Sam Sweeney and Grace Smith have announced Morning Of May, their debut duo album, due 9th October on Hudson Records. Lead single Round Hill Wood is available to stream now.
The album explores the rich possibilities of two fiddles in conversation within the English instrumental tradition — a pairing familiar in Scottish, Irish and Scandinavian folk but heard far less frequently on the English side. Rather than carrying the melody in unison, the duo take turns: one leads while the other seconds, weaving harmony and rhythm around the tune, reshaping the ground beneath it.
Both fiddlers are well known to KLOF readers. Sweeney’s 2022 solo album Escape That saw him compose entirely away from the fiddle, building tunes on synths and guitar before transposing them. As he told us in our interview that same year, the process was about honesty: “I started trying to write music that was very honest and was me.” Glenn Kimpton’s review praised playing that had “never been more confident or fluid,” with arrangements that were “fun and daring in places, all while serving the tune, which always makes up the iron core of his songs.” His subsequent Shapes EP with Louis Campbell took the collaborative impulse further, deconstructing 18th-century manuscripts into skeletal melodic shapes and rebuilding them as duets. That impulse — pulling old tunes apart and putting them back together with a partner — runs directly into Morning Of May.
Smith, meanwhile, made a strong impression with her trio’s 2023 debut Overleaf, which Peter Shaw described as a captivating instrumental record that managed to take British folk down unexpected new paths. Crucially, Shaw noted the trio’s ability to bring traditional songs up to date while making new compositions sound as though they belonged to the tradition — a quality that clearly carries over into the duo’s approach here.
For the new album, the pair immersed themselves in manuscript and tune collections, hunting out obscure sources. Some tunes arrived intact; others required restoration or near-total reimagining. Original compositions sit alongside the archival material, written in the same spirit of curiosity. “This record feels less like a conclusion than an opening,” Sweeney and Smith say. “There is much to discover in the meeting of two fiddles. These recordings are simply our first steps into it.”
Morning Of May is released on 9th October via Hudson Records. The duo tour England and Wales throughout October.
Tour Dates
14th – Reading, South Street Arts Centre
15th – Bristol, House Concert
16th – Sheffield, St Andrew’s Church
17th – Fordingbridge, Hyde Village Hall
18th – Hitchin, Town Hall
21st – Cardiff, Norwegian Church
22nd – Bath, Christ Church
23rd – Guildford, The Boileroom
24th – Bury, The Met
25th – York, NCEM