In Bristol, pub singers are keeping an age-old tradition alive

“Drunk­en­ness is a strange thing,” says Brad Fos­kett, prepar­ing to enter­tain a gag­gle of reg­u­lars at The Black Cat in Bed­min­ster, south Bris­tol. ​“It can be hap­py, or it can be vio­lent.” With a relent­less sched­ule of pub singing that saw him have just a sin­gle week­end free from per­for­mance last year, the assump­tion is that Fos­kett has seen plen­ty of both. 

As he sings, the glum­ness of a late Feb­ru­ary after­noon begins to lift with every pass­ing song. A bar­rage of clas­sics roll from Foskett’s soul­ful voice, loos­en­ing locals to dance. One woman is gen­tly spun by her part­ner to The Temp­ta­tions’ ​‘My Girl’, while anoth­er throws her arms above her head and beams. Men skank 2‑tone style across the pub floor as The Spe­cials’ ​‘Enjoy Your­self’ ignites a mass sin­ga­long. Cider taps stream as if they are run­ning a bath. Today, hap­pi­ness is the win­ner. Usu­al­ly, in fact, it is. ​“There’s only one or two pubs I where would nev­er sing in again,” says Brad. 

Oft-over­looked for their val­ue as pro­lif­ic grass­roots per­form­ers, Britain’s back­ing track pub singers have earned their keep at the foot of the live music lad­der for almost a cen­tu­ry. The tra­di­tion in its cur­rent form – which, accord­ing to Fos­kett, lends itself to being ​“annoy­ing­ly mis­tak­en for karaōke” – is a per­former, a micro­phone and a back­ing track played from a lap­top. In the days before music was avail­able dig­i­tal­ly, hours of sprawl­ing instru­men­tals were often record­ed onto cas­settes, and lat­er CDs, by the singers them­selves, but are now usu­al­ly pur­chased for use. Some singers play along with an instru­ment, but the tradition’s crux is the abil­i­ty to hold both a tune and, with rang­ing amounts of dif­fi­cul­ty, the atten­tion of a pub. 

Unable to dodge the impacts of rapid pub clo­sures mixed with the inter­ac­tive advances of karaōke, Spo­ti­fy playlists and the juke­box, time has seen work for the UK’s tra­di­tion­al back­ing track singers dry up, but scenes live strong in cer­tain pock­ets. In Bris­tol, thanks to the com­mit­ted pro­gram­ming of old-city spots such as The Black Cat, the cir­cuit – to the relief of its pro­fes­sion­als – stays intact.

“I just get sat­is­fac­tion out of it,” explains Fos­kett, a jovial scene vet­er­an who has over 30 years of expe­ri­ence. ​“Even if it’s some­one singing along, tap­ping their toes, tap­ping their fin­gers on the table, I feel sat­is­fied. You don’t always get a cheer at the end of every song, it doesn’t hap­pen like that, but I just enjoy doing what I do.”

Local­ly raised and per­form­ing in the same pubs that he has fre­quent­ed for decades, it is a qui­et need for show­man­ship that has entrenched his place on the cir­cuit. ​“Right from when I was a kid, I’d always want­ed to per­form – to be in front of peo­ple. I’m not a brash per­son, I actu­al­ly get very ner­vous before I start, but as soon as I switch the first track on that all goes away. Not every pub is busy, not every pub appre­ci­ates what you do, but that’s not the whole point. I still love it.”

After invest­ing in some mobile karaōke equip­ment, with the inten­tion of host­ing events at the height of the craze, Fos­kett inad­ver­tent­ly dis­cov­ered he had a voice of his own, join­ing the solo singer scene there­after. Incred­i­bly, his deep, Cash-toned vocals have since sur­vived a throat tumour and six oper­a­tions. ​“I didn’t have the con­fi­dence to sing for a while,” he reflects. At The Black Cat, with help from his ​“rit­u­al” swigs of med­i­c­i­nal brandy, Foskett’s set reach­es a test crick­et-like length of three hours. A feat that at one stage, due to the scar­ring on his vocal chords, looked impossible. 

