Fisherman’s Friends have nine albums to their name, two feature films, a stage musical, a book, a TV documentary, they’ve played for royalty and to tens of thousands of fans in sell-out tours year in year out… No, it’s not The Beatles, Take That or One Direction – it’s The Fisherman’s Friends!
A decade ago, The Fisherman’s Friends signed a million-pound record deal that saw their album Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends go Gold as they became the first ever traditional folk act to land a UK top ten album. And thanks to the small film with a big heart that shares their name, the story of the original Cornish ‘buoy band’ is known around the world. Bound by shared experience, for more than 30 years they have gathered on the Platt on the harbour in their native Port Isaac to sing the songs of the sea, songs that in some cases have been handed down for hundreds of years, songs that connect them to generations of Cornish fishermen that have come before them.
The film’s sequel Fisherman’s Friends 2 was released last year.The story follows the group from the highs of starring on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, through the lows of struggling to make a follow-up album. Fisherman’s Friends: The Musical broke all box office records selling over 250,000 tickets in the UK and Canada.
The Fisherman’s Friends are lobster fisherman Jeremy Brown, writer and shopkeeper Jon Cleave, smallholder and engineer John ‘Lefty’ Lethbridge, builder John McDonnell , lobster fisherman Jason Nicholas, filmmaker Toby Lobb and potter Bill Hawkins.