The Dreadnoughts are a Canadian 6-piece folk punk band from Vancouver. The band combines a wide range of European folk music with modern street punk. The band has seven full-length albums and three EPs on various labels, and has played around 500 shows in around 30 countries. They also used to perform before 2020 as a traditional polka band at polka festivals, under the name "Polka Time!".[1] Their performance peak was in 2010, when 180 shows were played.
The Dreadnoughts formed in 2006 in the Downtown Eastside area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They released their first album, Legends Never Die, in 2007, followed by their second album, Victory Square, in 2009. They wrote Victory Square as a tribute to their home city of Vancouver, and as such, many of the songs on the album focus on places of importance to the bandmembers.[2] The Dreadnoughts promoted the album by touring all over Canada and Europe in 2009, a tour which inspired much of the material on their 2010 album Polka's Not Dead. The tour was documented in a book by Adam PW Smith, who would later produce a mini-documentary about the band as well.
In late 2011, after producing Polka's Not Dead, the band announced an indefinite hiatus. However, they followed this by playing shows occasionally, such as annual Vancouver shows, a two-week European tour in January 2014, and two March gigs with Guttermouth in 2014. On November 11, 2017 they released their fourth full-length album Foreign Skies, a folk-punk concept album about the First World War. They followed this up with the acoustic album Into The North on November 15, 2019. Their most recent album Green Willow, which consists entirely of folk-punk renditions of traditional folk songs (with the exception of the final track "Roll Northumbria"), was released digital-only on March 13, 2023.[3] On December 8th, 2024, the band announced a new, unnamed album in the works, being "polka-heavy and shanty-heavy."[4]
The Dreadnoughts perform at The Underworld, London, UK, in July 2024
Their 2009 release, Victory Square, was ranked the 4th-best folk-punk release of 2009 by folk-punk magazine Shite N' Onions.[6] Their previous release, Legends Never Die, was ranked #7 on the magazine's 2008 list.[7] Multiple cross-Canada tours and European tours have helped to contribute to the band's steadily rising profile.[8]
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