Mighty Oaks Tickets

An international trio of musicians, Mighty Oaks consists of Ian Hooper from the United States, Claudio Donzelli from Italy, and Craig Saunders, a British performer. The band plays a blend of indie rock and folk music, with tight, three-part harmonies being one of the mainstays of their sound. Based in the German capital, Mighty Oaks predominantly use acoustic instruments to accompany their vocal sound. Regular performers all over Europe, the band has achieved several hit singles in Germany, as well as a top 10 album. In 2014, they were named by the European Festival Awards as the Best Newcomer of the Year.

Mighty Oaks' formation

Mighty Oaks got together as a result of Saunders relocating from the UK to play bass in Hamburg, a city that has long been associated with British rock acts. He met Hooper in the city and the two hit it off, musically speaking. Not long after their first jams together, the pair began to pen their own material. Shifting into a partnership and away from their solo singer-songwriter pasts, the duo met Donzelli at an acoustic music festival. Soon afterwards, the pair became a trio, with Donzelli’s stringed instrument playing and singing added to the blend. Over the course of the following year, the burgeoning band started to record some of their first songs in Donzelli’s flat. These were put out on the SoundCloud online music sharing platform and achieved notable success, with thousands of listeners picking up on the group’s vibe.

Mighty Oaks' recording and performance career

In 2012, Mighty Oaks started to lay down tracks in a proper recording studio. As well as gaining a name for themselves on the live music scene in Germany, the three ended up producing their first EP, Just One Day, by the middle of that summer. It was self-released but distributed, with some success, by Rough Trade Records. Reaching an ever-widening audience, the trio began a tour with Shout Out Louds. Soon, they were considered high profile enough to open shows for bands as big as Kings of Leon and Chvrches. The following year, the band played a sell-out tour of Switzerland and Austria in their own right.

Having signed to Universal Records, the band’s first full album appeared in 2014. This was called Howl and it was a mainstream commercial success in several European countries. A single followed, called “Brother”. The band travelled to the US in order to shoot a video for the single, which also saw an EP release of the same name in North America to promote the group. Mighty Oaks have gone on to play some larger festivals in the years after Howl came out, including the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and Latitude Festival in the UK.

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