Brown Wimpenny Share Rollicking New Single ‘Shady Grove’

Manchester/London/Liverpool folk collective Brown Wimpenny have shared their latest single, ‘Shady Grove’, a raucous reworking of the traditional Appalachian folk song, out now via Broadside Hacks.

Built from the same sessions as their acclaimed debut album Long Live Brown Wimpenny, the track captures the sheer communal force of the 11-piece at full tilt. Banjo, bodhrán and layered instrumentation collide into something that feels less like a polished studio exercise and more like a runaway folk session spiralling gloriously out of control.

As Luke Morris explains, the track began life as a smaller bluegrass arrangement, combining Jean Ritchie’s droney, minor-key version with Bill Monroe’s more frenetic interpretation. After bringing it to the wider collective, the song took on a new scale.

“The weight of all 11 instruments really gave it something,” Morris says. “It sounds like a runaway train and is really fun to play.”

That sense of collective energy has become central to Brown Wimpenny’s identity. Formed through informal Sunday jam sessions in a Manchester living room, the group initially grew to as many as 25 members before settling on its current 11-piece line-up. Their live shows have since taken them from intimate rooms to festival stages, with sold-out London headline shows and appearances at Green Man, Fire in the Mountain, Sidmouth Folk Festival and Manchester Folk Festival.

Their debut, Long Live Brown Wimpenny, has already picked up praise from MOJO, UNCUT, The Guardian, The Quietus, CLASH and others, with the record praised for its ability to push traditional material into strange, communal and thoroughly contemporary territory.

‘Shady Grove’ continues that approach, drawing on a song with centuries of musical history while giving it the full Brown Wimpenny treatment: loud, loose and built to be played in a room full of people.

The new single arrives ahead of the Broadside Hacks Recordings label tour, which brings together Brown Wimpenny alongside Goblin Band, Spitzer Space Telescope, Sam Grassie and Myer U Clark for a run of UK dates this autumn.

With Brown Wimpenny continuing to blur the line between folk band, collective and communal gathering, ‘Shady Grove’ feels like another invitation to get involved. Eleven musicians, one traditional song, and absolutely no intention of keeping things quiet.