• 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013

In ’24 we played 24 gigs, 2 of which in France and 1 in Belgium. There were a few so-so or just-about-okay occasions, due for instance to rain during outdoor events or to total lack of publicity by a local barkeeper in a far away city. But overall, we had lots of fun, and so generally did the punters in front of us. And not unimportant: all six of us were in good health this year. Early in the year Andries was finally able to resume gigging after an 8-months sick-leave. Among the niceties in the first months were (again) playing Irish Pub Fest and of course (again) ‘our’ St. Pat. night in the beautiful Bibelot venue in Dordrecht, where we were accompanied this year by Burning Pub Crawlers and Drunken Dolly. The St. Pat. weekend also included us bringing the major St. Pat. festival in The Hague to a close by a rowdy late night set in Zwarte Ruiter. What made St. Pat. ’24 all the more special for us was that is also marked the launch of our Drink, Holler and Dance cd. In between our holidays we played some summer festivals, and early autumn saw us spending many hours on French highways playing Caen and the neat Dirty Folk Festival near Tours. A final highlight was playing 3 sets at the Midwinterfair in the Archeon archeological themepark, where we played in a Roman Bath and a Roman Inn. Besides, we also found time to work on some new songs, a few of which have already become staples on our setlist and will be part of a new album we hope to present by St. Pat. ’26.

2023 was a bit of a mixed bag for BoB. It started off with a nice string of gigs. We returned to the Irish Pub Festival in Deventer. And we played Bibelot in Dordrecht again, for what was taking shape as our annual St. Pat. bash there. We had ourselves videod there, which resulted in a handful of cool videos on youtube and here on our website. A trip into Germany was made and a handful of summer festivals were in the books, so all looked bright. Then Andries fell ill, which was to last eight months. Bookers were informed BoB were willing to play but would be without accordion player. No gigs were pulled, yet no new gigs were being scheduled either. The five remaining lads did so good a job at the remaining gigs that BoB were asked to return another year. In between spells in hospital, Andries managed half an hour on stage at an August festival, which left him happy but exhausted.
In the meantime, BoB welcomed Dominic as a regular guest on stage. Not only did he occasionally help BoB out on drums, he also plays a neat bit of acoustic guitar to further enrich the BoB sound. And he is a sight to see on stage.
Towards the end of the year, the 2022 recordings Drink, Holler and Dance were released on the socials and were praised on Celtic platforms such Shite’n’Onions and LondonCelticPunks, the latter saying: “an authentic pub sound many try to replicate, but it ain’t easy to get it right”, leaving us rather chuffed.

After long corona limitations, Saint Patrick’s Day 2022 suddenly was GO! We played 5 gigs around that time, including the biggest Dutch Saint Patrick’s Day Festival in Den Haag. Although with Gosse falling ill the night before, it almost didn’t happen. Later that spring, in came Sebastiaan, a fabulous guitar player. A few nice festivals were played over the summer, such as Hrieps Festival in Grijpskerk and Hootchiekoe Festival in Varsseveld. After serious rehearsing and a string of gigs in October, we went into the studio. With the arrival of Sebastiaan, the return of gigging and the successful recording weekend, 2022 was a rather good year, the best since 2019.

We can be short about this year. Two shows in autumn, the Craft Beer Festival in Delft being a bag of fun. But that was it. Full stop.

Things looked bright in 2020, at least for about ten weeks. We played a folkpunk night in Rotterdam with Circle J and (again) the Irish Pub Fest in Deventer. At a late February gig, we had an Alkmaar pub packed to the rafters and sweat dropping from the ceiling. We were sharp and all set to play a really nice series of gigs around Saint Patrick’s Day and some nice festivals in the summer. We were to debut at the famous Saint Patrick’s Day Festival in Den Haag and our Saint Patrick’s gig at Bibelot, Dordrecht, was to be recorded and filmed. And we would ... and we would ...

Then the corona shit hit the fan. Just a few days before Saint Patrick’s Day, the country went into lockdown, we even didn’t rehearse for a while ...

BoB  played almost 20 shows in 2019, the first good year since 2016 (and little could we yet know of more bad years to come). We played Deventer Irish Pub Festival again, we celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day with a string of gigs including one in Bibelot with Royal Spuds, we again played support for the great Ferocious Dog and we set off to France for a weekend of gigs. Over the summer we played two festivals: Willems Wondere Weiland and Night of the Kilts Festival (Ger.). In autumn, Gosse joined our ranks on guitar and mandoline (he would add banjo and tin whistle later). Some pub gigs were played, new songs entered the setlist and things looked bright.

