CHAD MASON

“Chad is an accomplished singer-songwriter…tracks such as Long Way Home and Tonight have the audience captivated”

(Evening News,  Oct 2013)
 

“He’s a witty and engaging character with a sincere and ambitious desire to get at the heart of things”
(R2 Rock ‘n’ Reel, June 2015)

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Originally hailing from Oxfordshire, Chad’s emergence as a solo singer songwriter coincided with the move to study in the city of Norwich. Much like that city, he sits away from the main road, but has found a performance style that at once challenges and engage the listener on record, while all the time creating an affable rapport with any live audience he meets.

 

Building a crowd in Norwich by both playing and hosting acoustic music (including his own night Back In the Box – Live!) he has cleared his own path to perform his own songs and host others from around the UK and beyond. He drew friends far and wide into the creation of his debut album The Meandering Mind of Chad Mason in 2011 – evoking comparisons to early Fairport and Ennio Morricone. Always striking a balance between recording and gigging, he maintains a stripped-back approach live – engaging the room not only with his guitar, voice and harmonica but also his disarmingly witty patter, reasoning that pub and folk-club audiences don’t warm to shoegazers. The bantering has led to a side hustle as a popular music festival compere – Folk in a Field (voted East Anglian Festival of the Year) has installed him as the main stage compere of six years standing, with Chad introducing Spiers & Boden, Eliza Carthy, Seth Lakeman and Steve Knightley amongst others.

 

Chad’s music sits neatly between contemporary folk and alternative, and he relishes performing in either setting. Live highlights include Cambridge Folk Club, London’s Dylan hangout the Troubadour and Salford Music Festival. Supporting Steve Tilston at Norwich’s sadly missed Open venue is also a cherished memory. He even occasionally summons a full band – such as for his debut album launch.

His second release was the more ambitious May ‘14 project - emerging first as a solo Gig Theatre performance at London’s Roundhouse and E17 art trail in 2014 and latterly as a full length album May ’14 and More - “An intriguing homespun release that evokes Drake, Harper & Barrett” (Rock Society)

 

Indeed as a qualified actor and scriptwriter, he’s always comfortable cheek by jowl with the other performing arts. He relishes the unusual stages on the fringes of festivals, but increasingly holds his own on the main stage. The Roundhouse performance was initially a one-off but ended up as six shows over the weekend, and larger festivals such as Latitude (twice) and End of the Road (six times) request repeat bookings. Beyond the UK, he played in Austin, Texas during South by Southwest 2013 and accidentally took the New York open mic scene by storm with seven performances in so many days in 2015, with Greenwich Village’s Café Vivaldi demanding a return performance sadly prevented by the Covid pandemic.

 

During that strange period, while keeping up the day job supporting students in his role as a university theatre technician, he performed twice weekly online gigs and wrote, recorded and released his third record King of the Car Park. The single The Long Grass was featured in the Justin Hawkins Rides Again live podcast show in November 2024, with Chad joining Justin onstage at a sold out UEA LCR to listen to and discuss the song.

 

In the Spring of 2025 Chad was thrilled to win the Milkmaid Songwriting Competition with his song Jurnets Tale – which tells the story of the Medieval house in which Chad used to house a live music night.

 

His next album will likely be self-titled and has had a thrilling birth so far. Recorded on ¼ inch reel-to-reel in a former RAF nuclear bunker, this is proving to be both a doubling-down and departure style wise – with electric guitars, mandolins and real echo chambers aplenty.

 

From Eccles to Brooklyn or back home in Norwich, Chad takes every opportunity to bring the songs – including those from his upcoming records - to new audiences. Where they go, his bizarre yet charming stage patter goes too.