http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfPBiSBKjWU 
That link should find a clip of Duncan 'acoustic' which has been posted by the
very nice landlady from the Wrotham Arms, Kent - though the gig it was filmed at was in North Yorkshire!!
The Wrotham regularly hold music nights dubbed the 'Woodshed Sessions'
 - apparently named after my song ' Woodshed Boys' and the tale around it!
Bless 'em!

Our new album makes top reviewer Colin Randall’s Top Ten Albums of 2007!!!
Look here at the list..... www.salutlive top ten list   
and for his actual review, here.... www.salutlive review

’Colin Randall spent nearly 28 years working for the Telegraph and is an admired critic and reviewer. He has just posted his verdict on Dunc’s splendid album: Congratulations Duncan. To get a verdict like that from Colin Randall is high praise indeed’. Sir Robert Peel – Longdogs Forum

’One of our albums of the year!’ - www.rootsmusic.co.uk

A ’Five Star’ review from.......Rock ’n’ Reel.... Mar/Apr 08 issue - THE DUNCAN McFARLANE BAND - All Rogues & Villains *****
Wearing their musical influence like a badge of pride, The Duncan McFarlane Band proudly proclaim on the back cover of their second album, All Rogues & Villains, "We class our music as Folk-Rock". The unreconstructed six-piece from Yorkshire make no bones about or excuses for their desire to produce memorable, attractive and danceable folk-fuelled rock that offers a knowing nod to the 70s masters. Consequently traces of Horslips, Fairport, Jack The Lad, Steeleye and the classic folk-rock sound of punchy bass lines and solid, driving rhythms abound. There’s also a quality of delivery, vocal authority, and some stunning lead riffs, plus neat accordion and fiddle interplay. Their readings of ’Botany Bay’, ’Rakish Young Fellow’, ’Band O’Shearers’, ’Lord Franklin’, ’Lowlands Of Holland’ and ’A-Begging I Will Go’ provide a real master class in just how to do the folk-rock thing right, while their own songs and tunes, four of each, sit comfortably amongst the more familiar folk-rock fare.
Steve Caseman - Rock ’n’ Reel

’efdss’ - English Folk Dance & Song Society - Quarterly Publication ’EDS’ - Spring 2008, page 46 ’All Rogues & Villains’ - The Duncan McFarlane Band 
This is a band that has taken the strong lyricism of traditional music and has really banged it into rock with style and grace. Firm and rhythmic drumming, sharp and perceptive fiddling and a keen sense of arrangement throws this music back at you and screams ’listen to me’. This, the band’s second album, finds them sounding well rehearsed and polished and Duncan clearly gets terrific enjoyment out of singing; not always the easiest of emotions to pull off on a record. It comes from clarity of words, from a strong sense of narrative and from subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – changes of pace. And there is a jump-up-and-down feel that makes a lot of their music totally infectious.
Following on from their debut The Woodshed Boys, this album contains a similar mixture of traditional songs and tunes alongside Duncan McFarlane originals. I especially like ’Bed of Straw’, one of Duncan’s own songs about recruiting – it could easily be mistaken for a traditional song! As the sergeant presses the money into the travellers’ hands you can ’hear’ the smile on Duncan’s face.
The addition of Stan Rogers’ ’North-West Passage’ chorus to ’Lord Franklin’ is brilliant – it really shows the rocking element of the band at its best and makes you wonder why no-one has done it before.
Anne Brivonese’s fiddle soars and dives and weaves with Steve Fairholme’s melodeon throughout, and she adds an extra, slightly understated solo voice on the ’The Lowlands of Holland’. The drummer, Nick Pepper, has some great moments, especially on ’Atholl Highlanders’. Geoff Taylor on electric guitar and Tony Rogerson on bass provide the steady-as-she-goes rock element. I know the band’s live performances are a riot of enjoyment; this is a grand replacement until you can actually get to see them.
Dave Eyre - ’EDS’ Magazine

Raunds Festival, Northants 
What an incredibly exhausting weekend it’s been 
The whole place rocked and reeled to the music and energy that is 
The Duncan McFarlane Band.  If you haven’t heard this band, get to 
a gig soon! They were fantastic - great musicians, vocals and such 
style!  I want to know... how can Duncan McFarlane still have enough
energy to leap all over the place after 11 at night, following a curry 
and having played for over an hour? The band’s temporary drummer 
was not only very pleasing to the eye, but simply superb!  
Some of their die-hard fans came along with them all the way from up t’ north, 
and yet another CD was added to my collection. Another 2am crawl 
into bed with thoughts of Sunday in my head and the strains of 
Woodshed Boys still whirling in my ears. Jenny Clarke (co-organiser)
 
Otley Festival
The Folk Festival Sunday night concert opening act was the electric 
and electrifying version of the Duncan McFarlane Band. 
The hall was as crammed as regulations allow and the audience as 
intense as the music, which is potent without being overwhelming. 
The band is a 6-piece with Geoff Taylors lead guitar and 
Anne Brivonese’s violin rolling out a carpet of sound over which 
the action ceaselessly capers. Its a finely balanced outfit which could 
clearly hold its own in a venue ten times the size of this 300-seater, 
but was in no way too much for its surroundings.
John Hepworth, Wharfedale Gazette 

Reviews of The Duncan McFarlane Band "Woodshed Boys" 
(Dunx Music CD016)

From fRoots magazine...
Full-throated folk rock with as much attack as the Charge of the Light Brigade. 
McFarlane and crew are eager and put some determination into proceedings. 
A loud party animal and totally unashamed. 

