McHALE'S PERMANENT BREW

The Seventies Never Died — They Just Turned the Amps Back Up

There are bands who play blues-rock, and then there are bands who seem to have absorbed the whole glorious history of it — the valve amps, Hammond organs, twin guitars, smoke-filled clubs, festival fields and records that once arrived wrapped in gatefold sleeves. McHale's Permanent Brew belong firmly in the latter camp. On Thursday 19th November 2026, the North West five-piece return to Barnoldswick Music & Arts Centre for a special one-night show: five musicians, two guitars, Hammond-soaked keyboards and absolutely nowhere to hide.

Formed in 2017 around Paul McHale and Frank McHale, the band take their musical compass from the great guitar-driven records of the late '60s and '70s without becoming a museum piece. There are traces of British blues, psychedelic rock, muscular R&B and progressive colour in their DNA, but what emerges is unmistakably their own. The current line-up — Paul McHale on guitar and vocals, Frank McHale on guitar and vocals, Stephen Houghton on bass, Simon Lomax on keyboards and Chris Orrell on drums — has developed into a formidable live unit, with the rhythm section providing the weight while guitars and keyboards are allowed to stretch, breathe and occasionally disappear over the horizon.

And people are beginning to notice. Their 2023 second album, Lessons From The Darkest Storms…, prompted At The Barrier to hear far more than straightforward blues-rock, picking out echoes of classic-period Pink Floyd alongside slide guitar, organ, acoustic textures and lengthy, exploratory arrangements. Folking.com similarly heard connections reaching beyond the obvious blues-rock reference points, even invoking Michael Chapman and John Martyn, while describing the band as "really tight."

Live, however, is where McHale's Permanent Brew really earn their name. Reviewing their 2024 appearance at Blackpool's Waterloo alongside Jared James Nichols, ROCKFLESH described "sinuous, pounding bass lines" beneath "wide shimmering waves of keyboards," noting the infectious groove, slide guitar and soulful vocals that have helped build the band's increasingly passionate following. At HRH Blues 8 in Leicester that same year, another reviewer went even further, calling their performance the band's best he'd seen and his "pick of the weekend."

That momentum hasn't stopped. At the Nene Valley Rock Festival, The Progressive Aspect described them as a blues band with an "inventive psych edge," praising the way they wear their seventies influences proudly while putting enough of their own identity into the music to keep it vital. And as recently as August 2026, Devolution Magazine, reviewing their Firevolt Festival appearance, singled out the interplay between electric and acoustic guitars and the band's huge rhythm section, concluding that their high-octane rhythm and blues demonstrated exactly why this music refuses to go out of fashion.

The story has moved on in another important way too. The band's own current discography now lists three albums: their self-titled 2021 debut, 2023's Lessons From The Darkest Storms… and the newly released McHale's Permanent Brew III, dated September 2026. Their biography also records a 2023 UK Blues Award nomination for Emerging Act of the Year.

Along the way they've shared stages with Dr Feelgood, Atomic Rooster, Xander & The Peace Pirates, Crow Black Chicken and Warner E. Hodges, while festival appearances have increasingly moved them from early slots towards serious billing territory. That's important, because McHale's Permanent Brew are essentially an old-fashioned proposition in the very best sense: a band that has built its reputation by getting in a van, plugging in and winning people over one room at a time.

And that makes Barnoldswick on Thursday 19th November particularly enticing. Forget backing tracks, algorithms and carefully manufactured rock-star poses. This is the stuff that once made British clubs shake: guitars answering guitars, keyboards swirling around a heavyweight rhythm section, soulful voices and songs given enough space to catch fire.

Someone once described McHale's Permanent Brew as "pretty much the perfect rock & roll band." After nearly a decade of gigs, festivals and three albums, they're certainly making an increasingly convincing case for the enduring power of five musicians standing in a room and playing the bloody thing for real.

McHALE'S PERMANENT BREW — ONE NIGHT SPECIAL

This one should be LOUD, intimate and gloriously old-school.