The next Music Night at Sunbury Cricket Club falls on Friday 10th February, and the Club is delighted to extend a long-overdue welcome to the great rock singer Peter French with his band Leaf Hound for what will be an evening of top class rock.
Leaf Hound, with Pete French as lead singer, morphed out of the late ‘60s blues band Black Cat Bones, of whom Free’s Paul Kossof and Simon Kirke were early members, and made an album for Decca called “Growers Of Mushrooms”, which has since become a cult classic. Pete moved on to achieve success with Atomic Rooster, Big Bertha and then Cactus during the ‘70s, before pursuing a solo career, as well as writing songs for other artists including Beck, Bogert and Appice.
“Growers Of Mushrooms” was re-issued on CD and when interest began to (apologies) mushroom to the extent that vinyl copies were changing hands for huge sums, Pete re-formed Leaf Hound in 2004, and has been working with them ever since, with a settled line-up of Luke Rayner (guitar), Peter Herbert (bass) and Jimmy Rowland (drums). As well as performing material from their classic album, they have made new recordings, with Kerrang! magazine hailing their 2007 CD “Unleashed” as “as good a rock album as you could hope to hear."
Pete has recently re-formed Atomic Rooster with original organist Vincent Crane to do high profile gigs, but his work with Leaf Hound continues – they played the rock and R&B festival at Skegness last weekend, and are regulars at the Eel Pie Club in Twickenham, where Pete has been a stalwart of the house bands for many years.
If you Google Leaf Hound, you’ll get their Wikipedia page and current Facebook page, plus some great images from the ‘70s, and if you go to YouTube, you can listen to the complete “Growers Of Mushrooms” and “Unleashed” albums, plus some ‘live’ videos. “Barricades” from “Unleashed” in particular, is worth hearing.
It’s great to be able to bring artists of this quality to the Club for the first time, so it's hoped you will give them a nice big crowd to play to.The new caterers are now firmly in place, and everyone enjoyed the menu at their first Music Night service.
