The Young'uns


The Young'uns are an English folk group from Stockton, County Durham, England, who won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Best Group" award in 2015 and 2016. They specialise in singing unaccompanied, and they perform traditional shanties, contemporary songs such as Billy Bragg's "Between the Wars" and Sydney Carter's "John Ball", and original works including "You Won’t Find Me on Benefits Street" and "The Battle of Stockton". 2017 album Strangers includes nine new songs celebrating inspiring people 'A homage to the outsider; a eulogy for the wayfarer; a hymn for the migrant.' "These Hands" tells the life story of 1950's immigrant Sybil Phoenix while the story of the Battle of Cable Street is told through the words of Stockton teenager Johnny Longstaff. In February 2020 the band debuted the stage production 'The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff' at Newcastle's Northern Stage theatre to rave reviews.
The members are Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes, who met as teenagers and encountered folk music as underage drinkers in a local pub. They enjoyed the music and returned to the Stockton Folk Club, where "One day someone said 'let's hear a song from the young'uns' and we sang this one verse we knew from a sea shanty", hence the band's name.
The Young'uns released a book 'Bound Together' in 2017, chronicling their history as a band and the stories behind some of the songwriting.

Discography