BY MICHAEL CHOWNE

A special rare one-off show put on by First Time Flyers, more usually seen touring or at festivals, on Friday 25th September 2026 at St Pancras Old Church Music.

My 12th time seeing this fantastic country-pop band, this one had a particularly classy feel to it and with the band mostly seated throughout, their voices were able to shine through. The regular foursome of Tim Prottey-Jones, Poppy Fardell, Vicki Manser & Jake Morrell were supplemented by Phoebe Snelling on fiddle and Vicki’s wife Frankie South on a whole host of instruments (see how many you can spot in the photos!).

First time too seeing Vicki play both banjo and mandolin and, along with fiddle, these instruments certainly gave the FTF catalogue a more country feel than at the more high energy shows, taking the music to a higher plane.

Of course there were a lot of songs from their 2025 No. 1 smash album, ‘Bound To Break’, but it was lovely to hear a couple of older songs (‘Bad Guy’ was one of them) and brand new songs ‘Call Me If You’re Lonely’ and ‘We’re Not Scared’, the latter inspired by the 1989 children’s picture book ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. Nice touch too when the four of them came to the front of the stage for an unmiked acoustic/acapella version (with just Tim on guitar) of ‘Deadweight’.

A fantastic evening really appreciated by the crowd in this lovely church with incredible sound, the ballads really took pride of place here.

Get your tickets now for the next album tour in April and May next year before the gigs sell out!