{"id":1184,"date":"2014-03-11T16:22:45","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T16:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pennyless-band.co.uk\/?page_id=1184"},"modified":"2025-05-20T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T10:18:50","slug":"bio","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/?page_id=1184","title":{"rendered":"Bio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-scaled.jpg\"  class=\"pretty_image\" data-rel=\"prettyPhoto[1184]\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4280\" src=\"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-520x291.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-520x291.jpg 520w, http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-680x381.jpg 680w, http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-768x430.jpg 768w, http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-1536x860.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Pennyless-with-Ray-2048x1146.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After 15 years Pennyless are now mainly working as a four piece band based in South Lincolnshire at the borders of Cambs, Northants, Leics and Rutland, with Penny Stevens on violin, Les Woods on guitar, Colin Benton on Bass\/Mandolin and Ray Duffy on Banjo\/Guitar\/Mandolin<\/p>\n<p>Theirs is a special sound that is distinctly English cooking up lively, quirky and downright mystical songs from folklore, medieval history and their own musical minds.<\/p>\n<p>Working alongside their original material Pennyless bring in a Bluegrass and Old Timey American feel with pacey instrumentals, Celtic traditional tunes and a diverse mix of off-the-beaten-track cover versions!<\/p>\n<p>Penny and Les sometimes work as an unplugged duo: troubadours on fiddle and guitar, the instrumental arrangements irresistibly fiery and melodic, with warm harmony vocals.<\/p>\n<p>As with most creative musicians, influences are diverse ranging from Pentangle through to Bach and the realms of English folklore, poetry, history and legend.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>&#8220;a psych-folk tradadelia gem&#8221;<\/strong> fRoots magazine, Oct 2012<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>&#8220;Pennyless.. where real ale meets mushroom tea&#8221;<\/strong> R2 Rock n Reel magazine Nov 2012<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>&#8220;folk rock with pep and zest&#8221;<\/strong> Music maker magazine Nov 2012<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>&#8220;This hard working and ever-popular fixture of the East English live folk music scene offer their fifth album,\u00a0In the\u00a0Park\u00a0in six years. Pleasingly tight in it&#8217;s delivery, their accomplished musicianship carries forth delightfully intricate arrangements that ebb and flow beautifully.&#8221;<\/strong> Shindig magazine March 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After 15 years Pennyless are now mainly working as a four piece band based in South Lincolnshire at the borders of Cambs, Northants, Leics and Rutland, with Penny Stevens on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1184"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4281,"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1184\/revisions\/4281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pennyless-music.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}