Explore the wild frontier with Sons of Town Hall's 'part concert, part performance art' gig at The Square Tower, Old Portsmouth

Somewhere along the line they have morphed into Sons of Town Hall – a pair of Victorian vagabonds whose show is part concert, part performance art.

Ben Parker, the London wing, recalls: "We had this crazy tour where we played these tiny venues and we got on incredibly well and would play a bit on each other's stuff and that relationship developed over time.”

They had an idea to create a documentary as they toured Holland together by bicycle.

But as David Berkeley, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, says: “We were looking for a name for this fledgling project. We were looking for the name of transatlantic vessels and we stumbled on this story on page eight of Google about this guy who built a boat called the Son of Town Hall - a boat built out of junk and he sailed it across the Atlantic in his 70s. We found a book about it, and the more we read, the more fascinating this character became.

“So we decided to scrap the bike idea, and let's not actually build our own boat but let's pretend we have and start weaving a theatrical-folk project where we have this mythic fake back story about how we travel the world by water.

“The first few shows were pretty strange because we didn't know what the hell we were talking about. Ben had found a top hat and a bowler hat in a shop so we started to look like we were from the late 1800s.

"We began thinking about what it would be like if it was the two of us on the frontier with no actual skills and how an American guy and a British guy out there would get along – and the act develops from that.

“The other day someone was telling me about how terrible walrus tastes as a meat, that will definitely play into the show...

“The more time we spent together and the more songs we wrote, the more we started believing this was all true.”

Ben elaborates: "The songs we wrote initially, some really worked and some felt like they were a little out of the correct orbit. But as the show developed – and it only developed by us doing it – we had a lot of crazy conversations about: ‘Wouldn't be funny if...’

“A lot of what we do is playing up to our characteristics in real life. In any marriage there's often a hilarious dynamic where one person thinks they're in charge and the other person is definitely in charge, so we played to that, and the audience really responded to it – they felt they really knew us, they were in our gang.

“We're essentially saying we think we're brilliant, but we spend our whole lives running from people who are chasing us, and doing terrible jobs everywhere. Really the only thing we're good at is singing.”

David adds: "The songs are mostly serious, so you get this strange wash of emotions where the songs hit you in the heart, but what we're saying in between, people have a good laugh. It's kind of a wild show now.

"Now we're very intentional about how we're writing the songs with the story in mind. It's rare that we write a song now without some idea of how it will be presented.

“The early songs, we had to make up the back story for it to fit into the narrative, but now we're writing for the personalities and there's a story there. Everything now fits into this bigger show we're doing.”

So far the pair have only released one album – The Adventures of Sons of Town Hall, but a second album and accompanying podcast series is coming later this year.

There will be 30-minute radio theatre-style episode for each track on the album, with the stories introduced by Sons ‘super-fan’ Elias B Worthington (character actor Oliver Maltman).

"It allows us to fully encapsulate the atmosphere of what we do on stage but in a full length story, which then feeds back into what we do on stage,” says Ben. “Now we go on knowing the full story, and you can pick up any aspect of it, and the other one knows exactly what you're talking about.”

"It makes it even more like we've actually lived it and we know all of these details,” says David.

They play at The Square Tower, Old Portsmouth on May 5. The show is sold out, but you can go on the waiting list at squarerootspromotions.co.uk. Tickets are still available for their show the night before at Salisbury Arts Centre – tickets at wiltshirecreative.co.uk.