Band of Mothers

Available for over a year

When a group of female students at Oxford Poly formed a band called Beaker in the early 1990s, they had a lot of fun and were successful enough to attract a record label and appear on Steve Lamacq's Radio One Sound City programme. This was a golden era when bands such as Radiohead and Supergrass emerged from Oxford's independent music scene. But then careers and parenthood intervened. Now, in their mid-50s, Beaker has re-formed. So what are the realities for a band their age - truly a Band of Mothers? Beaty Rubens has been following Beaker for the last six months, attending Sunday rehearsals, Friday night gigs and summer festivals, and talking with drummer Clare Howard-Saunders, vocalists Sam Battle and Emma Hunter, bass-player T.J Ward, and Hayley Wright. Pretty much exactly the average age of the Radio 4 audience, this 'Band of Mothers' has much to consider. There’s been a bit of a change of the lineup since their student days but they are still Beaker. Three are now schoolteachers, one a university administrator and one a seamstress, all have children and other family responsibilities and, over the years, all maintained their love of music . As they release a new single - a number penned by Sam about the shocking experience of Gisele Pelicot - how might they position themselves, how welcoming might the music industry be to an all-female band their age, and what kind of success are they actually after? With music from Beaker and a new interview with Steve Lamacq (who, it turns out, has kept two early Beaker releases in his personal CD collection for all these decades), this is a programme about friendship, second chances, and the pure pleasure of collective music-making. Producer/Presenter: Beaty Rubens A Just Radio Ltd production for BBC Radio 4