Website: http://www.revhammer.com/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/revhammeronline

UK folk songwriter Rev Hammer regards his music not so much as a passport to fame and fortune but as a ticket to ride. He learned to play guitar and sing at the same time and wisely thought busking was the best way to get to a standard where he could play publicly. Rev spent 18 months busking in the streets before he dared stand on a stage.

In 1986, Rev Hammer helped found The Red Sky Coven together with the poet Joolz and Justin Sullivan. The show, which mixes acoustic songs, poetry, humour and story-telling in the best traditions of the travelling bard, continues to sell out within the UK and Europe.

In 1991, Rev released Industrial Sound & Magic, his debut album, on Cooking Vinyl. The follow up album, Bishop Of Buffalo, mixed acoustic ballads with harder, electric songs. In 1995, two songs written by Rev featured on top-selling albums: Maid Of The River was featured on The Levellers' Zeitgeist lp, and Searchlights was included on the record breaking Help album, which raised money for war victims in Croatia and Bosnia.

The same year, Rev started work on the Freeborn John lp, an ambitious concept album about John Lilburne, England's first radical and an unsung hero of the English Civil War. Soon after completing the album, in 1996, he recorded the acoustic Green Fool Recordings album in five days. The Freeborn John show was performed to standing ovations on all three nights of the 2005 Beautiful Days Festival and toured the UK in 2008. Rev's latest record, Spitting Feathers, was released in 2004.