Songs from the coalface
Fifteen years after first joining forces, Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox and Jez Lowe are back on the road as The Pitmen Poets
For Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox and Jez Lowe, The Pitmen Poets was never supposed to become a long-running live music project.
When the three North East folk stalwarts first came together in 2011 - alongside Benny Graham - for a one-off concert at London’s Kings Place, the plan was simple: sing a few songs, tell a few stories and shine a light on the culture and communities shaped by the region’s coal industry.
Fifteen years later, they’re still doing exactly that - and audiences are still turning up in force.
This summer sees the trio reunite for another tour, bringing The Pitmen Poets to 10 North East venues, with dates including performances at The Customs House, South Shields and The Glasshouse, Gateshead this weekend.
The tour, titled Still Burning Bright, draws on what the trio describe as the “greatest hits” of the show - audience favourites built from music, humour and storytelling rooted in pit village life.
“We started off in 2011,” recalls Bob Fox. “We were asked to go down to London to a big swanky venue and sing songs and tell stories about what life used to be like in the North East when we had all of that wonderful coal mining industry going on.”
“We didn’t really rehearse anything, we just sat on stage,” Billy adds. “We all come from the very first generations in our families to not be coal miners - so we all knew exactly what we were going to talk about. There was an understanding.”
That shared experience is at the heart of what makes The Pitmen Poets resonate.
Each performer brings decades of musical experience. Billy Mitchell rose to prominence with Jack the Lad before joining Lindisfarne. Bob Fox is a revered interpreter of traditional song and won widespread acclaim for his work on the National Theatre’s War Horse. Jez Lowe has built an international reputation through his songwriting and work on The Radio Ballads.
With The Pitmen Poets, the focus is collective: preserving and celebrating a culture that shaped generations across the North East.
The show draws on songs by Tommy Armstrong - often described as the original pitman poet - alongside work by more modern songwriters including Ed Pickford and original material from the trio themselves.
“We just sort of meld it all together,” says Bob. “We don’t actually distinguish between one and another really. It just seems to all kind of fit together.”
The result is a show that moves fluidly between eras, connecting the industrial struggles of the 19th century with more recent chapters of coalfield history.
“The oldest songs that Tommy Armstrong wrote about the South Medomsley strike in 1885… and Jez’s song The Judas Bus, which was about the miners’ strike of 1985,” says Bob.
While the songs offer much to contemplate, the trio are very clear that there lots of laughter to be had, too.
“Wherever there was hard work going on and deprivation, there was always loads of humour. Lots of funny stories,” says Jez.
That balance - between hardship and humour, politics and personality - is central to the appeal.
The audience, meanwhile, is broader than some might expect.
Billy says that while many audience members have long connections to folk music and coalfield communities, the stories continue to travel across generations.
“The kids have been brought up on that music,” he says. “So they know the music very well, they know the songs.”
And while many of the songs are deeply rooted in the North East, their themes resonate much further afield.
“I think most of them are rooted in the North East,” says Bob, “because the original Pitman Poet was Tommy Armstrong from Stanley, and a lot of his songs are very much about what happened in that community.
“However, when you do take them to other places where there was mining, they understand them… people had similar experiences, so they can associate with them.”
That continued appetite for the music and for keeping the stories alive perhaps explains why, 15 years on from The Pitmen Poets’ first outing, the trio have already said farewell more than once.
“The previous tour had to be marketed as a reunion because the three tours before that had all been final farewell tours,” laughs Billy.
As for whether this really is the last outing?
The answer sounds… non-committal.
They are, Billy admits, “half thinking about maybe doing a fourth final farewell reunion greatest hits kind of tour next year”.
For now, though, Still Burning Bright feels like an apt title.
The Pitmen Poets are on tour until July 12 with dates in: The Witham, Barnard Castle (June 26); The Customs House (June 27); The Glasshouse (June 28); Alnwick Playhouse (July 2); Queen’s Hall Hexham (July 3); The Forum, Billingham (July 8); Playhouse Whitley Bay (July 10); Gala Theatre Durham (July 11); and The Fire Station, Sunderland (July 12). A new CD will be on sale throughout the tour.