Hector Gannet Bring The Great Shakedown to The Glasshouse in Gateshead

For Hector Gannet, North Shields has never been simply somewhere to come from. Its coastline, shipyards and stories have threaded through Aaron Duff’s songwriting from the beginning. On Friday 27 November, the band bring that sense of place across the Tyne to Sage Two at The Glasshouse, performing their third album The Great Shakedown in full.

Released on 23 October 2026 through Guga Records, the record broadens the band’s folk-rock sound with stirring brass, choir and church bells recorded at the 17th-century Christ Church in North Shields. It deals in community, loss and the things people struggle to say aloud. Hearing the whole album performed in a room like Sage Two should give those ideas a different kind of weight.

Hector Gannet bring The Great Shakedown to Gateshead

Aaron Duff’s songs have long drawn on the area’s industrial and maritime past without treating it as a museum piece. Hector Gannet take their name from a fishing vessel on which Duff’s grandfather served, and both Big Harcar (2020) and The Land Belongs To Us (2023) explored the relationship between people and place.

The Great Shakedown pushes further. North Shields-based US musician Jason Holcomb arranged the brass, which cuts through the Dexys-like drive of the title track, relaxes into the jazz-inflected ‘Big White Telephone’ and lifts singles ‘Seven Signs’ and ‘The Mother Tongue’. The latter explores stoicism and mortality, while the closing ‘No Money No Time (The Great Reprise)’ draws the album’s many strands towards a communal ending.

There is considerable local history woven into the recordings themselves. The choir and bells were captured at Christ Church, with the bell melody plotted by the church’s Ringing Master. The album was mixed by Grammy-winning Eduardo De La Paz and mastered at Abbey Road Studios. Those details make the Glasshouse performance more than a standard stop on a tour: it is a chance to hear a record rooted in North Shields performed in full just across the river.

Pete Williams and Andy Wellings join the bill

The evening also features Pete Williams, a founding member of Dexys Midnight Runners, alongside guitarist Andy Wellings. Williams will draw on songs and stories from his career and three solo albums in a two-person performance. It is an apt pairing, given the Dexys echoes heard in Hector Gannet’s new brass arrangements.

The Glasshouse has billed the show as part of its Made In The North East and Innovators programmes. With the record only just released, this is an early opportunity to hear its full shape on stage rather than a handful of new songs between older favourites.

Hector Gannet at The Glasshouse: tickets and details

Date: Friday 27 November 2026
Venue: Sage Two (Club Layout), The Glasshouse, Gateshead
Time: 8pm (individual stage times to be announced)
Special guests: Pete Williams & Andy Wellings
Tickets: £24.50–£27.30; limited availability at the time of writing

Tickets and further details are available through The Glasshouse.

For more about the record, read SoundBite North East’s coverage of The Great Shakedown.