GIG REVIEW: Levellers + The Bar Stool Preachers @ The Fire Station, Sunderland, Friday 11 July 2025
It’s testament to the longevity of folk-punk legends Levellers that four of the musicians who formed the band back in 1988 are on stage tonight at this warm-up for tomorrow’s Beautiful Day At The Seaside shindig in Scarborough.
Mark Chadwick (guitar and vocals), Jeremy Cunningham (bass), Charlie Heather (drums) and Jon Sevink (violin) have been bandmates 37 years, with long-time keyboardist Matt Savage and more recent recruit Dan Donnelly (guitar, mandolin and vocals) completing the line-up.
They’re a well-oiled machine, and it’s easy to see why Levellers were among the most popular indie bands in Britain in the early 1990s, performing to a record 300,000 crowd at Glastonbury in 1994, and touring and releasing new music ever since.
Only one newer song makes the cut; Four Boys Lost from 2020’s 12th album Peace. That’s because it’s the classics people want to hear, which is why half tonight’s set comes from their 1991 breakthrough record Levelling The Land.
They start with three of its best-loved tracks, The Riverflow, an urgent Fifteen Years and an atmospheric Battle Of The Beanfield, and it’s clear from the off that this is going to be a crowd-pleasing set.
Chadwick keeps the chatter to a minimum, preferring to let his band’s songs do the talking, and there are 18 in all, spread over a 90-minute greatest hits set (though, disappointingly, no This Garden or Hope Street).
With nine of Levelling The Land‘s 11 tracks get an airing, plus three from debut album A Weapon Called The Word, that doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room, so I’ll forgive them for leaving out two of my favourites.
There’s plenty more to enjoy; for me the pick are the anthemic One Way, which brings the night’s biggest singalong, and England My Home from the first album, in the middle of a three-song encore.
Surprisingly, just Men-an-Tol is included from fourth album Zeitgeist, which gave Levellers their only No 1 (though it’s due to be celebrated in its own right with a 30th anniversary tour later this year).
The night is rounded off with a rousing rendition of another of their biggest songs, What A Beautiful Day, which sends everyone home happy.
Some of the Levellers’ spirit undoubtedly rubbed off on tonight’s openers The Bar Stool Preachers, who found a home in the ska-punk circuit after forming in Brighton in 2014. They’ve got three full-length albums to their name, with a new one in the works, and they’re a phenomenal live band.
There’s maybe a 60-40 split in the audience between those who’ve seen them before and those who haven’t, and they’ve got only 45 minutes and nine songs to make an impression.
I’ve seen them umpteen times, usually as headliners or at a festival. Their show is always high energy, but rarely have I seen them work as hard to win over a crowd as they do here.
Vocalist TJ is one of the most engaging and street-smart frontmen around, and quickly makes it clear Levellers were a huge inspiration for BSP, coming as they do from the same town.
TJ tells the sold-out crowd early in the set: “In our world there’s two types of people – cunts and not cunts. Let’s be not cunts.” Later he asks a mohawked fella right at the front who’s turned his back to the stage to join him up there if he’s unimpressed. “Nah, thought not,” he says.
The set is short and sweet; One Fool Down is taken from debut album Blatant Propaganda, 8.6 Days (All The Broken Hearts), Choose My Friends and DLTDHYOTWO from follow-up Grazie Governo, and Call Me On The Way Home, All Turned Blue and Flatlined from 2023’s Above The Static (reviewed here).
To my delight there’s also a cover of Suicide Girls, a latter-day classic by street-punk legends Cock Sparrer (whose singer Colin McFaull is TJ’s dad) before they end with ‘theme song’ Bar Stool Preacher. Hopefully they’ve converted even more fans to their own cause tonight.
A friend seeing BSP for the first time enjoyed them but “every song seems to have a message”. Well, quite. Messages of hope, community and togetherness – the same things the Levellers have spent their career advocating, then.