This resilience – a dri­ve to per­form that pro­pels pub singers past the obsta­cles they encounter – is a nec­es­sary asset to become a reg­u­lar on Bristol’s cir­cuit. ​“You have to be tough,” says Lucy Win­ter, prepar­ing to enter­tain The George; a mid 19^th cen­tu­ry pub with dat­ed grandeur based near­by in Knowle. ​“If you want to be an estab­lished, reli­able act, you just have to be. You can’t walk into a pub and feel uncom­fort­able, espe­cial­ly as a woman. You have to be able to bat it off.”

She expands: ​“Peo­ple think it’s glam­orous, that you’re just singing for a few hours a night and don’t have to work the rest of the time. They for­get what goes into it. First of all, I have to know songs from the ​’60s right up to the charts of today, and peo­ple under­es­ti­mate what a mas­sive cross sec­tion of music that is in a two, three hour show. And then there’s the crap that comes with deal­ing with drunk people.”

Using a recent gig as an exam­ple of what a tough evening’s work can look like, Win­ter describes fac­ing eerie ​“stand­off­ish­ness” from the moment she entered with her equip­ment, ​”ter­ri­to­r­i­al” groups unhap­py with her pres­ence. ​“They didn’t like the fact that I was a woman about to sing in their pub,” she con­cludes. ​“Some­times there’s no oth­er rea­son.” After­wards, Win­ter would change into her gig out­fit in a small, urine soaked cubi­cle before nav­i­gat­ing the aggres­sive advances of locals who were annoyed she wasn’t tak­ing requests. ​”I’m not a juke­box,” she informed them with a smile. 

In over 20 years of expe­ri­ence, which has tak­en her from the depths of Bris­tol to British bars in Tener­ife and Cyprus, Win­ter – a stur­dy per­son­al­i­ty with a stratos­pher­ic voice – has been through the mill of these expe­ri­ences. ​“You see every­thing,” she explains. ​“You’ve sung most of these songs a mil­lion times, so often you’re in your own world, just watch­ing or even hear­ing what’s going on. You see all sorts – cou­ples argu­ing, police com­ing in whilst I’m on stage – but you just sol­dier on. I’ll walk into any pub and it won’t phase me – you’ve got to have thick skin.”

Despite the dif­fi­cul­ties, accen­tu­at­ed by the female expe­ri­ence of being in major­i­ty male pubs, pub singing remains the cir­cuit where Win­ter finds her free­dom. ​“I could nev­er go back to sit­ting in an office, earn­ing some­one else’s liv­ing. When you strip it back; this is my com­pa­ny, it’s what I’ve worked on my whole life. I’m 40 years old with two kids, but I know on a gig night that I can put my make-up on, put on some­thing nice, and go have some fun. And when stuff is going wrong, I know it’s not me, my voice doesn’t sud­den­ly go bad, it’s the peo­ple that change.” 

As her set at The George begins, her per­for­mance fol­lows a famil­iar pat­tern. Winter’s mighty vocals fill the room imme­di­ate­ly, but they con­trast with the long emp­ty space in front of her. The George is a large pub shaped like a horse­shoe, and the major­i­ty of its clien­tele spend the first quar­ter of her set buzzing in the oppo­site branch. Singers, Win­ter says, expect this, ordi­nar­i­ly using the first chunk of their set to tri­al less­er known songs or play tracks that chal­lenge them. Even­tu­al­ly, pubs tend to drop their guard. That’s when the clas­sics come out. True to the process, by the end of her gig, the crowd is at Winter’s com­mand; the pat­terned car­pet in front of her host to a full mix­ture of move­ment which ranges from abstract takes on break­ing to grace­ful­ly drunk­en ball­room dance. A success.

