Nick and Dan

Nick Burbridge – www.burbridgearts.org – is an Anglo-Irish songwriter and musician, poet, playwright, novelist, journalist, short story writer.

 As a singer/songwriter, he made seven albums with his band McDermott’s Two Hours –The Enemy Within, Live At Ferneham Hall, World Turned Upside Down, Claws And Wings, Disorder, Goodbye to the Madhouse, and Anticlockwise – recorded in collaboration with The Levellers, who also covered his song ‘Dirty Davey’ on their eponymous number one-selling album, and feature him on their live DVD, Chaos Theory. An acoustic album with Tim Cotterell, Gathered, won him the Spiral Earth Best Songwriter Award, 2013, while another acoustic recording, Resolved, was released to uniformly positive reviews. A new band album, Besieged, (McDermott’s Two Hours vs Levellers vs Oysterband) came out in 2018 to equal critical acclaim. Another of these collective albums is planned. Nick has performed at major festivals, and all other kinds of venue, although live work is rare these days.

He has written four collections of poetry: On Call (Envoi Poets), All Kinds Of Disorder and The Unicycle Set (Waterloo Press); while poems have regularly appeared in major periodicals from Ambit to Stand. His most recent collection, Undercover Work, is due to be published by The Wild Geese Press in early Spring 2021, who also plan a Collected Lyrics for the following year.

His plays include Dirty Tricks (Soho Theatre Company), Vermin (Finborough), Cock Robin (Verity Bargate Award Runner-up/Brighton Festival), Scrap (South East Arts commission/Regional Tour), and double bills Neck/Cutting Room (Bright Red Theatre) and Acts Of Violence.  For many years he ran his own fringe company, Tommy McDermott’s Theatre. BBC Radio Drama productions feature Grosse Fugue (Monday Play), Rites Of Passage (Afternoon Play), and several short stories.

As a novelist, he had Operation Emerald (Pluto) published under the pseudonym Dominic McCartan. He also collaborated with Captain Fred Holroyd on War Without Honour (Harrap/Medium), a non-fiction work launched at the House of Commons.His short stories have been printed in numerous literary magazines, and Arts Council anthologies. He has worked also as a PhD student, busker, carer, and voluntary worker in infant and primary schools.

Violin player with the amazing Ferocious Dog, Dan has performed at some of the largest, independent music venues. His talents are not just with the violin as he has written and /co-written many of the Ferocious Dog hits.

He has also sung lead vocals on some of the songs including the amazing A&B; a haunting tale of the Holocaust.

Dan had a plan to manage Ferocious Dog around 9 years ago to take them from being a pub cover band to where they are today. As it stands they’ve just signed their first record deal with Graphite Records and will release their 5th studio album “The Hope” in October 2021.