We have 3 albums for sale
Just got to! - Jon Townsend & Friends. A studio album with guests £7. Released September 2021. See home page for details. No reviews yet.

Organic & Natural - King Biscuit Boys -  our first 'Live' album recorded at Peppers at The Gloucester Blues festival in 2019, just a couple of weeks after opening the Acoustic Stage at The Upton Blues Festival. £5

Bluesyourself - The King Biscuit Boys - Our 2018 recordings that was the 13th most played album by the IBBA (Independent Blues Broadcasters) £5

If you want one of each, then you can have them all for £12.
If you just want 2 it will be £10

Price includes postage and packing.

Drop us an email or Paypal to jonathan.townsend1@outlook.com 

Thanks


Andy Hughes of Blues Matters says:

"amazing harmonica throughout the album" "Everything about this 14 track selection underlines the authenticity of the duo's approach, and the flair and ability with which they achieve it".  

Bluesyourself.
Norman Darwen from Blues in Britain says "Take a listen to the whole album for a very enjoyable blues experience".
It has 14 tracks: I'm tired of working, Viola Lee, You're gonna lose, Tempted, Nice time, What is it tastes like gravy?, Killing Floor, In my time of dying, That ain't all, Won't you please (so&so), Spinning wheel blues, Lonesome lover & Twenty yards behind.

Bluesyourself songs:

I'm tired of working. This little shuffle has been opening our set for some time. Indeed we did record it on our first home made EP. We decided it was time to record it again, so we could have it available to our supporters.

Viola Lee. We have been playing this Cannon’s Jug Stompers song for awhile. It’s quite a simple song. The only real problem with the song it is that Viola Lee is not mentioned in the lyrics at all. I suspect she is the reason for the jail term.

You’re gonna lose (Gambler’s Blues). I’d been meaning to write a gambling song for awhile, but I had some music in my head that didn’t work for this, so I got a rhythm and started working on it properly. The only ones that win are the gambling companies, because they bet responsibly!

Tempted. Craig wanted a song to play his spoons and harmonica on, so I came up with this standard progression and provided some lyrics for today. It was a good opportunity to get that well known blues word ‘peccadillo’ into a song.

Nice time. This is our first political-ish songs. It’s the first time you get to hear Craig’s vocals on some backing singing/shouting.

What is it tastes like gravy? This is an old Tampa Red song. We have been playing this since we got together and did record it for an early EP. We thought we would like to make it available to more people, so we recorded it again. Craig has been known to get spontaneous applause for his one note solo.

Killing Floor. I enjoy playing this song and with Craig taking the rhythm section on washboard it has proved to be popular when we started playing it live.

In my time of dying. When we agreed that we should do this song we went back to listen to what we thought was the original, but it wasn’t there. It turns out that it was not a Blind Willie Johnson song as we thought, but a Josh White song.
Craig plays this with a spoon a sliding bar and a guitar on his lap. It gives it an altogether original sound. Craig had originally used a different guitar and it just wasn’t coming together. He bought a Radio King Lap guitar and it immediately worked.

That ain’t all. This is a little 8 bar blues love song.

Won’t you please (So&So). Blues come in different styles; this is a begging one. We have been trying this out for awhile. I wanted Craig to play piano on this song. Craig’s piano is not tuned correctly so he has to play in a different key.

Spinning Wheel Blues. We were originally just going to record this Rossi/Young song as Jonathan on vocals and Craig on harp while we were in the car travelling to gigs and put it on social media as a 30 second thing, but in the end we added guitar and recorded it in its entirety.

Early Shift Blues Boy. These are lyrics about unrequited love (lust). You know she is with someone else, but you would rather she wasn’t.

Lonesome Lover. Some more unrequited love. When you are young, you just don’t understand why the girls are attracted by the ‘bad’ guys.

20 yards behind. We started to play this when Wilko Johnson was very ill, and we thought we would have it ready as a tribute. Thankfully people don’t have to die before you can tribute them! We slowed this down to a shuffle and it works well with a bit of distortion.

 

As the CD versions of our first two albums have sold out, we decided to put some of the tracks available as download EPs from Bandcamp.  https://kingbiscuitboys.bandcamp.com/

2016 album 'Got my eyes on you'. (SOLD OUT)

Track listing:

1. Motormouth Mama (Not on the EP)
2. Pep on my step
3. She scares me
4. Sucker
5. My blues buddy done stole my baby
6. Depot blues  (Not on the EP)
7. Hit the road  (Not on the EP)
8. Miss you when you've gone
9. I won't be sober soon
10. A handful of kisses
11. My middle name is lonesome
12. Jukin' (My baby left me)
13. My blues buddy done stole my baby (alternative bonus)


Album Review – Blues in Britain - Issue 177 (Sept 2016)

The King Biscuit Boys: Got my eyes on you

If you want stripped down, front porch country blues, then this is the place to be. Jonathan Townsend brings simple, gritty lyrics with guitar, and accompanies Craig Stocker on a variety of percussive implements, not to mention breathing life into a very nice harp.  