Bris­tol bred, Win­ter believes that the city’s pub singer cir­cuit is ​“huge”, but deems it a sep­a­rate eco-sys­tem from what she terms the ​“Glouces­ter Road scene”, which is the area, scene and cir­cuit of Bris­tol that is more often pre­sent­ed in media and cul­tur­al sum­maries. ​“It’s the local pub on a Sat­ur­day night, work­ing men’s clubs, Sun­day after­noons,” she says. ​“They’re the bread and but­ter of the cir­cuit. With­out want­i­ng to gen­er­alise, the peo­ple I per­form to prob­a­bly aren’t the sort to go into cen­tral Bris­tol on a weekend.”

Back at The Black Cat, Fos­kett – born in the out­er-sub­urb of Hart­cliffe and fierce­ly con­nect­ed to Bristol’s south – expands on this sen­ti­ment. ​“If I get an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a gig in the mid­dle of town, I wouldn’t take it,” he says. ​“I’d rather be in pubs that are in the out­er-skirts.” It is here, Brad believes, where cul­tur­al exam­ples of a Bris­tol behind the cur­tain of an aggran­dised pop­u­lar image can be found.

“I find it bizarre that if there was, say, a TV news report on the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try, they would go to a pub on Glouces­ter Road, or the east side of town where there is a dif­fer­ent type of cul­ture, a heavy stu­dent pres­ence – you nev­er see a prop­er grass­roots booz­er, an estate pub. Bris­tol always seems to be por­trayed as a dif­fer­ent type of city to what it still, deep down, is. It’s always the upper-cut areas that you see in the media, which get spo­ken about”.

Foskett’s com­ments echo those of a long held ten­sion in the city. In recent years, sev­er­al well-known pub­li­ca­tions have includ­ed Bris­tol in a ​‘best cities of the world’ type lis­ti­cles, with one recent sto­ry cham­pi­oning a ​“famous­ly bohemi­an” cul­tur­al cen­tre with ​“a live­ly mix of protests and street art on every cor­ner”. For many, the con­ver­sa­tions that fol­low these inclu­sions have become almost as clichéd as the por­tray­als them­selves. It is a debate that can be traced back to when an infa­mous slo­gan – ​‘Make Bris­tol Shit Again’ – began appear­ing on stick­ers and walls across the city around the mid 2010s. 

But the feel­ing of widen­ing divi­sions – of an exist­ing pop­u­la­tion increas­ing­ly squeezed by gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and ris­ing rents, inter­nal migra­tion and a relent­less­ly expand­ing stu­dent pres­ence – has only grown since then. While Bristol’s ​‘bohemi­an’ his­to­ry of protest and cre­ativ­i­ty extends far beyond its cen­tre, the frus­tra­tion that Brad refers to, that a selec­tion of a few, small cen­tral spots such as Stokes Croft con­tin­ue to over­ride the city’s image and real­i­ties, is prominent. 

Parts of the city’s south, which is sep­a­rat­ed from the rest of Bris­tol by the Riv­er Avon, have also begun to feel the chang­ing tides in recent years. In Bed­min­ster, regen­er­a­tion has made tra­di­tion­al ele­ments of the dis­trict – such as the pubs that plat­form the enter­tain­ment cir­cuit – start to feel like a ver­sion of the city that is slow­ly being lost. It is also these pubs, says Fos­kett, that suf­fer from ris­ing costs the most, in turn affect­ing their abil­i­ty to pro­gram singers.

“I’ve noticed quite a few pubs aren’t as busy as they used to be, or have dropped their enter­tain­ment to once a week. That becomes a vicious cir­cle,” he explains. ​“I’m get­ting the same mon­ey in Bris­tol as an enter­tain­er that I was get­ting 20, 25 years ago – if pubs can’t get the pun­ters in because prices are too high, they can’t spend the mon­ey on the enter­tain­ment, and then peo­ple aren’t going to the pubs because there’s no enter­tain­ment on. If it car­ries on going the way it’s going, they’re just going to get quieter.”

