Big Country

'Return To Steeltown' 40th Anniversary Tour 1984-2024

Support: Jess Silk

Steeltown’ was the second studio album by Big Country which was recorded at ABBA’s Polar Studios in Stockholm with production from Steve Lillywhite. Released in October, 1984 Bruce Watson remembers the time very well, amid the nationwide strife back in the UK, fully in the grip of the Miners Strike: “We started work on Steeltown back in June 1984 at Abba’s studio. My Dad was a miner, so what we did was knuckle down to hard work for six weeks”.

Regarded by many as a classic, the multi-million selling ‘Steeltown’ went straight to the #1 slot in the UK album charts.

Big Country will be performing songs from the album as well as the classic hits and live favourites including:’Fields of Fire’, ‘In A Big Country’, ‘Chance’, ‘Wonderland’, ‘Look Away’ and many more.

Jess Silk
Jess Silk is a guitarist, singer and songwriter from the Black Country. Her shouty but melodic brand of folk/punk music often has her being likened to a female Frank Turner or Billy Bragg, and it gets people sitting up and listening. Armed only with an increasingly sticker-covered acoustic guitar and a distinctive, gravelly 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 andis currently working on her third studio album.

In recent years Jess has appeared at a number of festivals including Bearded Theory, Rebellion, Beautiful Days and Glastonbury where she shared a stage with Billy Bragg as part of his Radical Roundup on the Left Field stage. Jess continues to tour around the UK playing festivals, supports and headline shows and in March of 2023 played six dates supporting the Levellers.

INTO THE MUSIC BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ROCK ARTIST MANAGEMENT.