Category: Band News

Hire a Telford Wedding Band for your Shropshire wedding venue and have Shropshire’s premier party & function band ‘Punch The Air‘ handle all your live entertainment and DJ sets. Book a night of high energy music and an exciting stage show in the Shrops area with us cuz we’re ready to rock your wedding. Epic party classics hits from Queen, Oasis, The Beatles, Bryan Adams, George Ezra, The Human League, Blink 182 and more. No nonsense fast set up and sound-checks (As fast as walking across Iron Bridge in Ironbridge…well almost) . All sound and lighting equipment included in the price. And a simple booking process (a simple as walking up The Wrekin) make us the obvious choice for your TF1, TF2, TF3, TF4, TF5, TF6, TF7, TF8 wedding. Contact band leader Andy Starkey for price and availability. 

A Telford Wedding Band with everything you’ll ever need included in the fee.

Punch The Air live band will rock & pop your wedding around Shropshire including Telford, Shrewsbury, Oswestry, Bridgnorth, Newport, Ludlow, Market Drayton, Whitchurch, Shifnal, Church Stretton and more. Above image is by a Telford, Shropshire based female photographer.

Female singer wedding band options.

You don’t need to hire a separate DJ when you book our wedding band. We’ll spin you up classics at no extra cost. You can also hire a band with a female singer and increase us to a four piece mixed vocal party band. We’ll take care of announcing the cutting of your cake and make sure you’re up on the dancefloor for your 1st dance as man and wife. We won’t play any long winded drum solos or extended guitar solos as we want you to spend your time together WITH the band. Becoming one with us. An extension of us and the music we play for you on your wedding day. Wonderful female vocals by Florence + The Machine, Alanis Morissette, Tiffany, Amy Winehouse and more.  

Some of our favourite Telford wedding venues include:

• Mercure Telford Centre Hotel.
• The Shropshire Golf Centre.
• Haughton Hall Hotel & Leisure Club
• and more.

Our Shrops wedding band are all about showing you what we can do live. NOT in a sterile studio set up. Thats why pretty much all of our videos are 100% live filmed at weddings and parties. Watch clients rock out to ‘Punch The Air‘ in the totally live YouTube sensation video below. If you ever thumb through Guitarist Magazine you might find some super peachy pix of us in there too. 

Shrops function band

Find out everything we get up to on a regular basis by visiting our website social media page. Interact and communicate with us over there if you wish. Maybe catch our public performances at Alberts Shed, Alberts Loft or Alberts Pour House. You’ll find it’s not hard to handle our style of indie rock covers and chart pop. If you know of a guitarist of the year more capable of handling crowds of all sizes then us do let us know.  Or contact for further info to book a Telford wedding band. 

What Does a “Live Band” Experience Actually Feel Like? When you book Punch The Air, you aren’t just hiring musicians; you’re securing a high-octane live production that transforms a standard room into a festival-level event. Unlike “backing track” performers, every note you hear from us is 100% live—raw, energetic, and tailored to the room’s atmosphere in real-time.

The “Live” Difference:

• Real Interaction: We don’t just stand behind microphones. We engage with your guests, reading the dance floor to decide exactly when to transition from a classic indie floor-filler to a modern chart-topper.

• Pro-Grade Live Audio: We use a high-end digital sound system and a state-of-the-art electronic drum kit. This allows us to deliver that “big venue” punchy sound even in smaller venues with strict sound limiters.

• Non-Stop Energy: Our live sets are designed to be “all killer, no filler.” We specialise in the indie-rock sound that gets people off their seats and keeps them there until the very last chord.

Book a live band for an event

Being a professional function band ‘Punch The Air‘ can adjust our set list repertoire on the spot to make sure guests stay on the dance-floor the whole night long. Giving dancers more of the type of music they clearly want to listen to. As opposed to changing genres just for themselves. We are always thinking about what you want. It’s never about what’s best for us, it’s always about what’s best for you. Shouldn’t all party bands be like this?

‘Punch The Air‘ live band perform a superb mix of indie rock covers and also massive chart hits from modern day, through the early 2000s, into the 90’s. Also from the 80’s, 70’s, 60s and 1950’s. All your guests will already know and love all of the live music in our repertoire. These are tried and tested songs we’ve been performing live for many years now (Having formed in 2013). And with over 100 positive reviews under our belts you can be assured we are the right choice for your special event. We know when to slow it down a little and when to ramp it back up again for maximum effect. Our live function band will give you the best high energy performance around. All the while smiling back at you and your guests putting in 100% effort throughout the event. Do you like Coldplay, The Killers, Amy Winehouse and The Beatles? Then we’re the live act for you. 

Hire musicians 

Book a live wedding band for your wedding reception. Or hire live musicians for your party, birthday party, corporate event or charity fundraiser.  Contact ‘Punch The Air’ indie rock cover band and have our professional live band take care of all your entertainment. 

The term festival band is quite the generic pairing of words that don’t actually mean one thing specifically. It could mean ANY band of ANY genre that performs live on a stage to ANY numbers of an audience. But to us it means something a lot different. By FESTIVAL BAND we mean a band that can whip a very large crowd up into a screaming frenzy. A band that play the right type of music for the masses attending. Huge singalong hits by classic chart pop music by artists who have stood the tests of time. Big chanty chorus’s and loud stomping tunes. Plus tonnes of audience participation. This is exactly what it’s like when you hire a festival band called ‘Punch The Air‘. So get in touch with band leader Andrew Starkey ASAP to check on price and delivery. 