In spite of con­cerns, for now Bristol’s solo singer cir­cuit remains a strong, sur­viv­ing arm of the tra­di­tion. As Feb­ru­ary draws out, The George sees three more acts pass through its doors (includ­ing Paul Fos­ter, a chaot­ic, ska-heavy set that is one of the most pop­u­lar in the South West), while in Bed­min­ster, the hotbed of the scene, the major­i­ty of its sur­viv­ing tra­di­tion­al pubs adver­tise shows. At The Black Cat, which still sched­ules up to four nights of enter­tain­ment a week, high­lights include Pete Hold­en, a bowler-hat­ted, suit­ed singer who includes bursts of instru­men­ta­tion, Lee Ross, who spends his set float­ing up and down the pub with joc­u­lar crowd work, and per­haps most strik­ing­ly, Katie Mills.

A con­fi­dent and ele­gant per­former, her pow­er and soul set – often per­formed in shim­mer­ing sequin dress­es and gleam­ing gowns – has seen Mills booked well into 2026, some­thing of a rar­i­ty in the cur­rent cli­mate. The anti­dote to the circuit’s eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, she believes, is cre­ativ­i­ty with­in sets mixed with a method­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al­ism. ​“I think you need to offer some­thing a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. Some­thing of a lit­tle bit bet­ter qual­i­ty than what’s around you. Even if it’s not your music, it needs to be your stage pres­ence. Just some­thing that dif­fer­en­ti­ates you from all the oth­er acts out there. I know it’s hard­er, places have gone and it is dif­fi­cult, but I’m actu­al­ly busier than I’ve ever been. I try to keep a busi­ness mind about the music, I view this on the whole as a busi­ness. I don’t like feel­ing like I’m on the back foot.”

Some­what of a scene new­com­er, 42-year-old Mills saw an unlike­ly arrival on the cir­cuit four years ago after crav­ing a change in direc­tion. ​“I’d nev­er sung in front of any­one, and grow­ing up I’d nev­er even real­ly been to pubs and clubs. It was some­thing of a midlife cri­sis, real­ly, want­i­ng to do some­thing out of my com­fort zone. There were learn­ing curves, to be able to have that con­fi­dence of enter­ing these domains – pre­dom­i­nant­ly men’s domains – with a glam­orous per­sona and just brush it off. But actu­al­ly, 99% of what I’ve done has been real­ly lovely”.

As her career heats up, Mills believes in the con­tin­ued place of the tra­di­tion that has become her life, putting faith in its preser­va­tion. ​“It’s famil­iar,” Katie says. ​“Famil­iar­i­ty appeals. Some­times when you’ve been out all day, work­ing hard, you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to trudge into the cen­tre, watch some­thing off-the-wall cre­ative and brand new. There’s plen­ty of that in Bris­tol. Some­times you want to just sit, relax and have a drink. It’s ease, it’s nos­tal­gia – peo­ple know exact­ly what they’re get­ting with a back­ing track singer.” 

Per­haps it is a respect for this famil­iar­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly through bud­getary means, that will be vital to its future. The dis­pelling of notions that in a city such as Bris­tol, the cre­ative pin­na­cles that enhance its rep­u­ta­tion are the only strands of cul­ture worth heavy invest­ment. While pubs and social clubs in many of Bristol’s res­i­den­tial dis­tricts con­tin­ued to close, a five year refur­bish­ment of cen­tral venue Bris­tol Bea­con took £132 mil­lion from tax­pay­ers’ pockets. 

Bristol’s pub singer cir­cuit car­ries the same bruis­es as the ele­ments of the city it rep­re­sents. Both squeezed by gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, both fight­ing through change and eco­nom­ic strain, but still proud­ly ever-present. ​“I think it will con­tin­ue,” says Fos­kett, ​“that there’ll be enough work for every­body. I hope it does, you know, we wouldn’t know what to do with our­selves at the week­end otherwise.” 

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