[Cover photo credit to Sjoske Buursink]
Transatlantic Folk duo Sons of Town Hall has released their new single, “The Rocky Shores of England,” and announced the release of their upcoming album, Of Ghosts and Gods, due out March 6, 2026, including vinyl.
They first imagined this album nearly a decade ago in a London pub. The result is part Folk record, part “storytelling adventure”. “The Rocky Shores of England” is the most stripped down track on the album, with only their two voices and two old Gibson guitars recorded around three microphones. The track is “a wistful ballad of love lost and lingering regret.”
Sons of Town Hall have crafted a fictional world to frame the album. Frontmen David Berkeley and Ben Parker portray Josiah Chester Jones and George Ulysses Brown, two characters traveling the world on a mythical raft.
Their Victorian-era outfits and theatrical stage shows turn concerts into immersive performances that combine music, humor, and storytelling.
Parker explains:
The costumes, in the end, somehow enable us to be more ourselves.
Berkeley adds:
We are characters in a fiction we’ve dreamed up and re-create with our audiences every night.
Expanding the album’s universe, the duo has launched the Madmen Cross the Water podcast. Hosted by fictional superfan Elias B. Worthington, an armchair historian, failed musician, and lifelong bachelor, the first season explores the stories behind each song.
Elias guides listeners across continents and back through time, tracing the trials and triumphs behind the duo’s mythic catalog starting from the 1900s.
Sons of Town Hall will hit the road with a run of intimate U.S. dates across the East Coast and South. The tour kicks off February 18 in Atlanta at Eddie’s Attic and wraps March 8 with a special appearance on Mountain Stage in Charleston, WV.
Of Ghosts and Gods US Tour
Feb 18 – Eddie’s Attic @ Atlanta, GA
Feb 20 – The Green Room at Crosstown Arts @ Memphis, TN
Feb 22 – The Mansion at Strathmore @ North Bethesda, MD
Feb 24 – City Vineyard by City Winery @ New York, NY
Feb 25 – The Kate @ Old Saybrook, CT
Feb 26 – BNH Stage at the Colonial Theatre @ Concord, NH
Feb 27 – Spruce Peak Arts @ Stowe, VT
Feb 28 – Studio 9 @ North Adams, MA
Mar 01 – Peabody Essex Museum @ Salem, MA
Mar 03 – Club Passim @ Cambridge, MA
Mar 04 – Portsmouth Music Hall Lounge @ Portsmouth, NH
Mar 07 – Purple Fiddle @ Thomas, WV
Mar 08 – Mountain Stage @ Charleston, WV
