Read about the stories of Beans

Not your normal run of the mill classic protest folk singer, Beans, real name Jay McAllister, has been telling stories all his life through his songs but now he’s decided to write them down - in a book.

“It’s not something I thought of doing at all,” he tells me. “But I’ve been telling these stories down the pub for years. I was touring Germany last year and I had about four or five hours on the train, so I decided I needed a project. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it, in case the book was terrible, and then just started writing them all down.

“By the end of the tour I had good part of the book done and so I got someone to proof read it for spellings and that, and sent it off to a publisher.

“It was pretty scary and nerve wracking but when it came back all legit, I was pretty chuffed to bits with it.”

Entitled, rather appropriately Drunk Folk Stories, and jam packed with anecdotes from one of the country’s most eclectic musicians, Beans is now about to tour it with his Sitting on a Chair Tour.

Playing seated theatres and venues rather than pubs and clubs, he’s promising a unique evening of stories about his travels and songs from his huge nine album back catalogue. Love songs, protest songs and drinking songs are intertwined with the stories behind the songs and the random adventures they’ve led him on.

Featuring the likes of Billy Bragg, Banksy and The Cookie Monster, from Glastonbury to Wembley via The Bahamas, these first-hand accounts of drunken escapades, car-crashes, recreational drugs and burning pubs are full of humour, grace and honesty – just like his music.

The book came out on May 1, along with the re-release of the 2009 album Standing on a Chair with its whopping 50-tracks on vinyl, produced by Mumford and Sons’ Ben Lovett, with cameos from the likes of Emmy The Great, Justin Young and Frank Turner.

May 1 is a rather important day for Beans because that’s the day it all started.

“I seem to remember a friend and I were pretty drunk at the time,” he recalls, “and we decided to stage an impromptu protest outside a petrol station in north London. This was at a time when May Day used to be pretty political and I suppose we thought we would try and do our bit.”

Things have moved on for the former Braintree boy,

Born in Epping, his parents made a slow move through Essex before settling in the village of Rayne, just outside Braintree.

After going to the village primary school, Beans went to Notley High School, where he started his first band in the late Nineties.

He says: “We were called Jellicoe and we were a full-on ripped jeans, three-piece grunge band.

“Much to my immense embarrassment now I used to sing in a high-pitched American accent.”

All of that aside, the band actually did quite well.

Beans adds: “John Peel rang me at home. That was pretty good.

“We made a split demo with another Braintree band called Union Kid and I took it up to London to give it to John Peel.

“When I got to the BBC the lady on the reception said I had just missed him and told me to put it in his pigeon hole.”

Thinking that was it, Beans couldn’t believe it when he phoned a few days later.

“It was a little disappointing,” Beans continues, “because he actually wanted to play the Union Kid track but we got a Maida Vale Peel session out of it in the end.

“The thing is I was pretty arrogant at the time so it means a lot more to me now than it ever did back then.”

Dragging the group up to London to make their musical fortune, like so many other bands before and after them, Jellicoe split up and Beans and a friend began organising club nights.

“I kept writing throughout,” he adds. “I’ve never been the most accomplished musician so I couldn’t really play other people’s songs. That’s why I started writing my own simple tunes.”

And where did the name Beans on Toast come from?

He says: “It kind of described the music I was doing. Cheap and easy, basically getting the job done, beans on toast type of folk.”

Rising from the London folk scene, early interest in his amiable style led to an opening slot at Glastonbury Festival in 2007 and such was the success of this legendary performance he has been invited to play each year since.

Having amassed an extensive catalogue of songs and clocked up an impressive array of gigs, Beans followed-up his debut with Writing On The Wall and deciding to release a new album every year on his birthday, December 1, Frank Turner produced the next one 2011’s Trying to Tell the Truth, again packed with Beans’ witty lyrical take on modern day life.

While touring and promoting the album, he got the call to be the opening act at Frank Turner’s sold out Wembley Arena show in April 2012, playing to over

10,000 people.

Beans says finally. “I’ve done seated gigs before and always enjoyed them but never done a whole tour. Also I’ve never played the Colchester Arts Centre. Seen quite a few gigs there in my day but never performed there, so that’s a nice thrill too.”

Beans On Toast plays the Colchester Arts Centre on May 17. For tickets, priced £15, call 01206 500900.