The Young'uns

With heart-on-the-sleeve storytelling, beautiful lyrics, warm harmonies and relentless repartee, Sean Cooney, Michael Hughes and David Eagle (the award-winning stand-up comedian) write and sing folk songs for today.

Championing the folk music of the Northeast of England, The Young'uns are a traditional folk trio from Stockton, County Durham, who won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Best Group" award in 2015 and 2016 and “Best Album” for Strangers in 2018.

They specialise in singing unaccompanied, and they perform traditional folk songs and sea shanties, contemporary folk songs such as the 40 year old song Billy Bragg's "Between the Wars" and 60 year old song Sydney Carter's "John Ball", and original works including "You Won’t Find Me on Benefits Street" (alluding to Stockton's reaction to a Benefits Street television crew) and "The Battle of Stockton" (on a 1933 clash with Oswald Mosley's blackshirts).

Nearly twenty years after accidentally stumbling into the alien world of their local folk club as drunken teenagers, (and gaining their cureless name in the process) these three thirtysomething friends from Stockton and Hartlepool have never lost the joy of that first night of singing together.

Whether performing in front of 5,000 people at Glastonbury Festival, writing a song about pigs with a group of school children, or presenting a programme on BBC Radio 4, Sean Cooney, Michael Hughes and David Eagle are just the same.