Spiers and Boden

Young players are continually revitalizing traditional music. Some do it by bringing in electronic elements. Others, like the English duo of John Spiers and Jon Boden, are completely acoustic, but bring thrilling, powerful playing and imaginative arrangements to bear. Their first album, 2001's Through & Through (Fellside), brought acclaim, and nominations in both the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and the BBC Radio 3 World Music Award for best album. Prior to their sophomore disc, Bellow, they'd picked up Horizon Award for best new act at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Not a bad way to start a career.

It all began quite innocuously, when melodeon player Spiers was "in a session at The Elm Tree in Oxford. Jon Boden turned up and was playing Irish tunes, he was living in London at the time. But then he sang some unaccompanied English songs and some with fiddle accompaniment - at the same time I was playing English dance tunes and we just decided to have a go at a duo. Six months later we actually had a rehearsal."

Spiers had played music since childhood, first on organ and piano, then taking cello lessons. The son of a Morris dancer, he bought a piano accordion while studying genetics at Cambridge, "and the sound prompted me to remember all the southern English morris tunes. I switched to melodeon a year or so later once I had started playing traditional music and realised the rhythmic potential of the melodeon."

Boden took the back route into folk music, starting on classical guitar, then rock.

"I am slightly uncomfortable with the idea of anybody being a saviour of English music because I don't think it needs salvation."

"I started listening to trad. music as a spin off from Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. Shortly after this I decided that learning to play the uillean pipes would be the best way to get laid. Shortly after that I decided learning the fiddle would be the best way to get laid. It's an on-going process and I'm sure it will pay off eventually. I have recently taken up the concertina."

There's a range of influences in the music, from Kepa Junker's Basque melodies, to John Kirkpatrick's Morris music and '70s disco, and violinists like Dave Swarbrick and "any number of flash Irish fiddlers." There are obvious vocal nods to Martin Carthy and Peter Bellamy, but at the same time, part of the magic of Spiers and Boden is that they've transcended their inspirations.

While the praise has come thick and fast over the last two years, for both gigs and albums, the pair have tried to diminish its impact on their music, as Boden observes: "The response of an audience is much more addictive than media plaudits and I think we have become more focused on the live dimension than we were when we put Through & Through together."

They do write a few tunes, but the vast majority of their material comes from the tradition, and they look long and hard at a piece before working with it.

"When choosing to play a particular dance tune I look for something I can do with it," says Spiers. "It's very hard to describe the process of mucking about with tunes until you get a gut reaction that makes you really excited about playing it but that's how I work." And with the songs, Boden notes, "because box and fiddle is not the most natural accompaniment for traditional song we generally wait for a song that shouts out a comfortable or interesting arrangement. I'm one of those singers who deep down thinks everything should really be unaccompanied so we try to only do stuff that benefits from instrumentation."

Like most folk musicians, Spiers and Boden have other outlets besides their duo, and recently they've been playing as part of Eliza Carthy's band. It began when Carthy asked them "to play on three tracks on Anglicana. About a year ago we were asked to join a UK tour based around the material on Anglicana and have been in the band ever since. It's been great fun, the band really gels together well with this line up - the potential with the interplay of three fiddles (or two fiddles and a viola) is still being explored by us and it's at a very exciting stage. Of course playing the big stages and being on TV is good fun too!"

That's time-consuming, but they also find time for Rampant, which helps return them to their roots in English dance music.

"Rampant is an occasional barn dance band that we're in - a lot of the music we play is dance music, and it's great to see people dancing to it," Spiers says. "Playing music for the reason it was originally played has a certain frisson that you can't get from 'sit-down' concert gigs."

They're also experimenting with expanding their sound, a formidable task for a pair used to playing in such a stripped-down format. It will be a big band called "BELLOWHEaD," explains Boden. "Basically we're taking material from our first two albums and arranging it out for us plus three piece brass section, three piece string section, percussion and Benji Kirkpatrick on frets. It's pretty ambitious but we think we might just pull it off. Our first gig's in April at the Oxford Folk Festival and a few other summer festivals are interested."

They're committed to English music. It's in their souls. But, as Spiers muses, they're not sure about the labels the critics have been giving them.

"I am slightly uncomfortable with the idea of anybody being a saviour of English music because I don't think it needs salvation. It's true to say that it has been one of the less 'trendy' genres of folk music and it has definitely been under-represented on the world stage - but if you approach it as something to be saved by making it cool or fusing it with other traditions then you are already making a statement that English music is lacking in something. It isn't - I think the traditional material is fantastic and I am just glad that people are hearing it because we're doing it."