THE EIGHTEENTH DAY OF MAY were a six-piece, London based group. Originally formed as an acoustic trio comprising American singer and flautist ALISON BRICE, Swedish-born RICHARD OLSON (acoustic guitar, harmonica and sitar) and Oxfordshire-based guitarist and mandolin player BEN PHILLIPSON; the group's original intention was to combine elements of trad and contemporary folk with a psychedelic "underground" rock sound. They spent the summer and autumn of 2003 making home demo recordings and, having established the bare bones of a reportoire, THE MAY went electric early in 2004, adding rhythm section MARK NICHOLAS (bass) and KARL SABINO (drums,autoharp), and ALISON COTTON (viola). Their debut, eponymous album was released in September 2005 in the UK and May 2006 in the United States. They toured in early 2006: one two week support for Robyn Hitchcock and the Minus 5 (Venus 3), and a one week headline tour in support of the single Hide & Seek. There followed a busy summer of festival dates including some of the larger festivals (SXSW 2006 in Austin, Bestival on the Isle of Wight, Hyde Park) and the local festivals (Big Session, Green Man, Tapestry, Loopallu, Beautiful Days...) and sessions for various radio shows (Mark Radcliffe, Andy Kershaw, Rob Da Bank's Blue Room, John Kennedy on XFM). The band announced their decision to split in January 2007. From their site:- The last post - January 22nd, 2007 We regret to announce that The Eighteenth Day of May will no longer record or perform live together. It has been lots of fun doing so for the last three years, but we’ve reached the end of the road and all good things must come to an end, etc. We would like to thank everyone that has worked with us at any time, particularly Andy Childs at Hannibal, Kieron Moyles at ChappleDavis, James Alderman at Freetrade, Mark Stratford at Transistor, Andy Kershaw and Mark Radcliffe at the BBC for playing our records, and Ross and Dave at the wheel for making our tours so much fun. And let’s not forget Nat and Jimmy (we didn’t). We’d especially like to thank all the good people that bought the records and came out to see us. It meant a lot, it really did. Ultimately, has been an amicable split and there is nothing more to really say on the matter other than that it was all Karl’s fault. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.