Our very first Yorkshire Americana & Bluegrass Day was due to take place on 30th May 2020 and we obviously had to cancel due to the ongoing Covid-19 virus crisis. We're raising money to help musicians who've lost a huge amount of work and income from cancelled gigs, and to help us to stage the postponed event in 2021. We'll be hosting a live streamed concert on the original date with performances by some of the outstanding bluegrass and Americana musicians who were booked to play our 2020 mini fest. Please support them, and us, by donating to this fundraiser. Tune in to our virtual concert at 7pm UK time on Sat 30th May 2020 at facebook.com/truenorthmusicuk

Line-up:

AJ Lee & Blue Summit (USA) - sensational contemporary bluegrass & Americana band from California with superb harmony vocals - lockdown trio version featuring AJ Lee (mandolin), Sullivan Tuttle and Jesse Fichman (guitars).

Jaywalkers (UK) - classy Americana/folk trio from Cheshire, with glorious bluesy vocals and outstanding musicianship - lockdown duo version featuring Jay Bradberry (vocals, fiddle, guitar) and Mike Giverin (mandolin. guitar)

Zoe & Cloyd (USA) - North Carolina bluegrass and folk duo with gorgeous songs, superb musicianship and soaring vocal harmonies from Natalya Zoe Weinstein and John Cloyd Miller

Simon Brady (UK) - the talented Tilter Wheel frontman (mandolin, guitar, vocals) will represent the UK bluegrass aces with a lockdown solo set.

This is obviously a devastating time for musicians, festival organisers, promoters, venues and the entire live music scene in the UK. While we were fortunate to have received some Arts Council grant funding just before the crisis hit (which they have kindly agreed to defer to 2021) this was only part of our budget plan, which also included forecast ticket sales. We have already made a dent in our total budget with promotional costs incurred before we had to cancel, and by paying out some modest cancellation fees to the artists we had to let down. We're hoping to raise some funds both to fill this gap, and in anticipation of additional future challenges once we are able to safely hold our festival, eg lower venue capacity (resulting in lower ticket sales), additional cleaning and hygiene measures, and additional technical spending so that we can share high quality content online. Our musician friends are also suffering a devastating loss of income at this time, and we will be splitting any donations with them.