Hector Gannet Share Title Track from Forthcoming Album 'The Great Shakedown' - Full Record Releases 23rd October

HECTOR GANNET releases title-cut “THE GREAT SHAKEDOWN” as final single ahead of third album.

North Shields folk/modernist artist Hector Gannet releases “The Great Shakedown” - the title track and last single ahead of the forthcoming album of the same name (album out 23rd October on vinyl, CD and digital).

“The Great Shakedown” reaches back through history, utilising Reformation defiance, Jacobite rebellion, old myth and pageantry to highlight the muted awareness of ordinary people, of those who abuse their status or power, whether in positions of authority or simply among us, preying on the weak and vulnerable, while those affected watch, or choose to look away. The Great Shakedown is narrated by one who is at once the agitator and accused, calling for a reckoning of the abusers, and an awakening of the abused.

The accompanying video follows that same instinct, someone trying to shake people awake the old way, on foot, face to face, with a placard and a handout, rather than through a screen. It’s a small, human echo of what the song and the album are reaching for: rousing people through traditional methods and real messages, not algorithms. The video builds to the band ringing church bells themselves, a traditional form of alert and communication. This image runs through the record as a whole; “there is a bell to be rung” is a strapline that surfaces elsewhere on the album.

Hector Gannet on “The Great Shakedown”: “It’s not always the people at the top, sometimes it’s much closer to home, people preying on those who can’t or won’t fight back. That’s who this song’s really aimed at.”

2026 has been a busy year for Hector Gannet, showcasing new material at Austin, Texas (SXSW) and Belfast Showing Roots festivals, and other festivals across the summer including a headline at Durham Brass Festival, and memorable appearances at Krankenhaus, A Stone’s Throw, and Twisterella festivals.

Hector Gannet will launch the new album live at The Glasshouse (Sage Two) on 27 November 2026.

ALBUM INFO

Hector Gannet’s gathering glories have built through two previous albums, ‘Big Harcar’ (2020) and ‘The Land Belongs to Us’ (2023). As well as two visits to the US, there have been live dates with major artists including Elbow and Sea Power, Lindisfarne and Richard Thompson – plus massive shows with Sam Fender at the vast North Eastern shrine that is Newcastle United’s St James’ Park ground.

The third album from North Shields folk-modernists Hector Gannet will be released on 23 October 2026. The Great Shakedown is the group’s most ambitious album to date, with their galvanising North Eastern sounds now augmented by brass, a choir and church bells. Hector Gannet have been praised by music lovers from Chris Packham to Sam Fender and acclaimed as “North Shields’ answer to Crazy Horse” (Uncut magazine).

Hector Gannet are both band and solo project, centred on songwriter and guitarist Aaron Duff, from North Shields high on England's North East coast – a town shaped by the fishing and shipbuilding industries and by the sea. Two albums in, with debut ’Big Harcar’ (2020) and the acclaimed ’The Land Belongs To Us’ (2023) long sold out, Hector Gannet have built a reputation as a distinctive voice in British folk and rock. MOJO awarded four stars to ’The Land Belongs To Us’, praising its "pointedly political, natural-world-advocating folk rock”. Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music greeted a "band of exceptional talent”. Sam Fender, a North Shields schoolmate of Aaron's and now one of British music's biggest names, has called Aaron "a fucking great songwriter”.

With their previous records, Hector Gannet celebrated the culture and community of the North East, drawing on the coastline and heritage of a place that has always lived close to loss. The group are named after a fishing vessel of the same name, which Aaron’s late paternal grandfather served on and which suffered fatal misadventure in 1968.

‘The Great Shakedown’ goes further still in its communal engagement. This is Aaron ringing a bell for things larger and less easily named. The new album looks at communities dispersed without ceremony, industries silenced without mourning and the kind of hurt and absence that can settle into the machinery of daily life. The album rings a bell for all of this – a sound intended as much with hope as with lament.

The album is Hector Gannet's boldest work to date. There are brass arrangements by North Shields-resident US musician Jason Holcomb, whose credits include Ohio soul legends The O'Jays. The album features choir and church bells recorded at the 17th-century Christ Church in North Shields, with the bells' melody plotted by the church's own Ringing Master. ’The Great Shakedown’ expands the Hector Gannet sound without losing what made it essential. The brass pulses through the Dexys-influenced urgency of the title track. It simmers amid the jazz-tinged ”Big White Telephone” and then surges euphorically through ”The Mother Tongue”. The latter song examines stoicism as both armour and wound, mulling on the peculiar cruelty of a shared language built around not saying the things that needs to be said.

Mixed by Grammy-winning Eduardo De La Paz (Self Esteem, Charlatans, Frightened Rabbit) and mastered at Abbey Road Studios, the album is a journey – from waiting to gathering, from individual grief to collective reckoning, from the single voice to the many. It moves through political fury and personal loss, through faith and its absence, through the cost of labour and the rituals people reach for when language fails them. Closing track ”No Money No Time (The Great Reprise)” pulls together the album’s themes and threads, sounding out a defiant clarion: “No money, no time... no more!”

Hector Gannet will perform ’The Great Shakedown’ in full at Gateshead’s Glasshouse Sage Two on 27 November 2026.

‘The Great Shakedown’ is released on Guga Records on 23 October 2026 and will be available as vinyl, CD and download.

HECTOR GANNET – REMAINING 2026 LIVE DATES

Oct 28th - Musicport Festival - Whitby

Nov 27th - Sage Hall Two - Glasshouse Gateshead (album launch)