FOLK royalty Steve Knightley has sold-out his show at the Bournemouth Folk Club, which takes place at the Shelley Theatre tonight.

Steve is the songwriting force behind Show of Hands, widely acclaimed as the finest acoustic roots duo in England.

The Exeter-based singer-songwriter writes the majority of material for the award-winning band, which also features multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer.

The duo released their 15th studio album The Long Way Home, to critical acclaim last year.

But Steve, 62, has also enjoyed considerable success as a solo artist with nine albums under his belt.

In early 2014, Steve Knightley set out on his 160 date Grow Your Own Gig tour of rural village halls.

Once described by the Times as the “gravel voiced spokesman of the rural poor” and possessing a vast repertoire of songs about those who live and work in the countryside, this journey finally came to an end in September 2015.

In 2016 he has decided to turn his attention to maritime venues around the shoreline of England and Wales. The All at Sea tour will find him playing in seaside halls, an Elizabethan Fort, on boats and in a rich variety of performing spaces all within sight of the waves and the tide including the Shelley Theatre in Bournemouth.

As Steve says: “As a West country songwriter I have written so many songs of seafarers and wreckers, travellers and traders, pirates and smugglers. Now I‘m going to be able to sing them with the sound of the sea in the distance – I can’t wait!”

For more information please visit www.bournemouthfolkclub.com