Julian Gaskell & his Ragged Trousered Philanthropists are a band of such originality, intelligence and appeal that the ability to hear seems like a privilege.

Vive le Rock ***** 

After growing up in the musical wasteland of smalltown Sussex, Julian Gaskell relocated to Manchester in the late 1990’s, and set to work on his own ludicrously self-sabotaging musical projects, such as ‘Loafer’ and ‘Icons of Poundland’ (with their alarmingly prescient and unsustainable one-pound pricing policy on all music and merch).  Never quite fitting in with the post-Oasis sludge Gaskell was described as ‘just too confrontational’ by Guy Garvey and as ‘the missing link between Ian Dury and the Blockheads and a ferociously prolapsing larynx’ by the local press.  However, Gaskell eventually carved a niche for himself as a maverick producer of garage-punk bands and labels (Strap Ons, The Obsession, Tom Hingley, Moco, Akoustik Anarkhy) as well as driving a van and producing B-Sides for I am Kloot.  

These songs don’t come across as having been written, they seem instead to have been ripped from some ferocious source and battered into ragged form

Icons of Poundland album review

By 2004, Gaskell’s nerves were frayed, his van was scrapped and he left the Manchester scene, eventually ending up in Cornwall.   ‘Icons of Poundland’ bowed out with a spectacular gig at the Little Massive Stage at Glastonbury Festival, and Gaskell set to work reinventing himself as an open-tune-wielding-folk-blues soloist.  Around this time he worked with the legendary Chris Gray at Troubadour Studios in Falmouth and recorded his first solo album ‘Technology Will Make Us Better’ for local label ‘Top of the Hill’.  With its ‘echoes of bluegrass, blues, world music and good old punk attitude’ (Manchester City Life) this uncompromisingly bleak and archaic album set the stage for the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

burrowed in the silted-up, folky myths of a land time forgot, then buried alongside barndances at midnight, his sound varies from the brooding (nearly all tracks) to the twinkly and carefree… a humbly beautiful collection of gnarled wobblings and picturesque, pastoral warblings.

‘Technology Will Make us Better’ album review

It was in Manchester around 2006 that Gaskell discovered the accordion, or the accordion discovered him; no one is sure exactly what happened.  Suffice to say that in 2007 he was back in Cornwall, fresh from a trip around Hungary, Slovakia and Poland with a Parrot piano accordion and some worn out CDRs of klezmer and balkan music.  He teamed up with Thomas Sharpe (on electric upright bass) for some performances at house parties, Kester Jones (Icons of Poundland) turned up briefly on guitar and banjo and ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ were born, taking their name from the well known book by Robert Tressell. 

a Kernewek Tom Waits, a berserk klezmer band, Joe Strummer gone Weimar jazz or Kurt Weill punching The Pogues

West Briton

After some initial appearances at Falmouth pubs the Jacobs and the Front , Kester disappeared back up north and Penzance guitarist Dan Pye joined.  They astonished, amazed and upset audiences around Cornwall with their innovative mix of klezmer, punk, cabaret and balkan folk styles, and they recorded their eponymous debut album in 2007 – a mix of Gaskell originals including classic such as ‘Yuppie Flats’ and klezmer tunes.  In 2008 they ventured further afield with gigs at Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, Bath Fringe and a tour of Slovakia and Poland organised by the legendary global socialist Brian Smedley.

This trip inspired them to dive even deeper into the world of Eastern European music, and with the addition of drum and percussion virtuoso Rory Pugh, they built a huge reputation as a live band, with legendary performances at Mazey Day in Penzance, the Isles of Scilly Folk Festival and of course the Cottage Parties in Falmouth (where they recorded the era-defining classic album ‘Here the Brute Harpies Make Their Nests’)

Bits of hyper-Balkanisation bloody their noses on some crunchy Roma-jazz, and waves of speedy punkfolk ska crash in the mix on cheesy surf organ and the ghost of Cap’n Beefheart. And a whole exhausting (in a good way) lot more.

fRoots album review (Here the Brute Harpies…)

No one really knows what happened next, maybe it was the incessant local pub gigs, maybe it was a second vodka fuelled tour of Poland and Slovakia, maybe there were too many overnight drives back to Cornwall after 5am gigs in London, or maybe it was all down to a game of Monopoly that went wrong, but by the end of 2009 everyone in the band had had enough of it all, and so when Gaskell was offered the opportunity to run away and join a circus, he jumped at the chance.

