Bio
When Becky Blenko upped sticks and left London for rural Manningtree, she never imagined a chance encounter at a community weeding event would lead to a musical partnership with one of the town’s most notorious local celebrities. Ben Brown (SuperGlu, Dingus Khan) brings his signature sound to Becky’s wistful lyricism, as they breathe new life into Anna’s Bones. With drummer Pete Moore, they’ve already shared stages with Billy Nomates, Skating Polly and former antigen records label mates Gaffa Tape Sandy, and they now release their first single for the label.
Becky Blenko (not her real name) might be a face familiar to connoisseurs of straight-to-DVD horror as the star of Dead Wood, a cautionary tale of naïve city folk who foolishly venture to an inbred rural backwater, with horrifying results. Probably. I haven’t watched it.
In 2017, Becky left London for a new life in sleepy Manningtree, a retirement town in the heart of the Stour valley, in northeast Essex. Finding herself craving the cultural richness of city life, she joined a community hand-weeding initiative, helping to keep the pavements free of plant-based trip hazards. There, she met an affable bumpkin calling himself Councillor Brown, who claimed he was the world’s greatest songwriter, but looked like the kind of person you’d find masturbating in a shed after paying him to cut your hedge.
Becky had obviously never watched any of her own films, so this raised no red flags. The pair bonded over their shared ambition for weed-free pavements, and formed a writing partnership to help Becky explore her angst as a resting actor, home-schooling a child in a place where investment bankers go to die.
In an improbable twist, worthy of Becky’s most acclaimed film work, there proved to be kernel of truth in the stranger’s outrageous exaggerations and new songs began to emerge from this unlikely collaboration. Becky resurrected the name Anna’s Bones from her previous synth-pop project, pulled together a band, and began performing this new material as the country came out of lockdown.
Postscript: Cllr Ben Brown abandoned his pavement weeding initiative for solo tours with Pet Needs in January and March 2023 and he is currently recording with chart-topping folk punk Etonian Frank Turner. There are no figures available for the number of Manningtree pensioners hospitalised with fall-related injuries this year.
