Ben Calvert

Clockwork clowns!  A weak strongman!  A ringmaster on his last legs!  An adulterous love affair with Lucy!  A Valpolicella Girl! Polystyrene take-away food containers that talk!  And more!  There’s even a sideshow for Peter and Katie…

Ben Calvert & The Swifts’ psychedelic circus alt-folk first saw the light of day in front of a few hundred avid ears and eyes when they opened the main stage of Moseley Folk Festival in the early Autumn sun last September.

Since then they’ve recorded an album’s worth of songs, and released the single ‘Everybody Loves Lucy’.

Buy it at itunes, listen to it at bandcamp, or do Soundcloud things with it at Soundclound.

They have played a sell-out show as support to The Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band, and opened for Erland & The Carnival and Hannah Peel, and Admiral Fallow, as well as playing a 90 minute set to a packed out Birmingham Symphony Hall.

Ben Calvert (Vocals, Guitar)
Swifts:
Hannah Lawson, Violin.
Dave McCabe, Guitar, Bass.
Carlo Solazzo, Drums.

While making experimental theatre at Dartington College, Ben picked up a guitar and started writing songs immediately.  Influenced by British folk, US Psychedelia and Brit-Pop, audiences and reviewers alike have been charmed by his understated lo-fi post-folk sound that has melodic, narrative, songwriting at the core.

In the last three years he’s toured extensively, both solo and with The Fathers, playing support slots to Kris Drever, Jeremy Warmsley, Chris T-T and Jim Bob, to mention a few. He also appeared onstage with Guillemots at a packed out Birmingham Academy.

“Finely crafted songwriting” Metro

“Resurrects the mad ghosts of Nico and Nick Drake” Virtual Festivals

“Bruised romanticism…Ben’s Cohen-esque, Smithsian melancholy enchants the building audience.” The Fly

The album The Broken Family DaySaver is out now on Bohemian Jukebox thorough Horus Music.  Available here:

“Haunting, heart-bruising tales bitterly stumble into each other as if played by a meth-ed up, homeless Johnny Marr.  The dark humour and stark honesty of Ben Calvert is paralysing, and charmingly so.” The Fly

“A booty bag of avid odes to poppers, kids and wonderboys; he’s an understated emancipator of lyrical wisdom.”  Louis Pattison, Plan-B

“Although Ben Calvert has a folk heart, it is a folk heart which has been broken on indie dancefloors to the sounds of Blur and The Smiths. An accomplished piece of art.”   Indie mp3.co.uk