Spearmint

The line-up is unchanged since 1995: Shirley Lee (singing, guitar, main song-writer), James Parsons (guitar, bass), Simon Calnan (singing, keyboards) and Ronan Larvor (drums). We’ve been helped musically at various times by Dickon Edwards, Andy Lewis, Rhodri Marsden and Martin Talbot, our original bassist, who left after five gigs. Following Martin’s death, our debut album ‘A Week Away’, and its 10th anniversary re-issue in 2009, were dedicated to his memory. Even now we’re working on a song that continues the memory – we love you Martin. We’ve worked together continuously since we formed. There were a couple of slower periods: when Jim worked on an album with his side-project Telley in 2009, and when Shirley made a solo double-album in 2011. Even then, we continued to work on Spearmint songs. We’ve made nine records that we consider to be proper albums, including the ‘Shirley Lee’ album from 2009, which was very much a Spearmint record. We decided at the start, to release all our records on our own hitBACK label and this has given us independence and control and enabled us to focus purely on the music. Spearmint are currently working on our tenth album proper, and we’re looking forward to playing live again soon too!