Sam Sweeney and Grace Smith have announced Morning Of May, their debut duo album, due 9th October on Hudson Records. Their lead single, Round Hill Wood, is released today.
The album explores the rich possibilities of two fiddles in conversation within the English instrumental tradition — a pairing we’re probably more familiar with in Scottish, Irish and Scandinavian folk music but 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 Sam and Grace are well-known to KLOF readers. With his 2022 solo album Escape That, Sweeney changed his approach to composing; instead, he used synths and guitar to create the initial music. He told us: “What I ended up with was a chord sequence and a bunch of hooks, which I would try to link up to make them become folk tune length. The fiddle was an afterthought and I had to translate this music onto it.”
In his review of the album, Glenn Kimpton praised Sam’s 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 his collaborative impulse further, deconstructing 18th-century manuscripts into skeletal melodic shapes and rebuilding them as duets. This act of pulling old tunes apart and putting them back together with a partner feeds directly into Morning Of May. According to the album press, for the new album, Sweeney and Smith immersed themselves in a wide range of manuscripts and tune collections, delving into some of the more obscure sources. Within these archives, they found tunes that felt unexplored and rich with possibility. Some tunes arrived as complete hidden gems. Others required some restoration, their rough edges gently smoothed through the process of playing. Others were tiny fragments, inspiring almost total reimaginings.
Smith has also made a strong impression in these pages 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. He noted how the trio were able to take traditional songs and bring them up to date while making new compositions sound as though they belonged to the tradition — a quality that can be felt in this new work with Sam.
Alongside these old tunes sit a few original compositions by Sam Sweeney and Grace Smith, written in the same spirit of curiosity and continuity that informs their approach to archive material. They say that “This record feels less like a conclusion than an opening. 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