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Red Lion Folk Club Wednesday Oct 29th |
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Jon Wilks |
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Jon Wilks is an established fingerpicking guitarist and singer who performs traditional English folk songs and broadside ballads, often specialising in songs from Birmingham and the wider Midlands, of which he has recorded two albums, Midlife (2018) and Up the Cut (2021). He has a keen eye and ear for storytelling and mixes entertaining folk song performances with fascinating tidbits about the original singers and collectors that he has unearthed during his extensive research on traditional folk music in the UK. His talent has been recognized by Guitarist, one of the world’s biggest guitar magazines, which featured him as one-to-watch in July 2022. He was also the subject of an acoustic session on Mark Radcliffe’s BBC Radio 2 Folk Show in May, 2023. Jon Wilks was born in Solihull in January 1977, into a family of educators. His mother was a head teacher at the Nelson Mandela Community School in Birmingham, while his father taught Shakespearean studies at several universities, including Birmingham and King Abdul Aziz in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After attending Solihull Sixth Form College he obtained a degree in English Literature at the University of Wales, Bangor before spending several years in Japan, finally settling in Hampshire. |