Book a festival band

Our festival band started way back in 2013 and have continually upped the game of what you should expect from a professional band. We love performing at festivals and know how to handle audiences of any size small of large. We’ll play big singalong songs by artists like The Killers, The Beatles, Amy Winehouse, Blink 182, Coldplay, Oasis and more. We’ll perform something for absolutely everyone there including a great array of indie rock cover band music. All punters will know every single song we’ll play live. During our on stage performances we’ll sometimes stop playing completely and get the whole crowd to sing the song back to us. We really can engage with the audience this well. Also we’ll make sure we get lots of photos and video to share with you. When you hire a band for a festival make sure you hire Punch The Air. 

Punch The Air headlining The Big Gig at Paulton Rovers, Bristol.  Festival goers had sent Andy over their phone footage so he combined it into one video.

Outdoor or indoors.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning an indoor festival or an outdoor festival. We’re the ideal function band for your event.  Sound checking at festival performances is not a problem for us. All we need is to line check instruments just before our stage time. We just need to make sure we can hear our guitars, drums and vocals well enough. Then we’ll then be off playing live in a matter of minutes. This can help to keep the live music running nearly continuously without any breaks or down time. If you need us to fully sound check prior to guests arriving then thats not an issue either. Contact to hire a live band for a carnival, gala, fete or fair.

Are you hosting a wedding reception on a farm? Or are you a farmer or a son or daughter of a farmer looking to hire a farm wedding band? Then ‘Punch The Air‘ are the live wedding entertainment professionals you’ve been searching for. We have performed on many, many farms since our inception way back in 2013. We absolutely love a good farm style wedding as they are always so much more relaxed than those hosted in hotels and manors. We’ll perform massive singalong dance-along songs by artists like Coldplay, The Killers, Kings Of Leon, Blink 182, Oasis, Fountains Of Wayne, Wheatus and more for you and your other half. Then for your guests we’ll play tunes from The Beatles, Amy Winehouse, Bryan Adams, Neil Diamond, Elvis and more. You’ve got the best of both worlds with us handling your live entertainment. Contact band leader Andy Starkey now for price and availability for your farmers wedding. 

Hire a Farm Wedding Band

Whether you have a barn for us to perform live in or a marquee, tipi or tent we’ll make sure all your guests are up dancing all night long to our indie rock classics and pop tunes from old to new. Why not decorate your countryside wedding venue with rustic features or go super modern and contemporary in your farmhouse or cottage. Forget about agriculture, crops, mucking out and milking for a day and enjoy your wedding day in style on your home farmyard. We’ll bring along everything needed audio wise and we’ll even throw in free tablet DJ services too. That’s quality Yamaha speakers and subwoofer, LED lighting for us and you too. You don’t need to think about anything else sound or lighting wise when you book a professional wedding band like Punch The Air. 

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First Dance

Check out our live video above at Katie & Stuarts farm wedding. They chose You’ve Got The Love by Florence + The Machine as their first dance. As this classic tune is part of our repertoire we performed it live for them. Whether you’re a young farmer or an older farmer you’ll love our high energy live performances.

Having a wedding on a farm barn

Hosting a wedding on a farm means you’ll always have plenty of space for guests. Also room outdoors for old-school party games, gin horse boxes, street food vendors and much more.

What’s also great is that you can chose to work to your own relaxed schedule. As opposed to having to work to a hotels strict set of timings. You’ll find you’ll have a more much relaxed wedding on a farmyard. Also it means we can crank the volume up of our PA a touch louder so you have more of a festival style wedding. 

Indie rock cover band ‘Punch The Air‘ bass player (And lead singer) Andrew Starkey is a massive fan of The Smiths. Andy Rourke is one of Andy’s favourite bass players ever and one of the reasons Andrew Starkey picked up the bass guitar and plays a Fender Precision. Along with Morrissey, Johnny Marr and Mike Joyce, The Smiths were a huge influence on Andy growing up. So Andrew decided to help others out who want a bass guitar lesson Barbarism Begins At Home to learn a bit of the funkiness of Mr Rourke and so created this instructional video. To book an indie rock cover band contact Andy for price and availability. 

Bass Guitar Lesson Barbarism Begins At Home (The Smiths)

You can download & print out the bass tab to Barbarism Begins At Home to make it easier to play along to the above video.

Right click on each of the below and select ‘Save Link As’ to download the bass mp3 to Bass Guitar Lesson Barbarism Begins At Home to practice against. Each mp3 is repeated multiple times to save you rewinding.

1st – 20% Slower
2nd – 15% Slower
3rd – 10% Slower
4th – 5% Slower
5th – Normal Speed

How to get better at playing this bass line.

This is quite a tricky bass guitar line to master and it’s not one for complete novices. That said though, if you keep at it, start very slowly and over time build it up. You will nail it eventually. It’s as much about building up muscle memory on your bass guitar as much as anything else. Play it multiple times a day, then play it without looking over at your hands at all. When you’re not overly thinking about it anymore, that’s when you know you’ve got it licked. Do you know what bass guitar Andy Rourke from The Smiths is playing in the image below?

In comparison check out the video below of what this song would have sounded like if Andy had just played root notes throughout. What a different vibe and VERY boring eh?…..yawn

Andy Starkey is also available to give bass guitar lessons in and around the Lichfield, Staffordshire area. Find out more about what Andy can teach you on the Lichfield Bass Guitar Teacher page. Andy works on his own unique way of teaching which doesn’t involve learning notes or theory. It’s just about working out how to play your favourite bass lines and enjoying yourself. What could be a better way of learning how to play an instrument than from someone who performs live for a living? Are you a big fan of Andy The Smiths too?