude Festival, where they put together a show called Sonder in a day. “We met at ten in the morning, knowing we had to deliver an hour-long show, having a breakdown in the afternoon, then magically it all came together at night, on the theme of Mary Oliver poems.”
Will also joined up with writer, theatre-maker Casey Jay Andrews for her Feast of Words show in Adelaide, Australia, earlier this year and is working on a scratch show with Phil Grainger under the Wright & Grainger umbrella.
New York Brass Band’s upcoming gigs include a late-night party slot at The Magpies Festival on August 14 at 11pm Sutton Park, Sutton-on-the-Forest and Lindisfarne Festival on September 3. “It’s a meeting of crazy Geordies and Scots, where they all dress up as Vikings,” says James, whose first Barbican gig came in his days as the trumpet player in Big Ian Donaghy’s Huge, performing the test event at the Barbican Centre, as it was first called, in 1991.
Looking ahead, he says: “We can visualise getting together with Hyde Family Jam again – if it goes well with the audience and with the accountant.”
“Every time I walk past the Barbican, it’s lovely to see the poster up – and the Barbican staff have been very supportive,” says Will.
Friday’s concert will have one other fresh ingredient. “After I caught my son Charlie learning Portuguese In 300 Days on Duolingo, he met a girl in Rio de Janeiro, Elita. They kept flying over to see each other, and eventually she proposed to him and they married on a beach in Rio.
“She now has a visa, so she spends half the year in Rio, half over here playing the festival season, and she’ll be playing bass drum on Friday. She’s an absolute ray of sunshine, and we now have Grace [James’s daughter] and Elita to balance the general maleness of the band!”
New York Brass Band & Hyde Family Jam, York Barbican, August 7, 8pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
John Holt-Roberts
Did you know?
HYDE Family Jam founder member, singer and guitarist John Holt-Roberts still performs with the York band on occasion, when not clashing with his acting commitments. This summer he played Costard in Shakespeare in the Squares’ 10th anniversary tour of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s comedy of flirtation, foolishness and the irresistible pull of love, directed by fellow York theatre alumnus Toby Gordon, from June 3 to July 12.
Will Dreyfus says: “When John doubled down on his acting, it worked out well for me as I love playing with these guys. He still does some gigs with the band, and he’s very much the the consummate actor-muso, hopping around the stage whereas I’m more about the chat than the moves.”
Did you know too?
HYDE Family Jam double bassist Kai West will be flying back from Sorrento tonight in good time for Friday’s gig at York Barbican.