Spiers and Boden
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John Spiers and Jon Boden are an English folk duo. Spiers plays a variety of accordions and melodeons, while Boden plays fiddle, sings, and stamps out the rhythm on a piece of board.
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[edit] John
John "Squeezy" Spiers was born in 1975 in Birmingham. His father was a Morris dancer. As a child he learned the organ and piano. He attended John Mason School in Abingdon, and then went on to study genetics at King's College, Cambridge. It was at this point that he bought an accordion and instinctively started playing Morris tunes. He switched to melodeon for the sake of its rhythmic qualities. After spending some time busking he started a new career selling melodeons. In the meantime he started gigging, playing for local ceilidhs and functions. John is now a proud parent, he has a young daughter called Bryony.
[edit] Jon
Jon Boden was born in 1977 in Chicago but grew up in Winchester. At about the age of twelve he started singing on camping trips. In his teenage years he experienced a kind of "dark night of the soul", listening to Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull. From there he found his way to Dave Swarbrick. Jon studied Medieval Studies at Durham and Composition for Theatre at London College of Music. He drove himself to learn the fiddle, and found inspiration from certain singers - Martin Carthy and Peter Bellamy and from Irish fiddlers. When he heard the duo Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr (fiddle and voice) it was a revelation. The only way he could combine his singing with playing was to develop a strange bellowing technique, the same way that Peter Bellamy used to sing on stage while playing concertina. Jon and his partner, folk singer Fay Hield (of the Witches of Elswick) had a baby daughter in the summer of 2006, named Polly Boden.
[edit] The Elm Tree
John Spiers was playing in a tune session in The Elm Tree pub in Oxford when Jon Boden walked in. Jon's Irish repertoire didn't mean much to Spiers, but when he heard Boden's rendition of English songs, he joined in. Six months later they started rehearsing together. They appeared as a duo on two anthologies in 1999. Boden has developed his love of English tunes by teaming up with another singer, Ian Giles. All three of them, together with Graham Metcalfe, recorded a collection of sea shanties in 2002. These albums were sold through tourist centres rather than record shops. In 2003, Jon Boden played guitar on an album by the Irish band Broderick. Not to be outdone, John Spiers plays melodeon in several English country dance bands, including Rampant.
[edit] Bellowing
Their first album as a duo was Through and Through (2001). In 2002 they were both session musicians on Eliza Carthy's Anglicana, and toured with her. However it was their second album, Bellow, in 2003 that drew attention. Their punchy, stomping style was clearly English. The tunes and songs were mostly traditional, grounded in the Morris tradition. In the same year they won the "Horizon Award" in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, followed by the "Best Duo" category in 2004. Reaching out for a bigger sound, they brought in other musicians for a "big band" called Bellowhead, which can be heard on a five-track EP E.P.ONYMOUS (2004) and a full album Burlesque (2006). They also recorded two tunes for a collection of Morris tunes called Great Grandson of Morris On. A new album called simply Tunes came out in 2005 and another, and Songs followed in the same year.
[edit] Discography
John Spiers and Jon Boden
- Through and Through (2001) (Fellside FECD161)
- Bellow (2003) (Fellside FECD175)
- Tunes (2005) (Fellside FECD192)
- Songs (2005) (Fellside FECD194)
- E.P.ONYMOUS (2004) (own label MF111)
- Burlesque (2006) (Westpark)
Jon Boden
- Painted Lady (2006) (Soundpost SOPO5001)
Eliza Carthy (with Spiers and Boden)
- Anglicana (2002)
- Rough Music (2005)
Ian Giles, John Spiers, Jon Boden and Graham Metcalfe
- Sea Shanties (2002)
Broderick (includes Jon Boden)
- Cortanze Castle (2003)
Anthologies (with John Spiers)
- Five Years of Folk Music at the Fir Tree (1999)
- The Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales (1999)
Anthologies (with John Spiers and Jon Boden)
- Celtic Airs and Ballads (2003)
- Great Grandson of Morris On (2004)
[edit] Other publications
- The John Spiers Tunebook (2002) – 32 tunes with chords suitable for guitar, accordion, melodeon etc
