The Leisure Society At Grayshott Folk Club

Here at Grayshott Folk Club HQ, TLS are one of our favourite bands and we’ve followed them down to Devon, back up to Brighton and all the way to Grayshott Village Hall GU26 6TZ where one of our proudest moments to date, was seeing and hearing The Leisure Society play live for us on Saturday 21st September 2019. They were brilliant that night and we are beside ourselves that they are finally coming back to play for us again! The Leisure Society have collaborated and toured with artists including; Ray Davies (The Kinks), Brian Eno, Laura Marling, Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), Richard Thompson, Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott. TLS were founded by Nick Hemming, who grew up in Burton-on-Trent. As a teenager, Nick formed the Indie band She Talks To Angels with his art college friend, director Shane Meadows plus the actor Paddy Considine. Following the band’s split, Nick was scooped up by local indie hopefuls The Telescopes, who were signed to Creation Records. Shane Meadows remained a supporter, hiring Nick to score 1999’s “A Room For Romeo Brass” and 2004’s “Dead Man’s Shoes”, but Nick was beginning to lose confidence in his song writing abilities. Everything changed with the arrival of fellow Burton-on-Trent exile Christian Hardy, who worked with Nick to develop and record new songs and encouraged him to venture out on stage. In 2006, The Leisure Society was born and developed rapidly, with an initial landmark being the single ‘The Last Of The Melting Snow’, which was championed by Dermot O’Leary on Radio 2, and Radcliffe and Maconie, as well as being chosen as one of his records of the year, by Guy Garvey on 6Music. It remains one of our favourite songs and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in 2009. The Leisure Society will be visiting Grayshott as part of their “Into The Arms of Hope” Tour 2024. They have been working hard on their sixth studio album for some time now and the havoc caused by Covid, did not help the band to progress with it but bit by bit, they are assembling another masterpiece. The band will appear with founding members Nick Hemming, Christian Hardy and violinist Mike Siddell playing through a highly-regarded songbook that spans five albums (from 2009’s “The Sleeper” to 2019’s “Arrivals & Departures”) plus a new selection of songs, written during and after lockdown. Nick Hemming promises an “open-ended and intimate” night with fans, following the “incredibly uplifting” string of dates the band performed in November last year. We look forward to them unveiling some new songs for us but we also look forward to hearing some of their absolute classics, of which, there are many. To keep their loyal fans happy, the band released a single in 2023. It was called “Brave Are The Waves” and features their long time admirer and friend, Brian Eno.