"The Bash Band has become one of the most popular party bands on the circuit. Bash Band plays all the old favourites from the Seventies onwards with a bit of rock'n'roll thrown in for good measure"

- Tatler

"The wedding was a small but wildly joyous affair, in the River Cafe. The minute everybody came in, the Bash Band started playing, everybody began to dance, the three little girls started singing (daughters of the groom) ..... it was truly delightful, a happy thing to see"

- Telegraph Magazine

The Bash Band are:
Matt Button - Drums
Chris Cawte - Lead guitar and vocals
Jez Coad - Official deputy lead guitar and vocals
Tim Hamilton - Keyboards and vocals
Freddie Hospedales - Bass guitar and vocals
Max - Vocals
Hugh McManners - Guitar and vocals
William McManners - Trombone

Matt's a versatile and fluid drummer and has been playing for more years than he cares to remember. His drumming CV spans from sedate jazz ensembles through to punk thrash freakouts. He has played all sorts of different places and many venues: from back gardens, village halls, working men's clubs through to all of London's legendary music venues. His musical aim is simple: to get people moving, make them happy and let them feel the fun and the joy of the music. By day he is Direct Marketing Manager for Lexus. By night, he is one half of Mongo Shakers, a studio-based band occuping the outer reaches of funk and rock.

Chris is also the "Jimmy Page" in Led Zepplin tribute band Letz Zep, and lead guitarist for the Gutter Brothers, and the Genesis tribute band G2. Chris' day job is as a record producer, mastering and composing, but he is also a well-known session guitarist, able to play in all genres, with an encyclopoedic memory for songs, enabling the Bash Band to do most audience requests with only the briefest of pauses in which to determine the key, and who knows some words.

Jez Coad is a record producer and musician, and apart from playing time-warp maniac guitar for the BashBand, has played and toured with his own band The Surfing Brides. Jez produced the album Black & White 050505 by the Scottish rock group Simple Minds, which was released in September 2005, working with Bob Clearmountain mixing the album, and also writing and arranging throughout the album. Jez also produced the Andrew Strong (Commitments) album Gypsy's Kiss, and tracks in various films such as Austin Powers’ The Match, and Staggered (with Martin Clunes) in which Jez appears with The Surfing Brides. Jez has worked extensively with another BashBand guitarist Chris Cawte, and his band the Gutter Brothers, producing Isometric Boogie, Gone to the Dogs, The Failsafe, and Already Dead. Jez and Chris also worked together on the soundtrack for the Christmas episode of Only Fools and Horses and Miami Twice - for the BBC. Jez also produced the iconic initial Surfing Brides album Sparky's Dinner for I.R.S. Records, and the new Gutter Brother’s (2007) album.

Tim Hamilton was described by his tutor at the Kent University Faculty of Music as a "troubadour". A former Lay Clerk in Canterbruy Cathedral Choir, Tim is now an opera singer, and a senior lecturer in Music at Kent University - hence the alitterative nickname "Professor Pop". Tim is also a splendid soul and pop singer, and plays keyboards with all the style and diversity needed in a band which covers most musical genres. His rotating Hammond for example sounds uncannily like Booker T Jones.

Freddie Hosepdales travels the world applying his funky style of bass playing to a variety of bands. As a session musician has worked for the BBC and a number of successful recording artists. For a “day job” Freddie is Head of Brand Communications at KPMG. At night, in diverse places like Los Angeles and Berlin, he breaks out the bass guitar; one is never quite sure whether he's a musucian travelling under false pretences, or a plutocrat with an interesting sideline. He and Matt have worked together on many recordings - usually on the severely funky side, and come highly recomended to those wanting real humans and a slippery beat.

Max is a writer of well-crafted pop music, who sings in a very wide variety of differeny genres, from raunchy rock, to glitzy pop and smooth cabaret. During the day, she runs her own talent agency "Spotlight", representing bands and artists in the south-east of England.

After a misspent youth playing pop music in palais de dance, school assembly halls and working men's clubs, Hugh McManners became bass guitarist for seventies prog rock bands "Fat Abbott" (sic) and "Medusa". He has never quite recovered from an epic gig supporting "The Pretty Things". Then after a lost weekend supporting Black Sabbath at Exeter University, Hugh straightened out for a while as an Army officer, then became an author, broadcaster and journalist (www.hughmcmanners.com). He spends far too much time sitting in front of a laptop processing words, which turn into books and all manner of worthy entertainment and information. Hugh's aim is to determine the type of music each audience wants to hear, then get them dancing. Music is not just for listening, but should encourage the participation of everybody – which is what Hugh is looking to achieve at Bash Band gigs. He is developing an R&B band, and is involved in the thriving Oxford songwriting/performing scene.

Will McManners enters the BashBand frontline playing trombone, even though he has already featured on several previous occasions as a guest drummer, violinist, backing vocalist and sound engineer. Already an all-round musician of considerable accomplishment, Will took up trombone six months before our St Edmund Hall 1950’s gig, as he was bored with the desperate workload of playing violin in his school symphony orchestra – the Purcell Music School in Bushey, Herts. Trombones always play decisively, usually with the best tunes and inevitably with emphasis and precision, which matches Will's personality. As well as being a violin soloist and trombonist, Will is also an accomplished drummer – and features in the somewhat obviously named three-piece Hugh McManners Band, and when trombones are not required in the line-up, seems set to become the BashBand’s deputising drummer – subject to Matt’s approval.