YOU can never rest on past successes and Skelmanthorpe Band doesn’t intend to do that.
For several years, a gala concert in Huddersfield Town Hall has been one of the central planks in the band’s year. And that hasn’t changed.
What has changed is that instead of getting a star solo singer to share the stage with them, they’ve opted for five.
Kimber’s Men are a fantastic five-piece sea shanty group, who are proving a big hit with music fans both here and abroad.
The big concert idea began several years ago and Skelmanthorpe has pushed the boat out year after year on celebrity guests.
They’ve featured Welsh stars Aled Jones and Kathryn Jenkins, West End star tenor Alfie Boe, New Zealander Hayley Westenra, teenage singing sensation Faryl Smith and last year, Britain’s Got Talent winner, Paul Potts.
What’s certain is this is a band which knows its music and its singers, so listen out for Kimber’s Men.
The concert is at Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturday, October 6 and there’s plenty to get excited about.
“We’ve been very fortunate to team up with Kimber’s Men, a fantastic five piece sea shanty group who are very popular here and abroad with the folk contingent,” said band concert secretary, Graham Crossland.
“Two of the guys come from Sowerby Bridge.”
Kimber’s Men was formed in the summer of 2001 and in those early days the group was a quartet comprised of Neil Kimber (ship’s bosun), John Bromley (ship’s cook), Joe Stead (ship’s doctor), and Roger ‘Tonky’ Hepworth, the ship’s cabin boy.
Neil and Roger had been singing together as a duo in West Yorkshire since the mid Sixties while John burst upon the folk scene a little later in 1972 as a member of Hebric.
John also sings with the local operatic society in Halifax and is a member of The Bradshaw Mummers, who can be seen throughout most summers at various festivals acting out the important chapters of English history.
He also sang lead bass with Northern Ballet at Leeds Playhouse for the winter season of Mozart’s Requiem.
Meanwhile Joe Stead had begun a professional career in Sixties London, which eventually took him to various parts of the world and more recently the first Valparaiso Festival of the Sea in Chile.
Joe has performed in concert in America with Pete Seeger and in the Fifties, sang at a garden party with Paul Robeson in London.
Neil also sang in concert with Pete Seeger when he and Joe crossed the Atlantic with Paul Downes to perform in a concert in New Jersey to raise funds for the Delaware Valley River Project.
Sadly, the group lost Roger who died of lung cancer in 2004.
The group now has two new members, David Buckley and Gareth Scott.
David is an actor and a singer who has performed in musicals and with the Halifax Operatic Society.
“When we found him he was playing the part of Captain Smith in Titanic the Musical,” said a spokesman for Kimber’s Men.
“We managed to grab him by his shirt tails before he went down with the ship.”
The band itself will have a big programme with something to delight all brass band fans. Ticket details coming soon.
