Jess Silk is be heading back to one of her favourite venues, The Kitchen Garden, bringing her passionate, melodic brand of folk/punk songs along that gets people sitting up and listening. Support for this intimate show will be from Jess' long time gigging buddy Matt Johnson. When these two get together, you really do go home with a heart full of hope in a sometimes dark world.

Jess Silk

Jess is a guitarist, singer and songwriter from the Black Country. Her passionate and melodic brand of folk/punk music gets people sitting up and listening. Armed only with an increasingly sticker-covered acoustic guitar, lyrics right from the heart and a distinctive, powerful voice that many don't expect, Jess plays to audiences up and down the UK and has shared stages with many well known names among the folk/punk scene.

Jess released her debut album, Break the Bottle, in May 2018 with a packed out show at her spiritual home of Katie Fitzgerald’s in Stourbridge. Since then she’s shared a number of other releases including two live EP’s with tracks taken from shows at Katie’s and HMV Merry Hill. 2020 saw the world shut down and Jess release two (almost completely) self produced EPs, the first of which, If We’re Damned, was put together from songs that had been gathering metaphorical dust on her hard drive, and the second, There’s A Bar At the End Of the World, a collection of songs written between March and August taking their inspiration from the events of the year. At the end of August 2021 Jess released her second full-length album Blitz Spirit, and in April 2025 she released her new EP Old, Broken Isle which was recorded at Metway Studios in Brighton.

In recent years Jess has appeared at a number of festivals including Bearded Theory where she opened the main stage, Rebellion, Beautiful Days and Glastonbury where she shared a stage with Billy Bragg as part of his Radical Roundup on the Left Field stage. She has opened for the likes of the Levellers, New Model Army, Bar Stool Preachers, The Men They Couldn’t Hang and Merry Hell amongst others and she continues to tour around the UK playing festivals, supports and her own headline tours.

Matt Johnson

Matt is a Midlands based singer/songwriter who really wears his heart upon his sleeve, his emotive performances completely captivating his audience. His lyrics cover the whole remit of life, from the love of his family through to the persecution of our wildlife, and he means every word. He has a fantastic ear for melody and builds a hook into every song that has the audience singing back at him by the second chorus.