Welcome to the Foxwood Panyard Haphazardly-updated Website. Our panyard is not a real place, but a group of bands and players who provide steelbands and tuition, both locally in Leeds and further afield, loads of places. Also give advice on pan purchase and tuning and how to buy the Foxwood Songbooks, and also why you should buy them!
Here you can see up-and-coming, and been-and-gone concerts/gigs. We have a gallery of pictures and pages of videos of songs played and lessons taught. There's blog and a for sale page. And more. See the List of contents below:
About Us: Brief history all the Foxwood Panyard bands and how they evolved, who runs or ran them.
Bands: Here are details of the various bands, their leaders, rehearsals times, rehearsal places
Blog: Here are stories of the pan pioneers from Leeds, about how the Foxwood Panyard bands got banned from Leeds Carnival, about the etiquette of repertoire, how the Foxwood Songsheets evolved and more.
Films: These are videos of bands at events which show more than just the piece of music featured, and sometimes have been taken by a professional
Gallery: This is in chronological order from the earliest Foxwood School gigs in the mid eighties to the present day, well to the last gig.
Gigs Past and Future: Here are all the gigs we have played since March 2017, or which I began this page.. Plus which is the next gig to come.
Lessons at Home and at School; These were hastily put together [i.e. amateurish, and to be replaced] for school staff, students and parent, so that they could keep their pan, and percussion skills going during the Lockdowns 2020 to 2021s. There's even about how to make a djembe out of an upturned waste paper basket . . . . .
Music Theory for Steelpans: This is an educational page we started during Lockdown. Steelpans should have taken a bigger place by now in the school curriculum. This is an attempt to demonstrate why. And also to help students see how pans, and pianos and glocks etc, work in terms of music theory. [Also to be replaced]
Play Christmas at Home: Here are, as it says on the tin, some Christmas tunes, played by one of the bands, and some of players. [There are also two Christmas songbooks, World Christmas [every song from a different country], and the Christmas Collection [not fpr the faint -hearted].
Play It at Home: This also came about during Lockdown, but really it just for anyone at anytime with any instrument at home so that they can play any tune, melody or chords, or even bassline just by looking at the Foxwood Songsheet and listening to one or more version of said tune.
Play Lockdown at Home: After hand-clapping on my doorstep on April 2 2020, I saw [on fb] that Avtar had played dhol down his street. I was inspired. . . . . And every single Thursday after I have played pans in and on the Frontlinegarden, first with daughter, Georgia, then with friend, Wanda [aka Her Indoors], and over time we were joined by several others from the Foxwood Panyard [mostly it must be said during British Summer Time. lol!], mostly Trish.
Play Music Centre at Home: This is another Play-along-with page. Songs are all from the Foxwood Songbooks and range from very easy to quite hard and always include the page form the book. [This doesn't replace buying the books. they are there to whet your appetite]
Shop: This page shows you all the songbooks available and how to order and them. Also how to buy my fabulous sticks, made traditionally from dowel and rubber [and used by the stars!]
Videos: These a full tunes or little snippets of tunes of any of the bands may have played. The further we go back in the past, the smaller the snippets and the poorer the quality. Nearly all of these videos are from the Victoria Jaquiss youtube account.