From the Yorkshire Evening Post...
An album of robust folk-rock, The Woodshed Boys is full of reels, jigs and stout 
songs with melodramatic electric guitar flourishes. 
It’s well-executed and infectiously lively.

BBC Radio stations have been playing our new CD a fair bit - why not email them and give them feedback for being so good to us! Here’s a list of some we’re aware of - get those requests in! Cheers!

Frank Hennesey’s ’Celtic Heartbeat’ played the band’s ’Bed of Straw’ as first track the other Sunday - ask him for more! Use this link....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/shows/celticheartbeat.shtml

Lester Simpson & Mick Peat’s ’Folkwaves’ show on BBC Radio Derby – played Botany Bay as the first track on one of their shows - then ’Robin Hoods Bay’ another show down the line – why not write or ring and say more please! Via….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/derby/local_radio/folkwaves_programme_feature.shtml?focuswin

Geneveive Tudor’s Folk – BBC Radio Shropshire- Dear Gen has played four tracks at least (that we know of)…. The first four on the CD!.... Botany Bay, Rakish Young Fellow, Band O’ Shearers and Bed of Straw – don’t allow her to let up now! Contact her via….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/music/folk/index.shtml?focuswin

Mike Harding’s show hasn’t played us yet - get on to him! I know he has a copy of the album!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/harding/contact.shtml

Cheers - Duncan & Crew

Songs from our 'All Rogues & Villains' CD are on the 'player' above. Some are not the finished product - they are 'pre'  the 'mastering' process. All of the samples are compressed and reduced in file size to load on here - lower quality reproduction! Yuk! To hear the real thing - contact us, or even buy one using PayPal at www.duncanmcfarlane.co.uk ! Cheers!

The new CD from The Duncan McFarlane Band, was launched at Otley Festival 20th Sept 2007

....some 72 mins of fine folk-rock! 


The booklet back page reads....
 

Yep, have a look (when you're finished looking round here of course!)
It's not great 'sound' - it was a hand-held camera in the audience at Sidmouth Folk Festival 05 - the wee microphone built in to the camera wasn't up to the task really - kept compressing sound on the noisy bits and seeking out loudest noise in the quieter bits - but the energy and feel is there, we think.
One day we'll get a proper recording done, eh?
It's on this site - click the Videos link alongside the pictures link over on the left there.
Cheers!

Duncan McFarlane at the Black Swan Folk Club, York - 
Singer/guitarist/songwriter extraordinaire Duncan has been steadily making a name for himself over the past few years, increasingly well outwith the confines of his home county of West Yorkshire. Whether performing solo or in "acoustic band" format, his live sets invariably go down a storm, while his full-blown electric band has been hailed (and justifiably so in my book) as bringing the credibility back to that hoary old beast folk-rock.
Duncan has an obvious feel for the tradition and a deep-rooted belief that it has a place in the current folk scene, aspects which he puts across with lively showmanship. His own songs show a canny grasp of, and response to, the tradition, while his intrinsic seriousness of intent and approach is often laced with a healthy irreverence that happens to be hugely entertaining. And this latest folk club gig showed him developing his craft even further into a fine art, creating and building a great rapport with the audience from the word go - and maintaining it wholly naturally throughout two well-paced and good-sized sets.
This was another "first" for Duncan, in that on this occasion he was accompanied by just two members of his trusty "band" playing acoustically: fiddler Anne Brivonese and cittern/guitar player Geoff Taylor. To the already full sound of Duncan's own tremendous guitar playing, Anne contributed some excellent, sympathetic yet punchy bow-stroking and some lovely supporting harmony vocals, while the elfin Geoff (leaving his electric axe at home for the evening) provided some extraordinarily subtle and interesting (often quite experimental) shadings to enhance Duncan's vocals and guitar.
The set-lists contained plenty of confirmed hits from Duncan's solo repertoire (Turn The Bones Around, Bed Of Straw, Floating B) as well as a handful of newer songs (Strange Old Days Of England, Butterside Down and his brilliant contemporary take on the folk ballad Not PC) and a sprinkling of his enterprising and distinctly accessible treatments of traditional songs (John Barleycorn, Three Gypsies). These were interspersed with sensibly scaled-down renditions of good-time band-set favourites (Can't Go There, Woodshed Boys, and the rollicking encore Robin Hood's Bay).
So what if there were ramshackle moments and not everything was note-perfect - it was Fun (though some say I shouldn't use that word in connection with a folk club!), everyone had a great time, and it turned out to be one of the best recent club nights at the Swan in terms of atmosphere alone; three darned fine musicians having a great time, and carrying the punters right along with them. If you've never seen Duncan, do make the effort soon - he's one of the most genuinely entertaining performers on the folk circuit at the moment, and what's more, his original songs are worth getting to know too!
'The Living Tradition' magazine, June 06