They'll be at the Topic in Bradford on November 9th (which is still part of the Topic's 50th anniversary season)... they first went there 18 months ago and I heard they went down very well. So I went to see them at the Nova Scotia (itself 40+ years old, all in the same venue) in Bristol on Monday.

They were really good, mixing up fiddle, guitar, subtle banjo (clawhammer style, I gather), harmony singing and an a capella number; and drawing on old-time Kentucky material, a couple of tunes pinched, they said, from England, contemporary songwriters and Dana's own observational stuff. Having seen a few British floor singers with cod-American accents recently it was good to see the real deal. Thoroughly recommended even if (as with me) rural Americana isn't really your thing. They obviously like touring in the UK as they - Dana especially - have come several times, and they really get into what they're doing.

I hadn't been to the Nova Scotia before, but it's a great location for a folk club, down by the water - Cabot would have sailed past in 1497 on his first journey to North America. Though the function/club room is largely characterless the bar is yellowed with smoke deposits and the walls covered in old maps and pictures of shipbuilding, and it generally gives the (probably erroneous) impression no-one has redecorated since before the Great War.