Johnny Foreigner + Victor Villarreal

Hello The Press. We are Johnny Foreigner, a not-completely-unsuccessful late 00s indie rock band that made 5 albums about girls, drinking, and local architecture, before growing up and getting proper jobs. You folks (or more likely, your predecessors) grew into calling us a cult band, which is a kind way of explaining how our sales figures never quite matched up to our review scores; tho we are quietly proud with the lil niche we carved in our scene. In 2022 we reunited to release How To Be Hopeful, a record of chaos magic and coincidence and the giddying feeling of falling in actual real massive love and everything being alright forever. It was supposed to be a joyous coda. 

As always, our timing sucked. Between social unrest and inequality, fearmongering and facism, the sickening genocide on our screens and the collective internal realisation that all the politicians and leaders our media allows to flourish will sell us out in a heartbeat, everything suddenly does not feel alright forever.

We are not equipped to deal with this. We are a group of old getting older friends who like to write catchy relatable pop songs with gnarly guitars. So we have retreated into the past and written about what we know; and what we know more than anything, is our dear hometown. This is a small collection of songs about Birmingham and Birmingham history. It's a record of where we came from and why we are like this. A record that comprises 6 actual songs, each named from prominent bits of Brummagem media, and 4 field recordings from various points in the timeline from there to here. A record of how parliament and press stoked division and invoked ‘patriotism’ to burn the foreigners out of town. A record of how our nominally progressive Labour council was useless, controlled and corrupted, and bankrupted our city, and of how we were once quietly proud of our ingenuity, tolerance, and hope for the future... and now we are..not. Yam alright, bab? Complaining is the one thing real Brummies remain exceptional at, but mayhaps this ay -just- a Birmingham record.

As ever this seems like both a dumb move in terms of Furthering Our Career/Increasing Our Demographic, and absolutely the right thing for Our Band Johnny Foreigner to do. And as ever, we are super proud of what we’ve made, but being from Birmingham we pathologically cannot admit that out loud.

Support from Victor Villarreal (Cap'n Jazz/Owls/Ghosts and Vodka + more) as main support. Local openers tba.

For accessibility enquiries & carer tickets, please read the accessibility document on the Hare & Hounds website. 

Age restriction: 14+ / U16s accompanied by an adult