Steve Hanks Country Revival CMC: 19th July 2026

Steve Hancock comes from Doncaster, South Yorkshire and his father Gordon was in a popular Country trio, Dusty Road in the early 1980s. Despite this upbringing in country music, Steve was a late comer, not learning to play guitar till he was 20 when we was working as a RAF technician in Norfolk. Having learnt to play, he soon joined his first band, Country Style in which he played lead guitar and sung harmony vocals. After a year with them he left in the early-1980s to front his own band Moonshine. By the mid-1980s, Steve left the RAF and took full time employment working as a fitter at Norwich Airport. Travelling 50 miles to work and working in a band proved too much, and he had to leave Moonshine but he soon found a place as a bass player in a well established Irish band from Norwich called Spiral. In the late 1980s, it was time for Steve to move on when he left Norfolk and moved back to Doncaster where he took full time employment at RAF Finningley. By now, country music was in his blood and soon joined another country band playing bass in Reno. After being made redundant after 18 months and with no likelihood of another job in the aircraft industry with the decline in the employment market, Steve decided to turn fully pro as a musician; this is something he had always wanted to do but never had the nerve. He quickly teamed up with Keith Sterling to form the duo Hanks & Silva. It was at this time that that Steve Hancock became Steve Hanks. The new duo quickly made an impression on the local club scene. In 1993 Nick Payne joined them on pedal steel guitar and Tony Austin replaced Keith Sterling and the duo became the Steve Hanks Band. Despite a few changes in line up in 1998 and a change of name from Band to Trio, they continued to prosper into the 21st century. At the end of May 2002 the trio came off the road and Steve Hanks launched his solo career. After a couple of years as a soloist Steve teamed up with Tony Hornsby, another former member of the Steve Hanks Trio in a new duo and, in 2006, he joined multi-instrumentalist Jon J Paul in a new trio called C'est La Vie. The John J Paul Band from Lincolnshire was one of the top bands on the club circuit in the East of England in the 1990s. C'est La Vie toured for 14 months before Steve decided on a career change. Steve first trained as a teacher but another career change came in 2009 when he became a contract manager for a major welfare-to-work organisation. He was, ironically, made redundant in January 2012 as a result of changes in government funding and restructuring. It was logical for him to return to the country circuit as a soloist with a brief return to teaching during lockdown. He also now provides the PA for many country events and between that and singing he is still much in demand. Steve has also worked as a TV Actor/Extra and has had numerous appearances in programme's such as Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Heartbeat The Upper Hand and speaking parts in A Touch of Frost and Coronation Street as well as several commercials and a couple of films. Although always a prolific songwriter Steve initially avoided singing his own songs until 2002 when he was asked to write a song for a film called Among Giants, The song 'Why' wasn't used in the film for copyright reasons but the response he got from playing the song live has prompted him to continue writing. This video includes one of his original songs, Don't. Listen carefully to the lyrics!