Folk duo Winter Wilson back on road and due at Black Dyke Mills Heritage Centre

With venues closed and concerts banned, artistes and support crews alike were stuck at home with no jobs and often no income. Lincolnshire-based married couple Dave Wilson and Kip Winter consider themselves luckier than most.

Kip said: "We have a small income from other sources, so we knew we wouldn't starve, and we're used to spending long periods of time with just each other for company.”

When the pandemic first struck, the pair were on tour in Germany. With 10 days left to complete the trip, it became clear that their plans would have to be abandoned.

Their journey hoe was pretty uneventful and the couple settled back into their Lincolnshire home for what they felt would be “a few weeks’ rest”.

Dave said: “How wrong can you be? After a couple of weeks, we decided to do a bit of a live stream on Facebook, as much as anything to give ourselves a focus, but also to keep in some kind of contact with the outside world.”

That “bit of a live stream” was destined to become a 60-week odyssey, renamed Live from the Lounge, bringing fun, music and friendship to regular viewers from across the world, and raising more than £5,500 in charitable donations.

In fact Live from the Lounge became an on-line community all of its own and continues monthly to this day."After a couple of weeks, people started asking how they could make donations, so we set up a button on our website. The donations were divided equally between the MU’s Musicians’ Hardship Fund and our local food bank.”So how did the couple fill more than 60 hours of music? “We alternated,” said Dave. “One week it was all original songs, then the next all covers. And the regulars would send us requests.

"We genuinely did everything from Dylan, Tom Waits and Randy Newman to Crosby, Stills and Nash and Lady Gaga.”

Even learning more than 500 songs couldn’t completely fill the void for a couple who have lived their life – and made their living – on the road for more than 10 years.

During the Summer of 2021, alongside performing at those festivals which did go ahead, Kip and Dave wrote and recorded their ninth studio album, The Passing of the Storm, which was released in September 2021.

With a musical style ranging from traditional folk to blues and up-tempo Americana, and subject matter from the intensely personal to hard-hitting social comment, this is an album very much for our times,

How does it feel to be back out there?

“It was really strange at first. Even after all the hours of live streaming, there's this little nagging fear that you might not be able to do it live after such a long break. I think we were both nervous but it soon settled down,” said Kip.

Dave said: "We were really busy last year, although many venues across Europe were still struggling to attract audiences back until the last few months of the year. And then of course we both caught Covid last March, so we had to postpone a couple of gigs – Black Dyke Mills being one of them.

Winter Wilson are at Black Dyke Mills Heritage Centre, Brighouse Road, Queensbury, on Saturday April 15 from 7:30pm.

Tickets are available in advance at www.winterwilson.com or on the door.