About

This is a companion site to A Folk Song A Week, which I started in August 2011 and is still going strong. As its name suggests, that blog is all about song, and is published weekly. Whereas this one will mainly feature dance tunes and other instrumental pieces played on free reed instruments. And there will be no regular publishing schedule – so if you don’t want to miss a post, use one of the options on the right to subscribe.

I have played for morris and for country dancing – in the past with Polkabilly and (for a while) with the Oyster Band, and currently with Geckoes and Chameleons. And although we don’t normally play for dances, I play a fair bit of dance music with Magpie Lane and in my duo with Mat Green.

I also use the concertina for song accompaniments, with Magpie Lane, with Mat, and on my own.

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I got my first anglo-concertina at Christmas 1977. I believe that it came (seriously) from the local Woolworths, and was completely useless as within weeks several of the reeds had gone way out of tune. The following summer we stopped off at the Hobgoblin shop in Crawley on the way to my first ever Sidmouth Festival, and bought a C/G Lachenal for about £35. That wasn’t in concert pitch; the first instrument I had that was really playable, and which I could play with other people, was a G/D Italian job (like a Stagi or Bastari) produced for, and sold by, Neil Wayne’s Free Reed magazine. When you stretched the bellows out to anything like their full extent they tended to implode, but a good covering of carpet tape sorted that out (I seem to recall that John Gasson overcame the same problem with a metal coathanger stretched round the middle fold of the bellows). I made real progress on that instrument, and it served me well for a year or two. Here I am playing it with John Jones for Oyster Morris in 1980.

Next was a wooden-ended G/D Lachenal and then, in early 1982, I acquired the wonderful metal-ended G/D C. Jeffries instrument I still play today. I already knew this instrument, as it had belonged to Geoff Beilby who played for Great Western Morris. The only reason he was selling it, was that he had got an almost identical one, but in mint condition. I’m very grateful to Geoff for taking pity on a poor student and knocking £25 off his asking price. John Holman put on new bellows in 1984, and a few years ago Steve Dickinson replaced the original bone buttons with metal buttons; but otherwise it’s just as it was when first owned by a Mr Johnson from Fulham in 1882!

A year or so later I went to see Steve Turner at the Faversham Folk Club. As I walked back to my seat after doing a floor spot, Steve leant across and said “I have something in my car might interest you”. This turned out to be a 51-key C/G Jeffries, which he was selling for the ridiculously low price of £325. What was the catch? Oh it wasn’t in concert pitch, but he could get that sorted for another £25. Well I didn’t have £350, but I did have indulgent parents, and it really was too good an offer to turn down.

Within a couple of years the bellows were getting to the end of their life. Steve Dickinson of C. Wheatstone & Co. put on new bellows and gave it a thorough overhaul – and when he sent the anglo back it soon became clear that this was now a really good instrument. I have to say that I was really lucky to find myself in my late twenties with two instruments which I’m quite sure will last me for all of my playing days. So many thanks to Geoff, the two Steves – and, of course, my Mum and Dad.

I do also have a Bb/F baritone Jones anglo which my friend Roger Claridge picked up at an auction and kindly passed on to me. It’s rather clackety, and not wonderfully responsive, but no doubt it will feature here from time to time.

And now and then I’ll blast out some tunes on a one-row melodeon – I have instruments in G, D and C, all Hohners. And maybe one day I’ll even work out what to do with the extra row of buttons (and, more to the point, the extra 6 bass buttons) on a 2-row melodeon. But don’t hold your breath – I suspect that’s a project for my retirement.