Home Service

Home Service
Home Service at the 2011 Cropredy Festival
Background information
Origin	England
Genres	Folk, electric folk, folk rock
Years active	1980–1987; 1991; 2011
Associated acts	Albion Band
Website	http://www.homeserviceband.co.uk/
Members	John Tams Graeme Taylor Jon Davie Andy Findon Steve King Michael Gregory Paul Archibald Roger Williams
Past members	Bill Caddick Howard Evans Malcolm Bennet Colin Rae

Home Service is a British folk rock group, formed in late 1980 from a nucleus of musicians who had been playing in Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band. Their career is generally agreed to have peaked with the album Alright Jack, which is usually considered one of the finest products of the electric folk genre and has been highly influential on later work. Several members of the band, including most obviously John Tams, have gone on to very successful solo careers and to take part in other significant projects. In 2016 John Kirkpatrick replaced John Tams as main singer in Home Service, and will feature as such on their next album.

Home Service was formed out of members of the Albion Band who had participated in what is often said to be the group's most successful album in its long history, Rise Up Like the Sun (1978). Their establishment was partly out of the confusion caused by line-up changes when the Albion Band were playing as, in effect, a house band in Bill Bryden's National Theatre productions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Lark Rise to Candleford. Members of the group took part in an adaptation of Michael Herr's Dispatches without band leader Ashley Hutchings. In late 1980 eight members began to rehearse together in Southwark, London and had soon splintered off from the parent band. The original line-up was: John Tams (vocals, melodeon), Bill Caddick (vocals, guitar, dobro), Graeme Taylor (vocals, guitar), Michael Gregory (drums), Roger Williams (trombone, tuba), Howard Evans (trumpet), Colin Rae (trumpet) and Malcolm Bennett (bass). The large group was somewhat unwieldy and complicated by other projects, including the fact that both Evans and Williams were also members of Brass Monkey. Rae soon left and the remaining members initially chose the name 'The First Eleven' and then switched to Home Service, which had both associations of Britishness/Englishness and of a bygone world in the defunct BBC Home Service radio station.