2018  was a mixed bag. Things didn’t work out with our second singer. He wasn’t the kind of bastard we’d hoped he’d be, and he couldn’t memorize lyrics (who’d ever think about checking this at audition?). After a series of no-fun-at-all Saint Patrick’s Day gigs (no fun for us at least, fingers crossed the audience had a good time after all), we gave him the boot. Regrettably, gigs had to be canceled, apart from two spring shows where Paul Henshaw (see 2016) saved our asses by stepping in to sing with us. One of those shows was at Bibelot, Dordrecht, also featuring Paul Henshaw, Nick Parker and Circle J.

So auditioning began again, us being more cautious this time. This time round, however, we were very lucky indeed, running into Jasper, half-Irish, a great bloke with a great voice, and on top of that a great songsmith too. So after a stand-still of about a year, we at BoB could look upward and forward again. Gigging resumed in autumn.

2017 saw us playing 20 gigs, starting off at Irish Pub Festival in Deventer and throwing a Saint Patrick’s Day party in Hagen (Ger.) with local heroes The Ceili Family. We shared two long weekends of gigging and having loads of fun and drinks with our Czech buddies Pirates of the Pubs, them being over in the low countries and us playing gigs with them in various towns in Bohemia, Praha included, throwing in some serious sightseeing at famous breweries in both Plzeň and České Budĕjovice. Our show at the very charming Folk Veur Volk festival up north was the last show with our then singer Cor, who left for The Caribbeans. Finding a new guy that fitted us proved hard. Though we did a Ferocious Dog support slot with him in Baroeg, Rotterdam.

2016 was an eventful year for BoB. We released our album MY DRINKIN’ AIN’T DONE, half the tunes of which we still play to this day, and we gigged almost 30 times, including gigs in Germany, Belgium and England. Late January, our pal Paul Henshaw (UK) brought his Scientific Simpletons over for a long weekend of shared gigs, which were a load of fun and solidified some firm comradeship (see 2018). Around Saint Patrick’s Day we played four gigs in a cd-presentation tour. Early May we crossed the Channel to play four UK-gigs with Paul Henshaw. Other highlights were playing The Shrubdivers (Strukeduukers) Biker-fest in a very muddy field, hitting the road for a long weekend in Germany (including Scruffy’s in Karlsruhe), and playing the Big Rivers Festival in Dordrecht and the International Folkfest in Paard in Den Haag, the latter with Uncle Bard & the Dirty Bastards (It.), The Moorings (Fr.), Smokey Bastard (UK) and Fiddlers Green (Ger.).

2015 wasn’t a bad year for Bunch of Bastards at all. The first half of the year we played a dozen gigs, among which two in Germany and one in Belgium. No-one got hospitalized and no-one left the band, we grew a tighter unit and ended the year by starting to record an album.

Gigwise there were a number of highlights. It started with a gig celebrating Rabbie Burns day, where we shared the stage with Yorkshireman Johnny Campbell. A few weeks later, we played a the Celtic Punk Folk Festival in Stuttgart with The Moorings (France) and Paddy and the Rats (Hungary). Next day, we strolled through a garden of a monastry singing our lyrics in would-be Gregorian style. That spring BoB played support to the Scottish-Canadian folkpunk legends The Real McKenzies, were the closing act at the reknown three-day Na Fir Bolg festival, playing our first big festival tent, and played at a folk night with Drunken Dolly and Royal Spuds.

By March, John was up-and-drumming again, so BoB could have a second take-off. This happened in a new line up, with Dex taking up duties on bass. BoB played a handful of gigs around Saint Patrick’s Day. One of those saw us crossing the border into Germany, playing at a Saint Patrick’s Party of the Castellans Folk Festival folks, where Nick Parker (UK) also played. With him we jammed and drank deep into the night.

Over the summer, we played our first outdoor festivals, more gigs followed in autumn, the highlight of which was to play Fabrik in Coesfeld (Ger.), opening an Irish Folk Punk night that also included The Porters and Mr. Irish Bastard. In total, we played 17 gigs in 2014 and we added more self-penned tunes to our expanding setlist. Towards the end of the year, we had our first merch made: the t-shirts with our ‘Bunch of Bastards – Full Force Folk’ logo, still popular to this day.

Late August 2013, with little more than Andries having a few half finished songs and some ideas for covers to play, BoB set out to play full force folk. After a handful of rehearsals, BoB debuted at the The Hague Rockweek in the former venue Supermarkt. A couple of weeks and rehearsals later, we played an indoor festival which for f***’s sake nearly proved fatal to our drummer John. Gigs had to be cancelled, some initial bandmembers abandoned ship and BoB looked stillborn.