THE NEW DEAL STRING BAND is Robin Gillan, Joe Locker, and Ben Paley who together play a wide and lively repertoire of American traditional and written folk music; ballads, fiddle & banjo tunes, blues, and folk songs.
Founded in 1966 by two multi-instrumentalist New Yorkers living in London, Joe and the late Tom Paley, the NDSB has had various fiddle players, finally settling on Tom’s son Ben in the fiddle slot. Since Tom’s death in 2017, Joe and Ben have welcomed Robin as the third member of the trio.
All three have strong American connections and a vast amount of experience, having played on recordings and broadcasts, in concerts and at festivals in many countries, both together and individually, with some of the finest folksong artists of the last fifty or more years – giving them the depth necessary to present old-school American vernacular music as it ought to be.
ROBIN GILLAN – banjo, guitar, fiddle, harmonica, vocals.
JOE LOCKER – banjo, guitar, autoharp, vocals.
BEN PALEY – fiddle, vocals.