Julian Gaskell howls and hollers as if Tom Waits came from a Roma family and punk had its origins in cabaret and circus

Folkworld

Not quite a circus perhaps, but a street theatre company ‘Bash Street Theatre’… Gaskell toured with them from 2009 to 2011, performing music for their ‘silent movie’ style shows ‘The Lion Tamer’, ‘The Station’ and ‘Cliffhanger’.  In what seems like a distant pre-Brexit, rose-tinted world, they spent months touring France and played shows in Germany, Poland, Norway, Portugal, Italy, South Korea and even Macau.  Gaskell ventured even further into the triple-threat musical performance world, working with Rogue Theatre from 2011 to 2012, composing music and touring their ‘Dancer and the Devil’ show to great acclaim.  

One man whirlwind Julian Gaskell’s stunning musicianship and evocative soundtrack is unbelievably brilliant. Setting the mood and tone, playing accordion and piano as the audience arrives, his Kroke-esque percussive violin, haunting cello music and powerful expository songs are worthy of a show in their own right 

‘The Dancer and the Devil’  Rogue Theatre, The Cornishman 2011

During the long tours of Europe, Gaskell continued to expand his musical horizons, drunkenly jamming at the Krakow Klezmer Festival on an out of tune accordion,  attempting French musette style, and embarking on a long-term obsession with the music of Django Reinhardt.  He dug deep into his past, both musically and emotionally, for the songs which became the ‘Kind Words From Home’ solo album.

The album has strong strains of punk-folk, gypsy Balkan traditional, sea-shanties, Franco-dirty tangos, ragtime piano, and slow laments. Which all somehow get together to create an anarchic vaudevillian mix which is packed full of energy. Your imagination has to provide the gypsy dancing girls, the rum, and the candlelight but Gaskell does the rest.

Bright Young Folk

He really is an original… declamatory, vulpine vocals ranting and roaring his splendidly acrid, protestful lyrics over a glorious, urgent ramshackle garage blend of Balkan-Klezmerisms and French gypsy cafebilly. The ghosts of Blyth Power and Beefheart lurk in the wings, but when you think you’ve got it all figured out he throws in a great romantic, slovenly delivered torch song like ‘Left Luggage’. Few things this exhilarating come along very often, the antidote to tweefolk.
‘Kind Words from Home’ album review, Ian Anderson, fRoots, 2012

Returning to Falmouth in 2012, various forms of the ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ re-appeared for local gigs – Gaskell & Sharpe duo, Gaskell vs Zapoppin’ and the short-lived but spectacular lineup of RTP in 2013-14 (Gaskell, Sharpe with Luke Richards on drums and Dave Hart on harmonica, bagpipes and percussion). 

2014 also saw another unlikely theatrical diversion ‘The Anthropic Organ’ – an installation based on a pipe organ re-purposed to play drum’n’bass by Penryn scientist Dom Allen and fronted by Gaskell and Sharpe at Glastonbury Festival.

Around this time there is yet another baffling turn of musical events, namely  ‘Leigh Delamere and the Gordanos’.  This was an attempt to square the unsquareable circle of creating good music whilst earning money playing gigs in Cornwall.  The same lineup (Gaskell and Sharpe now with Nigel Parsons on bass and Matt Collington on drums) skiffled the boogie-woogie in a bizarre and disturbing version of a cover version band as ‘Leigh Delamere and the Gordanos’ and then played original material as JG&RTP.  This led to some chaotically great Leigh Delamere gigs at posh weddings as well as at Port Eliot, Masked Ball and Boardmasters Festivals and some unfathomably eclectic efforts from the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. 

