Hodmadoddery – Hodmadoddery Music Group Duo Guitar Voice Festival Concert

Two Blokes. Two Guitars. Two Voices. Since 1986

This is HODMADODDERY’s website. There’s really very little that you really need to know about us, and it’s probably not anything we could express on these pages.

If however you persist in pursuing various bits of fairly random & trivial information, of varying degrees of usefulness, that’s what the www is full of, so why not this bit too? Oh the technology, genius, resources that are expended in something so unimportant. Oh well.

From the links on the menu you can find out whether we’re playing at any time in the near future (we’re lazy so’n’sos) or if there’s other news, whether you really have succeeded in escaping any of our multifarious recorded output, indeed what we sound like to start with if you really don’t already know, what we look like (now and back then), some places and people from Doddery legend, some useful information if you want to book us for a gig or a festival, and the full unexpurgated story, from the days of unlimited free cider and tickling battles, through Comfylux, Pearce, Darch, Wilcox and Maiden Newton, all the way to the fine upstanding gentlemen we are today.

We first did one of these website things back in 2007 when we worked out that we’d been playing as a duo for 21 YEARS (or as near as we could work it out). This new site [2026] isn’t really much different, just a bit updated, and maybe better-looking. Just like us, of course. Be kind… AND NOW WE’RE FORTY!

Steve wrote and sort-of-designed this one by demanding various things he couldn’t do himself, on an editor that he’s really not got the hang of yet, clicking things at random, etc. Lollo did all the difficult stuff and the real work, tho’ we did manage to confuse an AI sufficiently [and definitely not the other way round] that this is all the work of human beans.

Who?

Hodmadoddery came together (and usually fell apart shortly afterwards) in a residency at a notorious local cider house in Bath, where we got paid in bright orange nectar. This was some time in the late 1980s. By the mid ’90s we were actually getting quite good, the positive effects of switching to wine on the European Street Festival circuit. Nowadays we don’t run around Europe quite as much as we used to, but that has allowed us to get some practice in; through dubious backstairs deals we have since clocked up 30-odd innings at Glastonbury, on multiple stages. By dint of following our own furrow we don’t any more sound like anyone else (except when we want to) and make a set of folk circuit standards, trad numbers, and the odd random who’d-ha-thought-it sound like they belong together and can even be ours (or yours) for the duration

What they said

Distinctive and fascinatingly intricate music … Vocalists and guitarists of much note, great compatibility and an incredibly intense togetherness yet possessing distinctive and contrasting individual playing styles … their music is imbued with a sensibility which embraces not only a performance ethic and method that’s unbelievably telepathic but also a quirky and enterprising, and impeccably tasty, choice of material.

David Kidman, www.folkradio.co.uk

…….more on Biography Page

Biography

Hodmadoddery started in Park Street, Bath, in about 1986. One of these days we’ll find something that will actually fix the date for sure, but for the moment that’s a pretty good approximation – it may even be an understatement.

We can blame some mutual friends for suggesting we might sound good together; let’s keep the guilty parties anonymous, they know who they are and they know what responsibility they bear. Throwing together a bunch of songs from both of our previous musical lives, and learning a few more from people we were very keen on at the time (Dick Gaughan and Christy Moore, for a start), we soon worked out we could get people to buy us drinks for playing, so out to play we jolly well did go.

Hodmadoddery came together (and usually fell apart shortly afterwards) in a residency at a notorious local cider house in Bath, where we got paid in bright orange nectar. This was some time in the late 1980s. By the mid ’90s we were actually getting quite good, the positive effects of switching to wine on the European Street Festival circuit. Nowadays we don’t run around Europe quite as much as we used to, but that has allowed us to get some practice in; through dubious backstairs deals we have since clocked up 30-odd innings at Glastonbury, on multiple stages. By dint of following our own furrow we don’t any more sound like anyone else (except when we want to) and make a set of folk circuit standards, trad numbers, and the odd random who’d-ha-thought-it sound like they belong together and can even be ours (or yours) for the duration

The long and winding history

A nice cider pub called The Beehive, long since closed [curiously it had a brief afterlife as an altogether posher bar called Grappa], that was the place; they’d give us unlimited farmhouse cider, the orange stuff, Thatcher’s I expect, and allow us to take a collection round the pub at the end of the night.

Tony & Nessa would live the travelling life most of the year, even up to three straight years on the road in a series of vehicles, and that lightweight Henwood would come out and play at being a traveller in the summer, play a lot of music and drink a lot of wine. The most remarkable of those vehicles was a former coach (“vecchio pullman” in Italian) – the back read: “Comfylux – Pearce Darch & Willcox – Yeovil, Martock & Maiden Newton” – we hoped people might have thought those were our names…

Italy and the Busking Years

In August 1991 we wandered into Ferrara just as their soon-to-be-enormous Buskers Festival was ending for the year. Not knowing we weren’t supposed to, we played an arch just off the main piazza on the last night, the Thousand Lire notes fluttered into our guitar cases, and we went away with the resolve to do the festival properly the following summer. We were invited performers at the 1992 event, where we also met the legendary Cosmic Sausages. Since then we’ve played Ferrara every year except two, and other festivals up and down Italy.

Notable Venues & Festivals

Artisti In Piazza, Pennabilli, Italy
The Bandstand at Glastonbury Festival
Ferrara Buskers Festival
Bristol Zoo
Linz Pflasterspektakel
And many, many pubs…

Guests & Collaborators

Hodmadoddery are proud to have had the following guests on live shows and recordings: Ed Boyd, Maclaine Colston, Steve Davies, Marion Kenney, Brian Madigan, Simon Sausage Palmer, Gigi Scaccabarozzi, Henry Sears, Tony Stephenson, Zoe Stevenson, Mykey Vince, and The Cloghoppers.

We updated this website for our 40th year – well, it was a bit less effort than the mini-festival Steve was planning. 2026&7 will be seeing lots of personal changes for both of us, and this period of transformation will doubtless extend towards the end of the decade, it’s a time-of-life thing. Expect to see us at our regular gig haunts, Glastonbury, Bath Folk, and at least one annual Italian expedition of course. We’ve got some of the way towards a new album so that’s not an impossibility. Keep your eye on us, we’re not done yet…