Honey and The Bear celebrate ten years with Shoreham date

The Suffolk-based husband-and-wife duo, who released their third album Away Beyond the Fret to critical acclaim last November, combine vocals and play a range of stringed instruments. They both play double bass, bouzouki and acoustic guitar while Lucy also plays ukulele and Jon provides electric guitar.

Lucy explains: “We met at a songwriting evening. We used to go regularly to this place in Ipswich and we happened to be there at the same time. And I just stood there in awe of his guitar skills, to be honest. He sang three songs on this songwriting evening and they had wonderful lyrics and it was just such a good feeling. And everything about the guitar was just perfect and he was very smiley in his presentation!”

Jon recalls: “We sometimes get asked about our name, Honey and The Bear, but actually it was the first thing I thought when I heard her sing, that her voice just had the quality of honey. Sometimes you just hear a quality of voice that moves you and I was just so bowled over by the uniqueness of Lucy’s singing. And when I see something that overwhelms me I just have to say something. I'm quite an honest person in that respect and I gave my full opinion at that first meeting! We started a friendship and we started to talk whenever we met. This was back in 2012 but we didn't really start playing together until I came back from Australia in early 2014. I wanted to learn what I was going to do musically next and the first thing that came to my mind was to work with Lucy and we played our first festival appearance in 2014.”

Shoreham audiences can expect to hear songs from each of their three albums – debut release Made in the Aker (2019), Journey Through The Roke (2021) and their 2023 album Away Beyond The Fret.

“We did a traditional cover on the second album and I don't think we did any original covers at all on the third. It was all original but our second album was something we did during lockdown.

"We did 52 streams and we challenged ourselves to write a song every week while we were doing it just to have something fresh to play for audiences and so we ended up producing the second album.”

And in a way they hark back to lockdown with the latest single release, Sandy Denny’s classic Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

Lucy explains: “We came across this song for the first time during the lockdown. We asked audiences for suggestions for music that we could play the following week and one of our friends suggested this and we came up with our own version. We're not a covers band and we're not wanting to be a tribute but we've just come up with our own version of the song.”

Jon said: “It was a song that just resonated with that reflective period of lockdown. Everything was standing still and we stepped off the rat race. All the industry stopped and all the factories stopped and the motorways stopped and we were just living our lives in reflection and stillness.”