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To book the band or for more details, please e-mail Tina Smith

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The Sussex Pistols band with Bing, Tina and Vic have played together since the early 1990s, bringing together their experience of all kinds of folk, dance and related musics to barn dances. There has been very few changes in their line-up since then, When their bass player, Ian Kearey, took four years out and they were fortunate to get Dave Levett to replace him and at the same time to gain a fiddle player, Ben Paley. Throughout most of their existence, the band was graced by the wonderful musical presence of the late Naomi Russell and this will always be sorely missed. Ian is now playing in the band again and will play either bass guitar, mandolin, slide guitar or tiple. Dave plays either bass, banjo or mandolin.
Ian Kearey was founder member and bass and sometime guitar player for The Oyster Band (as they were then known), appearing on their albums until 'Wide Blue Yonder'. He has worked as producer with Michelle Shocked and Sheffield band Boot Fare, while recording and playing live with, among others, John Fahey, Texas fiddler Erik Hokkanen, Billy Bragg and Leon Rosselson, Sandra Kerr, Ivor Cutler, Anne Lister and singer/songwriters Heidi Berry, Pete Astor and Caroline Trettine - not to mention street-corner busking in LA with Ry Cooder. As well as the Sussex Pistols, he also plays for country dancing with Used Notes alongside Dan Quinn, Chris Taylor and Jim Younger. He has been a constant on albums by Bristol poetry/rock legends The Blue Aeroplanes, and in 1987 released a guitar/vocal album, 'Siamese Boyfriends' with Aeroplanes leader Gerard Langley, which was described in the Melody Maker as 'joining up the dots between Martin Carthy and Ry Cooder - brilliantly'. A solo album, 'Preaching to the Convertible', received very good reviews on its release in 2001, and a new album of instrumentals is in production. Latest project is a piece for a concept album of a James Joyce set of poems.
Ian's repertoire includes traditional and self-penned guitar tunes, trad songs from the USA and UK, plus songs by himself and other people that he just feels like doing...

Dave Levett has worked with a great variety of country and folk rock, blues and rock bands over the years. As well as this band, he currently plays with a glam-rock band! He is a real multi-instrumentalist but with the Sussex Pistols, he is mainly heard playing bass guitar, although he also plays banjo, melodeon and whistle. He has had a long association with barn dance bands and has played with The Catsfield Steamers, Chequered Roots, Banjax and Maxwell's Demon.

Ben Paley has been playing the traditional music of Sweden, Ireland and the USA (as well as blues, jazz and rock of various kinds) since he was six, on the stages, screens and street corners of two continents. His book of Swedish traditional tunes is one of the classics of that music. As a fully professional musician, he has toured and recorded extensively with his famed father Tom, both as a duo and with Joe Locker as the New Deal String Band, the leading Old Timey band in Europe. He was a member of the prominent country/rock band, The Wild Turkey Brothers. In that band, he played alongside the guitarist, Tab Hunter, whom he still plays with regularly as a duo. He has been in considerable demand as a session musician and he has worked with Chris Wood, the Levellers, the Sawdoctors, Mandragora and Murray Lachlan Young, He has been called "The finest folk fiddler of his generation" by fROOTS magazine.

Bing Lyle is the powerhouse of the band with his mighty accordion playing. He started his musical career as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral, which gave him a lasting love of modal music. His classical training studies derailed by exposure to Punk Rock and traditional music, he took up the accordion and busked for five years round Europe. Bing was musical director of the Brighton community arts organisation Same Sky from 1989-96 since when he has been working with all Ireland concertina champion Mandy Murray, singer-songwriter Pete Morton, singer and storyteller Pete Castle. He is a regular tutor for the folk arts project Trads and Herbie Flowers' Rockshop. In 1998 he joined the Travelling Light Theatre Company's production of Tir na n'og. touring the UK, Ireland, Canada and the USA. Although he plays accordion, piano, flute and guitar, Bing is essentially a singer and composer; his original songs and tunes make up a large part of the Lyle/Paley repertoire.

Tina Smith plays English concertina. She has been involved with folk music for over 30 years, both as a musician and an organiser. She was co-resident and organiser at two London folk clubs in the mid-sixties and at clubs in Brighton, Isfield and Lewes from 1968 onwards. She was one of the organisers of the popular Lewes Folk Days and has been involved in many other Sussex folk events both as performer and organiser. She was one of the residents at the Coppersongs folk club in Peacehaven. Up until 1975 she was one of the founding presenters of the BBC Radio Brighton folk music programme, "Minstrels Gallery".
She has played in several bands, including The Creepy Crawley Concertina Combo, The Dodgy Button Band, The Lewes Band and Four Piece Suite. She is one of the resident performers at the Royal Oak Folk evenings in Lewes.

Vic Smith plays guitar and mandolo and is the band's caller. He has been involved in folk music activities for more than 30 years as singer, folk dance band musician and caller, club, festival and event organiser, broadcaster, journalist, critic and writer and magazine editor Along with Tina, he has been running folk clubs in Woolwich, Blackheath, Brighton, Isfield and Lewes. The current very successful venture at the Royal Oak has been running since 1992.
Again with Tina, he has played and called with a number of successful folk dance bands.
Along with Jim Marshall, he organises and edits "The Sussex Folk Diary" and has been doing so for over 30 years. Again in partnership with Jim, he was presenter/producer of "Minstrels Gallery" the weekly local radio programme which catered for folk music enthusiasts in the south of England for 25 years. He writes for a range of folk and traditional music publications including "Musical Traditions" and "Folk Roots".

The band has played in every kind of venue,- from windswept fields and dusty barns, to zoos, faded hydro hotels and elaborate marquees- and for every occasion, including birthday and wedding parties, PTA and works outings, street parties and charity fund-raising events. They have also played at the Crawley and Tenterden folk festivals and the Brighton Fringe festival.
As caller, Vic can get anyone up to dance, and the band's infectious rhythms and lively attitude guarantee a successful occasion. The band owns its own PA system.