The Young’Uns play Shoreham with message of hope

Produced by Andy Bell on the Hudson Records label, the release takes its title – Tiny Notes – from the remarkable tale of 22-year-old Paige Hunter’s handwritten messages of hope tied to the railings of Sunderland’s Wearmouth Bridge (depicted on the album cover) where tragically many people decided to end their lives. But her notes are thought to have saved the lives of some 30 people in the north-east; and Paige’s actions have inspired others to leave similar messages on bridges around the world.

The Young’Uns began as three teenage friends in Stockton-on-Tees 20 years ago – Sean Cooney, Michael Hughes and David Eagle. One of the big discoveries for Sean, as the new album shows, is that folk absolutely doesn't have to be about things that happened in the past.

“This is our first album post-Covid and it has felt like a long time. Basically it's a collection of songs about real people. It's about 21st century folk. For years we had the impression that folk music was always about the past and I took great delight in finding folk stories in the past that I could use and turning them into songs but I realised that those folk stories in the past were actually about the present in many cases when they were written… and that's what we are doing now.

“Paige Hunter came to attention four years or so ago and I just thought that what she was doing was absolutely incredible and I wanted to turn it into a song. It took about three years because I wanted to get it right. She is very open on social media about her own struggles. She's been in that place herself. She has been on the bridge and someone saved her and now she is just determined to raise awareness about how we can help people. She's the most incredible champion and that's what we wanted to reflect on the album, and there's also a song on there about the three dads walking (also raising awareness of suicide).”

It's an important new chapter for the band who literally stumbled over folk music in 2003 in the back room of The Sun Inn in their native Stockton-on-Tees, never knowing that such music existed.

“We were all good mates and we just went along. And we just discovered it by chance, this traditional singing in the back of the pub. We had no idea at all that folk music even existed but people had been meeting there for about 40 years. We just had no idea that people sang songs about Teesside in Teesside accents but we went along and they were just so welcoming and so friendly and it was fantastic. My dad suggested that we go there. My dad was very into Dylan and I was getting into Dylan. He just said that we should get along and it was just such a revelation. We were made so welcome even if everyone in the room was at least three decades older than us. And that's how we got the name. We were asked if we wanted to do a song and what our name was and we didn't have one so we just said well everyone calls us ‘the young’uns!’”

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