Dave Banks

Dave Banks is a songwriter, singer and musician from Chesterfield. He’s a member of Me & Mr Jones, Poke O’Swedgers, the Angry Forest and the Sedatives, but he also plays and records as a solo artist. Thus far, he’s released the album “Gammon and Spinach“, the EP “Artless” and a handful of singles including “Night Witch” and “Jacob’s Black Dove“, with Sue Jones. Several tracks off these collections have been selected by BBC Radio Sheffield’s Upload program for radio airplay. His album “Gammon & Spinach” was a collaboration with several musical and poetic chums, including Tony Keeton, Sarah Sharp, Ian Jones, Rob Dean, Tom Nash, Jenny Banks and Louise Sweeney. The album received a lovely review from the folk magazine “Tykes Stirrings”:

“Dave is a Chesterfield-based singer, songwriter, poet and musical wit, whose previous CDs will be familiar to readers of Stirrings. This is the first CD since the merger with Tykes’ … and we of the Northern Half have been missing out! The CD features eighteen tracks in total, whose range of style and content is surprising – from ambient acoustic to studio electric, from mysterious meditation to vituperative vitriol….. Urban (Bethlehem Steel) sits alongside rural (the exquisite Rother Vale). There is nostalgia in the recollection of the delights of younger days and, child being farther from the man, modern realities in a world where “hard times come again”…..One is often put in mind of Jake Thackray and the CD bristles with a reactive incongruity….You can delight in identifying audio references and lyrical allusions that range from Carry On films… to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, whose David Copperfield is the direct source of the CD title. But then, it also puts me in mind of another 19th Century G&S and that is valid too. Indeed, references are so plentiful, non-essential and at the same time crucial that one feels tempted to draw a parallel with the approach of TS Elliot (it’s so elegant, so intelligent).”

Dave is a long-standing member of Hasland Theatre  and is currently putting together a collection of short songs, inspired by the lives and works of playwrights he loves: Tom Stoppard, Joan Littlewood and Anton Chekhov. This collection is due to be released in Spring 2024.