Sometimes Gaskell and the band were confused as to which band they were supposed to be in – agitated folk-punk made its way into wedding receptions and New Orleans piano started to syncopate the Philanthropists, as heard on their 2016 album ‘Carvery of Blight’. This well received album added psychedelia, AOR, bossa nova and English folk song to an already crowded list of influences and featured a spectacular guest appearance from Biscuit (Speakers Corner Quartet) on flute.

Very occasionally, a set of songs emerge that features such originality, intelligence and appeal that the ability to hear suddenly seems like a privilege and it’s difficult not to gush. ‘Carvery of Blight’ is such an album – beginning with the anxious maelstrom of world-weary urgency ‘Herbs and Spices from Afar’, it plunges the listener into a travelogue wherein the lyrical mastery of all-purpose polymath, poet, performer and storyteller Julian Gaskell acts as the most entertaining of guides. Backed by his uniquely adaptable band, Gaskell summons up echoes of the Folk Devils, Joe Strummer and, on the title track, Gogol Bordello by way of Berthold Brecht. The slice of life in the middle lane ‘Dolomite Sprint’ and the achingly beautiful ‘Pretty Little Tears’ are foremost among this collection of highlights. 9/10
‘Carvery of Blight’ Album Review, Vive le Rock, 2016

Falmouth character and ‘Cornish Tom Waits’ Julian Gaskell’s Carvery of Blight is a wonderful discovery.  Blending folk, punk, klezmer, cabaret and Gypsy rhythms – and pretty much any other genre that falls in its way, the album’s melting pot is firmly rooted and anchored by Gaskell’s powerful rasp of a voice, as melodious as it is guttural, and from foot-stomping folk and rock to ‘The Extended Trilogy’, a ballad fit for Jacques Brel.* 

‘Carvery of Blight’ Album Review, R2, 2016

A dada composite of Beefheart, Spike Jones, The Fugs, Bruce Springsteen, David Lynch and a subtle but eloquently expressed social conscience

JP

With its extravagant production and complicated arrangements, much of the Carvery album was difficult to perform live, this conspired with an incessant demand for Leigh Delamere and the Gordanos to make for a lean time for the Philanthropists around 2017-18.  However, 2018 was also a prolific time for Gaskell, who doggedly pushed his songwriting into dark new lyrical territory.  Into all this confusion, with Leigh Delamere riding high and Julian Gaskell on the back foot, stepped a new band member, Cally Gibson on viola and violin.  The newly written material demanded a more ‘folky’ sound, and the current Ragged Trousered Philanthropists trio took shape, with Thomas Sharpe taking a multi-instrumental role on piano, banjo, mandolin, accordion and bass along with Gibson on strings.  During 2019 and 2020 the songs that made up the next Gaskell solo effort ‘Out of the Trees’ took shape, the recordings were finished during lockdown…

Post COVID, the Cornwall gigging world was a barren and difficult place and there seemed to be no need for Leigh Delamere, who was consigned to history.  The RTP trio thrived however, digging deep into their folk and klezmer roots with the new addition of Gibson’s violin.  They gigged at new venues, such as the Cornish Bank in Falmouth and with a prolific run of EP and single releases.  

This era also saw the return of Gaskell to the world of theatrical touring; a chance meeting with Bash Street Theatre during a socially distanced bike ride led to a new production ‘The Camerman’, with songs, narration and music by Gaskell, the show kicked of at the infamous Minack Theatre and toured the UK during 2021-22.  This was followed by another show ‘Battling Butlers’, again with music written and performed by Gaskell, but this time with lyrics written by Simon Pullum; this toured the UK for two years, and will be bowing out with a grand finale at the Falmouth Poly in April 2025.

