Beans on Toast

folk

Beans on Toast is the stage name of English folk singer-songwriter Jay McAllister, born 1 December 1980 in Epping, Essex and raised in Braintree, who began performing under the name in London in 2005. His defining habit is a release schedule: a new album every year on 1 December, his birthday. That practice has produced eighteen studio records, beginning with Standing on a Chair (2009), produced by Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, and running through Writing on the Wall (2010), Trying to Tell the Truth (2011), Fishing for a Thank You (2012), Giving Everything (2013), The Grand Scheme of Things (2014), Rolling Up the Hill (2015), A Spanner in the Works (2016), Cushty (2017), A Bird in the Hand (2018), The Inevitable Train Wreck (2019), Knee Deep in Nostalgia and The Unforeseeable Future (both 2020), Survival of the Friendliest (2021), The Fascinating Adventures of Little Bee (2022), The Toothpaste and the Tube (2023), Wild Goose Chasers (2024) and Kill Them With Kindness (2025). Much of the catalogue has appeared on Xtra Mile Recordings, and Frank Turner has both produced for him and taken him on tour. The songs are conversational and largely autobiographical, covering family, love, drugs, politics, the environment and, on the pandemic-era records, the beauty of the human spirit. He performs solo with an acoustic guitar. He has played Glastonbury Festival every year since 2007, along with Boomtown and Y Not, supported Kate Nash at Hammersmith Apollo in 2008, opened Turner's Wembley Arena show in 2012 and Turner's 2014 UK stadium tour, playing to more than 100,000 people in a single week. He made his first American tour in 2015 and has toured with Flogging Molly. He has also written two books drawn from life on the road, Drunk Folk Stories (2018) and Foolhardy Folk Tales (2021).

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