BRITISH folk songwriter Beans on Toast will be back out on the road this March and has a Devon venue set firmly in his sights.

The alto ego of Jay McAllister, he rose to rose to prominence out of the UK folk scene in 2005 when he started performing as Beans On Toast in London in 2005, primarily at the Holloway Road pub Nambucca, where he lived and worked at the time.

Beans On Toast has performed at the Glastonbury Festival every year since 2007. He supported Kate Nash at London's Hammersmith Apollo in 2008, before releasing his debut 50-track double album Standing On A Chair in 2009.

Touring in support of his critically acclaimed latest work Wild Goose Chasers, Beans and his long time musical partner Matt Millership will be playing sixteen headline shows in total.

With support across the tour from William Crighton, the run of dates kicks off at Liverpool’s The Cavern Club on March 12 before heading to Plymouth’s The Junction. on March 23.

“I will be playing some of the country's finest independent venues,” said Beans. “It's my annual trip and I've been touring these venues for many years now. Support comes from William Crighton, the Australian folk powerhouse. I'm currently in Australia supporting him, and he'll be supporting me in the UK in a musical friendship.”

While Beans will be dipping into his vast catalogue of classics, the shows will also pose an unmissable opportunity to hear music from his refreshing new album, Wild Goose Chasers.

Featuring former singles “Myths & Legends” and “Why?”, Beans has also just released a new video for the stand-out track “Faith In The Moon” in anticipation of the tour.

Released at the end of last year, ‘Wild Goose Chasers’ cemented Beans’ reputation as an arch songwriter for our times, and one unafraid to push himself into adventurous new stratospheres. Receiving a wave of positive reviews in the media, RNR Magazine praised the album as “warm, thoughtful, and human” (4*), whilst NARC hailed its “lyrics that dig deep into the meaning of life and our purpose on Earth” (4*). Louder Than War championed “the record’s “undeniable uplifting charm”, while Devolution Magazine summarised the record neatly as “ethereal, beautifully enigmatic and distinct”. You can stream ‘Wild Goose Chasers’ in full now, here.

A collection of newfangled pagan hymns to coincide with the end of truth, ‘Wild Goose Chasers’ is a suite of sparsely-arranged, supernaturally-shaded songs unlike anything Beans has made before.

“These songs are about trading modern society for a wilder, more feral existence. Songs that dig deep into the meaning of life and our purpose on Earth,” continued Beans.

“They provide an exit strategy from a boring dystopia by gambling the flood for a fairy tale. This might sound pompous, but such is life, and such is the wild goose chase.”

Tickets for the gig at The Junction can be booked at the website https://beansontoastmusic.com.