Woebegone Brothers call it a day.

IMMEDIATELY after this year's Greenbelt, popular combo the Woebegone Brothers will be breaking up. Having shot to overnight prominence at the Greenbelt Festival in 1988 (they arrived to busk on the fringe and ended up appearing in the Big Top) the real-life brothers cited a number of factors involved in their decision to quit.

"Basically we're a band that just set out to busk," explained string bass player Nigel Griffiths. "Ok we busked to Christians at Greenbelt, but we like to play in High Streets or folk clubs and places, but the Christians all say 'Christian band' and home in and want us to do all these things. You turn up and you don't know if they'll say 'Just do four or five up-tempo numbers for the kids', or 'can you play for an hour and a half then give a little talk and ask them to make a commitment to Christ'! One place we went to they locked the doors after our set and wouldn't let the kids out," adds multi-instrumentalist Glynn. "That leaves a nasty taste... Never have we been invited by a Church to play in their local pub, it's always a Church hall."

"There's almost a kind of apartheid where Christian performers entertain Christian kids," points out elder brother John. "When we have the potential to take our music wider it's very frustrating. I don't want to be part of a band that's acting as a buffer to stop kids listening to non-Christian music. We want to make music that's an end in itself, not a means to an end."

The band also spoke of the strain of distributing their own tapes and merchandise, servicing their 700-strong mailing list and replying to the average three letters per day demanding attention. "That's not to slag off our audience," John adds. "People have been incredibly warm. We get people writing to tell us when they move house - someone even had a kid and sent us a picture of the kiddy. It's nice to do that for a while, but we can't do it for ever, we've got to look wider."

The brothers are not bowing out of music altogether by any means. "I think there's a whole lot more to explore in the whole gospel thing - we haven't begun to do all the different styles and arrangements," says Nigel. "Glynn and I will definitely carry on together, and we'll play with other people. It's a chance to wind down and take our names out of the book - do something more experimental and creative, rather than being a novelty act."