Rural France + Ben Auld + Sumos

Event information

Much like the duo’s music, the story of Rural France is both mundane and magical. Tom Brown (also of transatlantic janglepunks Teenage Tom Petties) and Rob Fawkes moved to London in their mid-twenties. Despite living under the same roof, they never picked up a guitar – except for one drunken, failed attempt at writing a Spoon song ('Big Chops' …don’t ask).

It was only after both separately relocating to Wiltshire and starting families that they began assembling songs as a way of meeting up. Tom had amassed a pile of sprightly slacker jams that were calling out for Fawkes’ messily melodic guitar lines. Rural France was born.
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Ben Auld is a power-pop artist out of Norwich, UK. His band is made up of close friends that are active in the local scene. It features Duncan Baker on drums, Conor Etteridge on guitar, and George Witty on bass.
A fan of lo-fi, scrappy DIY bands like Guided By Voices, The Replacements and Bill Fox, Auld spent his early twenties learning how to write the perfect 2 minute pop song. He also spent this time figuring out how to record to tape, and produce his own recordings. He moved to Bristol at 25 and befriended jazz musician and potter Nick Dover, who let him moonlight at his recording studio ‘Canyon Sound’.

Over a two-year period he wrote and recorded the songs that would become Lemongrass (Earth Libraries, 2022), having performed and produced it entirely solo.
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Sumos are a scuzz-pop band from Manchester, UK. They began as a bedroom recording project between Joel Sloan (Guitar, Lead Vocals) and Kyle Tarbuck (Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals) after a hiatus from playing together in a previous band. Now a blazing four-piece, adding Kyle's sister Siobhán Tarbuck on Bass and Andy Kilroy on Drums
In his late twenties, Auld moved back to his hometown after struggling to replicate the community he had back in Norwich. At this point, he began performing the songs of Lemongrass with friends who encouraged him to play live.