Artist description The Cellomenders are Pete Beech, who plays mandolin and Si Brunert, guitarist and singer. Their spiritual home is Tooting, South London, even though Pete is from Lancashire and Si from Manchester. Songs include the jazzy "Seven Weeks", the cynical "Restless" and the rocking "Steve" ("rockin'!" says Jim, part time drummer)

Music Style Alternative Acoustic

Musical Influences John Cooper Clarke, Dick Gaughan, Bob Dylan, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ivor Cutler, REM, The Waterboys, Eddie Cochrane, Joan Armatrading, The Beatles, Nena, The Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band

Similar Artists The Smiths, Neil Young, Scott Joplin, The Waterboys, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Tommy Steele, The Weavers

Artist History The Cellomenders, Pete Beech and Si Brunert, formed in early 1993 as a kind of barmy folky offshoot of one of south London's heaviest, funkiest and most happeningiest bands at that time. The Splashing Maxwells, as was their name, tore up some of the most salubrious toilets south of the Thames with their fiery mix of .. but that's enough about them. The Cello's ditched the amplified swagger for an acoustic blend of guitar and mandolin, plaintive singing and songs about birds, films, family roots and identity. They hung around at Bunjies, the recently-defunct and much missed venue off Charing Cross road, swapped jokes with performance poets and accordian players, and charmed a packed house there once when the sudden arrival of a coachload of Scandinavian tourists (evidently just out from a performance of Les Miserables across the road and looking for some late night entertainment in the gigs listings in Time Out) swelled the usual crowd shoehorned into the musty cellar. They knew they were onto something interesting when people started approaching them after a set, enthusing about the songs and offering them gigs. The Maxwells got offered drugs; the Cello's got offered gigs, a pleasant novelty for Pete and Si. In the midst of playing these gigs at various other venues and clubs across London, the Cello's recorded their mini-album, basically a concise form of their set. Recorded live on a four track in Si's room above a junk shop in Tooting, it's a neat record of their work and of a sound that had been developing generally in London during the '90's; a loose coalition of stand up poets and ranters, protest strummers and survivors of the system (education or mental health, collapsed local government, the still clinging-on Tories..). The Cello's time was all too brief. Pete went on a course, Si carried on writing but didn't like playing gigs on his own. A couple of years later they were back in a re-vamped Splashing Maxwells shaking the flock-covered walls of south London's finest.. but that's another story. (whaddya mean you never heard of The Splashing Maxwells?.. )

Group Members Si Brunert: guitar, vocals - Pete Beech: mandolin

Instruments mandolin, guitar

Albums Tooting Up

Location London - United Kingdom

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