Brown Wimpenny's Annual Christmas Do

A collective who mine the transcendental collective power of traditional folk music, Brown Wimpenny, split between Manchester, London and Liverpool, are bringing communities together to celebrate that rich catalog of folk songs owned by no individual in particular, bar humanity itself.

Taking their name from a distant 19th century relative of tenor banjoist Seth Lockwood’s, Brown Wimpenny began with informal get-together Sunday jam sessions in his Manchester living room. Growing as large as 25 members before being whittled down to its current number of 11, early gigs saw the band take up half the capacity of the room they were playing in, lyrics being passed around to attendees too, as part of a broader ideal of reducing the gap between audience and performer.

‘We see the band as a shared social and creative endeavour,’ explains Anna Korbel. ‘We love the sense of the everyday and the normal, and rejoicing in the collective and communal. I think that’s the key to our process and our ethos. We’re not over-egging anything. We’re just seeing it and playing as it is.’

Brown Wimpenny’s debut album Long Live Brown Wimpenny was released in June on Broadside Hacks.