At the heart of this new work is Julian Gaskell, who could have done with more than one pair of hands as he narrates and voices the lines while playing songs on keyboard, guitar and accordion and adding loads of sound effects… a truly remarkable performance.  

‘The Cameraman’  Bash Street Theatre,  Minack Theatre, June 2021

In 2022 Gaskell made another bold artistic decision, this time to immerse himself in the world of 19th century broadside ballads.  There are thousands of these in existence, most are long-forgotten and remain as digital scans of lyrics with no music attached to them, offering an often astonishing and unseen view of a different age.  The RTP trio took it upon themselves to create music for some of these and made a touring production ‘Broadside Bangers’ from them, venturing around Cornwall and Dorset with the show.  Many of the ballads have become firm live favourites, with songs such as ‘Johnny Sands’, ‘Burial Club’ and ‘Cat’s Head Apples’ offering an unhinged Victorian view of life and death which seems to resonate here in 21st century Britain.

Some of the recorded fruits of this labour appeared in December 2023 as ‘A Shandy Ballad’, which (as the name suggests) is a 50/50 mix of archive ballads with Gaskell originals.  The album was very much a ‘back to basics’ folk recording, and represents the RTP trio sound in it’s full, unpolished glory.

This is an album you pick up for the outrageous band name, discover quickly it isn’t what you expected (what did you expect exactly?), make to turn it off and then realize you actually do like it – or at least there’s no real harm in letting it play, right? That is, until suddenly you’ve somehow listened to it a dozen times and wake up with Gaskell’s rasp bouncing around your skull at 3am and can’t really bring yourself to be upset about it.

A Shandy Ballad is self-produced and it feels like it, but I can’t stress enough how much I mean that in a good way. Gaskell rants over guitar, accordion, piano, banjo and percussion (supported also by Thomas Sharpe’s bass and Cally Gibson’s violin and viola). He rants fast, he rants slow, he rages and pleads, and his unmistakable voice is just great to listen to. It’s interesting and full of character and scratches my brain in exactly the right way. It’s all you could hope for in a project like this and I could listen to it all day.

A few highlights: a bluesy and delicious Johnny Sands which “attempts to stand on the shoulders of” the versions by Martin Carthy and jon Wilks “but somehow falls off” (Gaskell’s own words); and updated Rigs of the Times which accomplishes the requisite fist shaking at landlords while taking a nice modern swipe at Airbnb, Exxon, and the Daily Mail; and On the Corner of a Photograph, one of the more sentimental of Gaskell’s originals (and maybe my personal favourite).

Honourable mention, too, to We Couldn’t Make This Shit Up If We Tried, a scathing, accordion-driven tirade about post-Brexit Britain that builds manically from start to end and gives way so seamlessly to the 19th century broadside The Durham Pant-Wife’s Petition as to make them both feel regrettably timeless.

Genuinely? I adore this album. It’s the sort of unpolished and slightly unhinged raging against the machine that I love in good folk – a mix of traditional and original, stretched across genres, with a fury and earnestness that is hard to fault.

Folk London

The band struggled to record good versions of some of the other ballads, so Gaskell decided to kick them into a different sonic spheres of psyche-garage rock and ambient electronica.  This production took most of 2024 to complete, but the long-awaited ‘Broadside Bangers’ album is now complete and will be released on Croustpop Records in May 2025.  Expect to hear nothing less than the most unhinged racket, the most unholy and difficult lyrics and the most flamboyant playing and singing this side of Cape Cornwall, who else but Julian Gaskell & his Ragged Trousered Philanthropists!

Folk-punk in the finest sense of the word

Angeline Morrison, Uncut

We so enjoyed your set last night, the synergy was quite exceptionally absurd. Great start to our wet windy typically Cornish vibe. Made us think we were at some crazy European festival in the dark moon sun. Thank you Julian et al. 

Audience member