Since 1993 I have often been musician or leader at the Folk Camp in Germany, which is where I first met Ben.
I started calling and playing melodeon and English concertina for ceilidhs in the late 1970s with the Peak District based Village Band. We ran workshops and played for dances at festivals, particularly at Whitby, where I subsequently ran the Festival Orchestra for 5 years.
In the late 1990s I started a session for beginners in a pub above Froggatt Edge, which morphed into a 40-piece community ceilidh band, The Well-Dressed Band, who I still direct musically over 25 years later.
Since moving to Cheshire I have been playing over the border with Welsh musicians exploring new and neglected Welsh music, and also for Clerical Error, a Border Morris side based in Flintshire.
In 2012 I started a research project to find tunes whose titles relate to specific days in the year. Some 1800 tunes later and I perform some of these in an audio-visual show as part of The Cabinet of Monkies. This illustrates the stories behind the melodies that we play.
I’ll be bringing to Miserden some great tunes from these projects which are both fun to play and very suitable for sessions.