Mad Dog McRea

Plymouth may not be the first place one thinks of for folk music with a restless streak, but it is where Mad Dog McRea come from. The Devon band pull together folk rock, pop, gypsy jazz and bluegrass into a single loose-limbed sound, so one song can slide between genres and still hold together.

Their breakthrough came with The Whirling Dervish, released in 2011, which won Best Album of the Year at the South West Music Awards that year. Later in 2011 BBC Radio 2's Mike Harding heard the band, asked for CDs and then played them on the station several times, calling them one of the most exciting discoveries of the year despite three albums and years of gigging behind them. Cosmo Jarvis, who wrote Waiting on the Hill from that album, supported the band on the Happy Bus tour of the UK in November 2012. Other milestones include playing at the wedding celebrations of their friend Seth Lakeman in 2012, performing The Rocky Road to Dublin with Mick Jagger on tambourine at a Prince's Trust charity garden party, and appearing on the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury in 2013.