Sons of Town Hall

Sons of Town Hall, the transatlantic folk duo of American songwriter/author David Berkeley and British songwriter/producer Ben Parker, is creating an entirely new performance genre. Part live concept album, part performance art, they conjure their timeless mythic universe under the aliases Josiah Chester Jones and George Ulysses Brown, 19th-century vagabonds who travel the world in a hand-built boat to escape troubled pasts and search for adventure and love. Designed as a live companion experience to their gorgeous radio-theatre podcast Madmen Cross The Water, The Sons weave their wild and hilarious stories between their heartbreaking and rousing songs, taking audiences on a deeply imaginative trip every show.

Madmen Cross the Water is radio theatre at its best, immersive and transportive, a bit like Welcome to Nightvale crossed with Flight of the Conchords and Dolly Parton’s America. Complete with a lush original score and hosted by a fictitious superfan/band archivist, each monthly episode tells one of George and Josiah’s adventures from around the world and reveals a new song from their latest album, Of Ghosts and Gods, now available, with the first singles, ‘Wild Winds’ and ‘How to Build a Boat,’ out now along with episode 1.

Each month will bring another song and another episode. The podcast is an incredible corollary to Sons of Town Hall’s live show, allowing the duo to develop their elaborate backstory in far more detail. Both the Sons of Town Hall concert and the podcast offer escapes from the everyday, temporary relief from the woes of the modern world. Listeners and concertgoers alike are left transfixed and transformed, in awe of Sons of Town Hall’s harmonies, and drunk on adventure and the tragic beauty of the human condition.

Part balladry, part performance art, and totally cool…complete with Victorian-era costumes, sing-alongs, and meditations about the seafaring life….Think Simon & Garfunkel lost at sea, and you get a sense of the mythic world at play here – Philadelphia Inquirer