We are excited to welcome Boff Whalley, musician, author, and a founding member of the anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba and Commoners Choir, for a night of song and stories to celebrate the publication of But: Life Isn't Like That, Is It?

“These are stories about real lives and real people—stuttering, wayward, disjointed, funny, ridiculous, and unplanned.”

To coincide with the release of But, Boff is touring both the UK and USA, visiting bookstores and venues to talk about, and sing, the stories that make up the book. Part reading, part gig and part conversation, Boff will play songs from a lifetime of writing and making music, songs which chime with the book, and will draw from a personal history of creative activism.

Boff explains his new book, “It's a book about stories, and a book of stories. How the stories we see and hear as films, novels and theatre aren't really the stories we experience in the real world. It's a big dig into storytelling and is mainly about the disruptions that stop our lives being simple narratives. 

“This book is threaded through with a travelogue mapped between my meetings with a variety of people—I've called them DISRUPTERS—who disrupted my own life in the best possible ways.

“The book is a collaboration with designer/typesetter Christian Brett, who has worked recently with Penny Rimbaud, Sleaford Mods and Killing Joke. But possibly more relevant is the fact that I sit next to him for every Burnley FC home match. He's a sweary curmudgeon and his design and typesetting for the book is incredible.”