2025 is an incredibly special year for Please Please You. It marks the 20th anniversary for the York-based live music promoter. On the 16th of July 2005, Joe Coates – the man who is Please Please You – put on his very first live music event. That gig took place at The Basement, downstairs in York’s City Screen cinema, and featured three local acts, Boss Caine, Ambulance, and Dallas Boner.
Since then, Please Please You has put on hundreds of shows, co-ordinating alternative musical entertainment across Yorkshire, Manchester, and beyond, often in collaboration with other similarly innovative northern promoters such as Brudenell Social Club, Brudenell Presents, and Hey Manchester!
Over the past two decades Please Please You has brought immeasurable happiness and joy to thousands of people in small grassroots venues by promoting loads of cracking gigs ranging from Angel Olsen to Acid Mothers Temple, Big Thief to Bill Ryder-Jones, Shonen Knife to She Drew The Gun, and Yard Act to some of York’s finest emerging talent. Many of these artists would go on to play on much larger stages.
And by way of celebrating its 20th anniversary, Please Please You has already begun putting together what promises to be yet another brilliant programme of gigs for 2025. Here we look at some of the early highlights that will be coming our way.
Come the 18th of January the PPY gig year begins when Simon Joyner, the fabulous singer-songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska comes to rise @ bluebird in Acomb, York.
Former Wild Beasts’ singer Hayden Thorpe and The Propellor Ensemble arrive at the NCEM in York on the 29th of January to perform his third solo album, Ness, a record made in collaboration with the best-selling nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Support on the night comes from Brighton-based, Scottish-Thai songwriter Helen Ganya.
The following month the PPY schedule really starts to gather some serious momentum when there are a number of superb shows coming in very quick succession from the sublime American singer-songwriter and guitarist Ryley Walker (17th February at The Cluny, Newcastle), the Welsh language indie band Adwaith (20th February at Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds), punk/noise/pop group Man/Woman/Chainsaw (22nd February at The Crescent, York), the nine-piece experimental folk outfit Shovel Dance Collective ( 23rd February at The Crescent, York), and the English folk singer Katherine Priddy (26th February at Pocklington Arts Centre).
And March is similarly jam-packed with some seriously good gigs. Northern Irish singer-songwriter Joshua Burnside gets the ball rolling at The Hyde Park Book Club on the 8th whilst post-punk, performance, and art all conjoin when Snapped Ankles return to The Crescent on the 12th of the month. Tough decisions will then have to be made as Nadia Reid the singer-songwriter and guitarist originally from Port Chalmers, New Zealand is also playing that night. Her show is at the famous Brudenell Social Club in Leeds.
Another unavoidable clash occurs on the 27th, when the Portland-based singer-songwriter Laura Veirs appears at The Crescent whilst that great Oregon city is also represented the very same evening by The Delines when the country-soul specialists play at the historic City Varieties in Leeds.
And all of this is before we even get to April, May, and beyond when some more great gigs all lie in wait, including Jane Weaver (The Crescent, 2nd April), Lambrini Girls (The Crescent, 7th April), Throwing Muses (Brudenell Social Club, 18th May; Manchester Academy 2, 24th May), and King Creosote (The Crescent, 5th June).
Further information on all of these gigs and more besides can be found at Please Please You
And here is a collage of photos from some of Please Please You’s best shows of the past 20 years
Photo collage: Simon Godley
