Gigspanner Big Band talk about their new album, Turnstone, revealing an insight into an album that exists in a tradition of sprawling and inclusive experimentalism and where variation and difference are celebrated and encouraged.
Gigspanner Big Band’s ‘Turnstone’ is a great example of how traditional song can provide a template for exciting new musical discovery. It’s also a career-defining release from one of folk’s most powerfully creative groups.
If you’re seeking music that beautifully honours the traditions of this season, look no further than Jackie Oates & John Spiers’ “A Midwinter’s Night”, in which they carry these cherished traditions with inspiring grace.
Spiers & Boden have announced their Spring Tour dates for 2025. Watch them performing ‘Bluey Brink’, a strange tale…as Boden told us, “Such a weird type of hero, sheep shearing and drinking acid. Brilliant!”
Bellowhead founders and frontmen Spiers and Boden have announced a Spring Tour for 2024, something any folkie should find impossible to resist. They reunited in 2021 for Fallow Ground, “a genuinely warm-hearted, exuberant, and life-affirming album”.
Don’t miss Gigspanner Big Band and Raynor Winn’s live dates this month for their Saltlines project. Jackie Oates will be joining them as she steps in to cover for Hannah Martin whilst she takes maternity leave.
Saltlines is a massive, ambitious and highly unusual project; the fact that it feels perfectly judged at every moment is down to the sheer excellence of Gigspanner Big Band’s musicianship and the touching, clear-eyed nature of everything Raynor Winn writes or speaks. It is a constant delight.
Taken from Saltlines, the new show and collaborative project from The Gigspanner Big Band and author Raynor Winn, listen to Ten Thousand Miles and read John Spiers’s personal insight into the song collected by Cecil Sharp. Saltines is on Tour in July.
Filmed in the late summer of 2021 in a field near the Gate To Southwell Folk Festival, watch John Spiers and Jon Boden performing Bailey Hill / Wittenham Clumps from their latest album ‘Fallow Ground’. The duo are on tour in June.
We interview Peter Knight and John Spiers about their new album, Both in a Tune, the excitement of free improvisation, comparing playing to 90 minutes playing as a midfielder and the beauty of being lost in a tune.
Peter Knight & John Spiers’ ‘Both in a Tune’ is effortlessly impressive and sublimely performed…innovation, experimentation and improvisation at its very best. By the end this year it will surely still be in the minds of many as one of the best of 2022.
We chat to John Spiers and Jon Boden (our Artists of the Month) about their new album Fallow Ground that finds them reunited and revelling in the sheer fun of music-making rooted in the English folk tradition.
At the heart of Spiers & Boden’s “Fallow Ground” is the utter joy of two friends making music together. It’s a joyful, exciting, and beautifully produced release and it’s so great to have them back.
Having parted ways back in 2014, Spiers & Boden, one of our finest folk duos, are back together again with a new album titled Fallow Ground, which you can pre-order today. They have also announced festival appearances and a 23 date UK tour.
The line-up on ‘I Am of Ireland’, reads like a who’s who of the mainly Irish but also Irish American and British folk music world. There’s plenty of enjoyable music here and if it guides you back to Yeats’ poetry, well, that’s a worthwhile bonus.
The Gigspanner Big Band announce official launch gig for Natural Invention this month, to be live-streamed on Monday, September 21 via Oxfordshire’s famous Nettlebed Folk Club.
Thomas Blake interviews the Gigspanner Big Band, our Artists of the Month, who demonstrate they are admirably democratic not just in their music-making process, but also in their interviews where everyone gets their say.
Natural Invention is a piece of music that feels thrillingly, frighteningly, beautifully of our time. With the Gigspanner Big Band, Peter Knight has assembled a group of musicians intent on making some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music.
