FOLK act Beans on Toast is bringing his 'Wild Goose Tour' to Birkenhead's Future Yard this month. 

Since 2005, Beans on Toast has written simple songs about complicated subjects. Tackling the big issues of the day but doing so with his feet firmly on the ground, he’s become a people’s champ of the modern folk scene and amassed a huge back catalogue of songs in the process. 

One of the hardest working artists in the business, he’s released countless albums, written children's books ('The Fascinating Adventures of Little Bee’), played every festival under the sun, and even organises his own (the annual ‘Foolhardy Folk Fest’). As vital a voice in folk music today as when he started, in 2023 Beans on Toast notably delivered a speech for the Campaign of Nuclear Disarmament from Glastonbury’s iconic Pyramid Stage too. 

An unrepentant optimist whose songs celebrate all that is wonderful about the human spirit, his live shows are similarly uplifting and have taken him from SOLD OUT headline shows in the UK to major international festivals and stages across the globe as far as America, Australia, Europe, and beyond.

He releases his new album, ‘Wild Goose Chasers’, on December 1.

While its idiosyncratic title may be typical of the wry turn-of-phrase we have come to expect from the Essex songwriter, listeners should expect a very different animal for his latest release. A collection of newfangled pagan hymns to coincide with the end of truth, these sparsely-arranged, supernaturally-shaded songs promise to be unlike anything the artist has conjured previously.

As Beans says: “These songs are about trading modern society for a wilder, more feral existence. Songs that dig deep into the meaning of life and our purpose on Earth. They provide an exit strategy from a boring dystopia by gambling the flood for a fairy tale. This might sound pompous, but such is life, and such is the wild goose chase.”

An album of shadows and deception, melody and magic, Wild Goose Chasers stands as Beans on Toast’s most unadorned, unconventional, and daring release yet. Streaming on all services on December 1 2024, the album will also be available as a limited edition picture disk vinyl with artwork by photographer Nick Page.

Recorded under a full ”flower moon” at the Albion Rooms in Margate, these 12 heartfelt, mystical journeys are all accompanied by Matt Millership on an ancient piano.

Beans on Toast plays Future Yard (75 Argyle Street, Birkenhead CH41 6AB) on November 15 at 7.30pm. 

Tickets from futureyard.org