Our final headline act of 2025 combines the talents of singer-songwriter Pip Collings and TwickFolk's longest-serving volunteer Paul Vile. Pip and Paul have been playing their urban folk together for more 30 years and have released the albums Portraits and Landscapes (2000) and Diary (2005).
Pip (vocals, guitar) began singing in folk clubs when she moved to London from her Suffolk home in the late 1980's. She sang in a duo with Robb Johnson for six years in the early 1990's and in the Johnson Collings Band. After that, she started writing her own material and played with bands including The Last Drop (British folk and Americana), Kickback Plus (14-piece Americana band) and Something Going On (four-part harmony). She is currently working with pianist Adam Thompson.
Paul (vocals, guitar, mandolin) hails from Newcastle upon Tyne and moved south in the 1980's, where he formed the band Staying up Late with Pip Collings and Andy Peters, releasing two albums. He has been a member of The Manana Brothers and Woodsmoke and is a member of rock band ClogIron. He released the album The Girl Always Wins in 2018 with John Prosser. A regular at TwickFolk since 1988, Paul has been promoter, treasurer and MC and is nowadays regularly found running the sound desk.
John Mannel (vocals, guitar, flute, harmonica) and Mark Worledge (vocals, guitar) formed Back of a Length in 2021 after meeting as members of a short-lived Celtic folk-rock band. Enjoying the band's brief but wide range of musical experimentation, they committed to continuing to work together to make music that combines traditional folk songs and tunes from the British Isles and elsewhere, contemporary interpretations of songs from the last 60 years and original songs written by Mark.
In choosing the duo’s perhaps mystifying name, John and Mark drew on their love of cricket. “Back of a length” is the description applied to a bouncier-than-usual delivery that fizzes up unexpectedly around the batter’s ears – in a way that mirrors the duo's ambition to provide audiences with (hopefully pleasant!) musical surprises. Based in Surrey, Back of a Length have played extensively in folk clubs and pubs in Surrey and south London. First album Green and Pleasant Land was recorded in 2024 and is available on CD.
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