The lyrics are the boys view on everyday life, mixed with a few interpretations of old stalwarts, such as ‘Hit The Road Jack’, in a lovely, harp driven instrumental form. A grungy ‘Motormouth Mama’, and a reworked Son House, ‘Depot Blues’ complete the ‘covers’.  Most of the material is written by Jonathan ‘Lonesome’ Townsend (his label accorded by the lyrics) with a little help from Craig on ‘Pep In My Step’, a song that swaggers along to retell getting up for the next gig. Washboard, tin cans, and the kitchen sink come into Craig’s reach for a delightful tap dance across ‘ She Don’t Scare Me’. Scary women, stolen moments with other men’s women, lost women, and, of course, you cannot have blues without resorting to alcohol. That bottle is cracked open for ‘I Won’t Be Sober Soon’, pouring out two fine measures of harmonica between verses.


Throughout this album, Craig shines through with his country harp, Jon has injected the lyrics with humour and the whole session is unadorned straight acoustic takes, recorded to capture the sound of The King Biscuit Boys live.
It adds a light touch and brings a smile to the face. 


Graham Munn.




All in a days work...  2014  - (SOLD OUT)

Track listing: 
1. Suck, squeeze, bang, blow
2. All you need
3. Cocaine (not on the EP)
4. Lies travel faster than the truth
5. Tell by her look 
6. Stealin' Stealin' (Not on the EP)
7. Bye bye baby, so long
8. Live life and take the consequences
9. If you want loyalty...but a dog!
10. How come my dog don't bark? (Not on the EP) 

Blues in Britain
The story behind this album was detailed in November 2014’s issue, but a quick recap: Gwyn Ashton offered to record anyone who was interested . These guys, who have been working together since 2011, got in touch.
The CD title is quite literal – it was all laid down in a single day, generally keeping to the duo’s live approach.
So it is that the set closer- both live and on this disc – is the traditional ‘How come my dog don’t bark?’, influenced here partly by Dr John’s version. It is a favourite with audiences and gets a lively treatment, with some forceful guitar work by Jonathan Townsend, and it is a good example too of the Boy’s sense of humour. ‘Bye bye baby, so long ‘, inspired by American harp great Steve Guyger, has an early ‘50’s Chicago flavoured sound, thanks to Craig Stocker’s accomplished chromatic harmonica work, and some of the other songs are in a similar early post-war style. They also draw on the likes of the duo’s favourites The Memphis Jug Band, and they occasionally write songs, taking inspiration from a comment by Son House or compose a replacement song for Muddy Waters’ number ‘You got to take sick and die some of these days’, as it was deemed inappropriate for Jonathan to sing in the hospital where he was working!
Nice and lively, this one, and well worth a listen. I guess Gwyn liked them- I certainly do – Norman Darwen.


Blues Matters
Recorded in a day with the help of Gwyn Ashton, this latest from the King Biscuit Boys is as raw and rootsy as you would expect given the tight budget and time constraints the band placed on themselves. A collection of acoustic originals and reworked blues standards, more often than not given humorous lyrical twists by the duo, All In a Days Work captures all of the band’s unfurnished elegance as well as their impressive array of instruments and talents as players. There’s obviously plenty of guitar and throaty vocals (pitched at an entirely authentic Delta yell throughout) but the band also have their trademark virtuosic harmonica, as well as melodica, washboard and even spoons in their arsenal. Album opener Cold In The Morning is a wonderful duet between harmonica and guitar and is rife with double entendre, a stylistic trait so oft overlooked in the Blues. Lies Travel Faster than the truth has an almost ethereal quality more than likely due to it’s open tuning, and again highlights the band’s willingness to pay tribute to their Blues idols (in this case Son House). There is some fantastic slide work on the likes of Tell By Her Look and some interesting bass/harmonica counterpoint on Bye Bye Baby and it’s perhaps here that the band’s ‘ace in the hole’ becomes most apparent, this unlikely duo have that rarest of things, chemistry. The musical empathy they so clearly share is hard to resist and only ever serves the material in a beneficial way. Whilst a word of advice would be to amp up their promotional game as trying to find any relevant info on these guys may make you feel like you’re actually trying to track down one of the original legendary bluesman (perhaps this is the point), as songwriters and musicians first and foremost they are hard to fault.


RHYS WILLIAMS