f30 BELLOWHEAD


A biographical & geographical introduc- tion to the eleven band members of the Bellowhead collective.


Jon Boden – Vocals, Fiddle, Tambourine (based S Yorks)


Jon grew up in Winchester, studied Medieval History and later, Composition for Theatre. He’s lived in a cottage in the rural moorlands near Sheffield for the past seven years with his partner, award- winning singer Fay Hield. Jon has also made two solo albums and six albums with Spiers & Boden. He composes for theatre (RSC amongst others) and his first concert composition, Musgrave Interpo- lations, premiered in Aldeburgh in 2013 as part of the Britten centenary. He appears, albeit briefly, in the latest Richard Curtis film as a busker and per- forms the closing song of the film How Long Will I love You?


Pete Flood – Percussion, Drums (based Hampshire)


Broadcaster Charles Hazlewood once described Pete as being “a bit like Keith Moon. He’s all across everything, all of the time”. Pete recently moved from a watercress mill in Hampshire to a normal house where he is actually much happier. He combines free jazz and Beefheartian clatter and plays everything from frying pans to rusty metal and bells. Along with Brendan Kelly and other Bellowhead band members, Pete’s also in the Japanese Space Funk band, Setsubun Bean Unit as well as experimental jazz outfit, Farmyard Animals Trio. He’s hop- ing to release a solo album one day.


Brendan Kelly – Saxophone & Reeds (based Sussex)


When Brighton-based Brendan isn’t playing saxophone and reeds (often at the same time) he is also a kayak instruc- tor, about which he is passionate. Other- wise, very little is known about him…


Benji Kirkpatrick – Guitar, Bouzouki, Banjo, Mandolin (based Shropshire)


Another multi-instrumentalist – of the stringed variety – Benji has ‘folk pedi- gree’ as one of the offspring of John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris. Based in Shropshire, Benji is often away touring extensively with other artists such as Seth Lakeman and Maddy Prior. He still records and tours with Faustus and occa- sionally performs solo gigs too.


Rachael McShane – Cello, Fiddle (based Newcastle)


The only female member of the


band, Yorkshire-born Rachael is now a resident of Newcastle where she became one of the first people to grad- uate with a degree in Folk & Traditional Music in England back in 2005. She embarked on a solo career a couple of years ago, infusing trad folk with jazz and released her first solo album No Man's Fool in 2010. Rachael is also a teacher and workshop leader and was one of the more enthusiastic creators of the band’s unique take on touring and wonderful A Bus Song A Day videos.


Andy Mellon – Trumpet (based London)


The only member of the band based in London, Andy has played with a huge array of musicians from Bad Manners to


Damon Albarn. Andy has MD’d several of Bellowhead’s collaborations at the South- bank Centre (where the band are Artists in Residence) and is especially proud of a British Council-led Anglo-Gulf music pro- ject, Shifting Sands, which has led him to perform on multi-artist projects in several countries in the Middle East.


Ed Neuhassuer – Helicon, Tuba (based Northants)


Ed started his musical life playing in


a local brass band in Yorkshire and was drawn to the helicon as it was the biggest instrument he could find and found learning to dance whilst playing a heli- con an interesting challenge. He went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music. Classically-trained Ed has played with a number of orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Welsh National Opera.


Paul Sartin – Oboe, Fiddle (Hampshire)


Paul grew up in North London but is now based in rural Hampshire. He stud- ied at the Purcell School and then read music at Magdalen College, Oxford. Also one half of the folk duo Belshazzar’s Feast and one-third of folk trio Faustus, Paul became lay clerk with Christ Church Cathedral Choir, teaches and, despite all of this, has a parallel career ahead of him as a stand-up comic if he wanted it. He’s had a letter published in Private Eye.


John Spiers – Melodeon, Concertina (based Oxfordshire)


John was born in the Midlands but grew up near Oxford where he lives with his own family and vegetable plot. He studied Genetics at King’s College Cam- bridge and was a contestant on the Young Krypton Factor. When not touring and recording with Bellowhead or the award-winning duo, Spiers & Boden, John likes all sorts of gadgets, especially ones associated with coffee making, home brewing and Oxford United. For- merly a busker on the streets of Oxford- shire, John also briefly played accordeon with the late Stephen Gately. John’s father was a morris dancer who is also big in solar panelling.


Sam Sweeney – Fiddle, Bagpipes (based Derbyshire)


Derbyshire-born Sam is 24 and (still) the youngest member of Bellowhead. To simply call him a fiddle player is to do him something of an injustice. Sam has been playing violin since he was six and is now a highly respected, BBC award-nom- inated, multi-instrumentalist, touring in an award-winning duo with Hannah James, and also with Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings, Sam Carter and The Fay Hield Trio. As well as the fiddle, Sam plays English bagpipes, viola, English concertina and nyckelharpa and pretty much anything else…


Justin Thurgur – Trombone (Berkshire)


Justin’s main projects outside Bel- lowhead are collaborations with ex-Fela and Femi Kuti keyboardist Dele Sosimi and the pianist / composer Kishon Khan, the former playing Afrobeat, the latter a variety of projects mixing African and Cuban music with jazz, funk and, most recently, Bengali folk songs. Justin has also played sessions with The Selecter, Tony Allen and the National Theatre’s production of Fela.


Brendan L


ooking to be more commercial musically is not just business sense. Boden sees the weaving in of other genres both as a natural way of best realising their big


band’s sound in the songs and of drawing that non-folk audience into the folk world. He wants Bellowhead to be a ‘folk shop window’ and reckons the more the band has to offer, the more people will want to step inside. Spiers mentions that “Loads of people come to us, and say that through listening to Bellowhead, they’ve discovered an amazing amount of English folk music that they love.”


Their increasing commercial success is in part due to their canny choice of producers. John Leckie (The Verve, The Stone Roses, Radiohead), with his experi- enced and subtle hand on Hedonism and Broadside, recording the band at Abbey Road, and now Rupert Christie (whose arrangements have featured on Coldplay, Green Day and Kate Bush records) on the latest release.


Yet the underlying concepts for the albums are not the product of some mar- keting idea, but arise naturally from the rehearsal and recording process. Spiers explains that “When we put together tracks for an album, we go through rehearsals and writing as a band. Several members of the band are faster and bet- ter at arranging but we all tend to give it a go. People might come up with a song in between albums. Generally one or two people get together, and give us a clear starting point. For Revival everyone did as much as they could. We must have had 25 new tracks demoed – nearly all of them via email. We’d all add our bits, see how the track developed, listen back and then make a decision about what goes on the album. The lion’s share of arrangements are done by Jon Boden and [percussion- ist] Pete Flood.”


They find that there is a linking ele- ment underlying the songs put forward, a synchronicity born perhaps of the years the band has worked together. The Revival concept arose, Spiers tells me, because “there’s a lot of life in it, mentions of plants, things that are quintessentially folky to do with life and coming back to life, almost all the songs are rooted in tra- ditional songs. There’s a sense of revival in the fact that we’ve just been picked up by Island though we’re ten years old. It points to resilience, ups and downs: every time we go down we come back up again.” Though he says that their fans are gratify- ingly loyal, the signing to Island is like a “shot of adrenalin”.


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