The Ogretones celebrate the music of the Shrek movies on tour

Hailing “from the swamps” of Hampshire, The Ogretones are delivering their very own tribute to the Shrek soundtracks on a tour taking in Portsmouth’s Gaeity Bar on October 2.

Andy, our Shrek in the band, is promising an evening of hits from Smash Mouth, Counting Crows, Led Zeppelin, Buzzcocks, Wolfmother, Heart, The Monkees, The Proclaimers, Lipps Inc, Bonnie Tyler, David Bowie, Willie Nelson, Joan Jett, Paul McCartney, Ricky Martin and more.

“Our first-ever show was in June 2023 and I think the idea was about a year before that. I was in another band beforehand and we were doing weddings and pubs and functions, and looking down at the setlist I realised that a lot of the songs in the show that we were doing were in the Shrek films.

“It got me thinking just how popular these songs were and I started thinking about the other songs that were in the films. And I just thought that there was mileage in doing a band that just did those songs. The first thing I did was Google to see if there were any other bands that were doing that and there weren't and so we started.”

The repertoire is the four films with a couple of spin-offs – a repertoire soon to expand with a fifth film coming out next year.

“Our set is around 25 tracks and they really have got universal appeal. The songs very, very accessible for all ages and it really isn't just one demographic. The songs were a full range of all sorts of different eras going back to the 60s. I'd love to sit down and chat with the sound designer who came up with the songs for the films. I owe him a very solid thank you!

“It's about four years ago that we first started as a project. I put the word out and had an audition day which was one of the strangest days of my life. I rented a rehearsal studio in Portsmouth, and it was just really bizarre to have people sticking their head around the door telling me that they were there for the Shrek band! I got fantastically lucky with the people that showed up for it, and it's been pretty much the same line-up ever since. That was the core of it but we've added more people, and there are now nine of us. Nine is already fairly unwieldy. There is a lot of diary juggling, I can tell you. But it is worth it.

“Gigging goes through the seasons. We were pretty busy with the festival season and then September was a bit quiet and now we've got a tour coming up with the band across England, and there are a couple of venues on this tour which are the biggest venues that we've ever played, the first ones that we've ever played that have got a capacity of more than a thousand. It's really great that we've got to the stage where we can do that.”

And with the new Shrek film out next year they will be able to extend their repertoire even further. The latest trailer includes the songs Baby Come Home and Roxanne.

“I think we will be experimenting with those!”