DESCRIPTION:
http://www.peter-aston.co.uk/cottage.htm

Cottage Industry are a 4 piece ceilidh & barn dance band from Dorset specialising in song and dance from England, Ireland & Scotland plus medieval banquets, shanty sessions and Dorset, St. Patrick's & Burns' evenings. Cottage Industry were established in 1976, since when the band has been on one long rollercoaster of a tour! Gigs across the country have included theatres, castles, country mansions, hotels, boats, clubs and pubs - and leaky barns! It also seems like almost every village hall in Dorset & Hampshire has echoed to the sound of the band's driving jigs & reels! Highlights of the past 30 years have included a 'medieval banquet' broadcast live from the BBC studios in Southampton and playing aboard a schooner owner by an exiled Cuban goldminer - with a crew of 10 Swedish girls!

Over the years the band has done quite a lot of recording - starting in about 1978 in a 4 track garage studio owned by photographer Roger Holman, to BBC Maida Vale Studios in 1981 & 1982 which produced a release "We're All for Swanage", a song about Swanage Railway that made us famous on TV and radio - well, for about half-an-hour anyway! In recent years Cottage Industry have recorded in Peter Aston's 16 track studio.

Cottage Industry are available for engagements in England & Wales. A quick way to check our availability is to click on "Bookings" in the left hand menu. As Peter Aston is a member of the UK Musicians' Union, engagements carry automatic public liability insurance cover of £10 million.

In 2006 our original fiddler, Peter Birnie, announced his retirement from the band as he moved on to, as he put it, "new, magnificant projects!" Peter had been in the band since the start in the mid-1970s (apart from during an extended trip to India) and, even before then, he and I had appeared as a duo called "The Long and the Short of It". We made our debut as a duo at the King Charles pub on Poole Quay where we received the princely payment of £8 a night between us! Our thanks and very best wishes go out to Peter in his retirement; we'll certainly miss his unique style of fiddling and, particularly, his willingness and ability to busk anything from jigs & reels to rock 'n' roll and from medieval set dances to the Can-Can - thank you Peter!

We're delighted to now have on board fiddle maestro Steve Faulkner to provide a high-octane lead for our ceilidh dances and sensitive backing for our songs.