Farewell for now, Sons of Joy
26th June brought the Sons of Joy to the Ipswich Fringe festival for what was widely rumoured to be their final performance… for a while at least. Matt Simpkins (voice, fiddle and drum) heads off to Oxfordshire in August, to study to become an Anglican priest. Daniel Merrill (backing shouts, violin and stomping) is also leaving the fair county of Essex, to study in London.
The duo performed as part of the Switch Fringe antigen records night and delivered a blistering live set in an Ipswich Labour Club outbuilding, which turned out to be a pre-war barracks hospital, undecorated since 1938. Also on the bill, Nathaniel Robin Mann, who stunned the crowd into awed silence, performing much of his set unamplified among the audience.
