About
Folk, blues and the long road between Shropshire and Oxfordshire.
Shropshire to Oxfordshire, via a few detours.
Dave Arrowsmith is a singer-songwriter and guitarist based near Banbury. His songs are somewhere between folk and blues, never quite settling on either. They are mostly about people — real ones, usually — someone with a fight to fight, someone with a telescope, a camera or just a fistful of contradictions.
Dave was born in Shropshire and grew up in the Black Country. He's lived in Bournemouth, Stourbridge, Nottingham, Northampton, Timaru (New Zealand) and Banbury. Home is now the village of Adderbury in Oxfordshire, which seems to have stuck.
"Not quite folk. Not quite blues. Both somewhere underneath."
Beginnings
It started, improbably, with Yorkshire brass teacher Robert Coates, handed the thankless job of turning West Midlands kids into traditional brass band players. Dave made it to Grade 6 on cornet, before electric guitars and guitarists made a more compelling case to a 14-year-old wannabe. The cornet went in the cupboard. The guitar has rarely left arm's reach since.
"Any instrument you liked, as long as it was brass."
The Songs
Dave was a late developer in songwriting terms. Maybe it needed travels, experience and a bit of quiet before it showed up. Early ones found a home with Boogiesnakes, an electric funk/blues/jazz outfit he helped put together soon after arriving in Banbury.
The subjects tend to be characters — the real ones include Jacob Riis, Nancy Wake, Theodore Lamb, Nikola Tesla — and stories of fights against the status quo. Extraordinary people. No love songs, at least not in any traditional sense.
The Scenic Route
The path between the cornet and the songs has been, politely, varied. Electric blues bars. Pub covers. Country singers. Fronting blues trios. Dep gigs with Tess of the Circle, Rollo Markee, Beer Parlor Jivers and many others. A stint with Ginger Pig (where Northampton meets New Orleans!), including at Ascona Jazz Festival in 2006. Even an AC/DC tribute band, because why not.
In 2022 Dave joined folk-rock festival favourites Leatherat on guitar and vocals — twenty-plus years in, still delivering a blend of the traditional, canvassed on a wall of rock, at the festivals that matter.
Now
In 2016 Dave founded the monthly Banbury Blues Club jam night. He'd seen how well these things worked in Northamptonshire and noticed Banbury was missing one. A decade later it pulls players in from London, Birmingham, Northants and beyond — a standing invitation to holler, jam and network.
A first solo album is taking shape for 2026. Between now and then: folk clubs, festivals, small rooms, Leatherat outings and a jam night on the first Sunday of every month.
Come and say hello.
Bookings
Solo sets. Happy to travel. Small PA available, or tell me what you've got.
Get in touch →