Bournemouth Folk Club

SPIERS AND BODEN

The Centre Stage, Bournemouth

October 3, 2010

Making a welcome return to a packed Centre Stage, award winning English traditional folk duo John Spiers and Jon Boden thrilled their following and the Bournemouth Folk Club regulars with an eclectic mix of folk songs and instrumentals. In their tenth year together, Spiers and Boden are now established at the forefront of English folk music and have been playing to packed houses during their autumn tour prior to rejoining super group Bellowhead later in the year. With Jon Boden on vocals, violin, stomping board and occasional guitar and John Spiers showing his virtuosity on a variety of squeezeboxes and chipping in with some great harmonies, the couple can virtually replicate the music on their string of excellent albums.

They kicked off with The Rochdale Coconut Dance, an instrumental from THROUGH AND THROUGH followed by a couple of waltzes; Rambling Robin from their latest offering VAGABOND and one from the Lincolnshire Collection, Volume 1, strangely entitled The Cheshire Waltz. Jon Boden switched to guitar for The Birth of Robin Hood or more appropriately called Earl Richard which then doesn’t give away the surprise ending. Three Tunes, again from VAGABOND was supplemented with a fourth, The Sportsman’s Hornpipe from TUNES. Brown Adam, a song about a blacksmith was followed by a quick reel before the duo closed the fifty minute first set with the excellent Tom Padget from VAGABOND.

This was rousing stuff and the eagerly awaited second set opened with a whaler’s sea shanty Rolling Down to Old Maui and Bold Sir Rylas from SONGS which had the audience joining in on the three choruses. A couple of hornpipes; The Old Lancashire Hornpipe and The Third Beekeeper were closely followed by the excellent Horn Fair before the duo performed their ‘sea shanty sandwich’ with the John Spiers penned Jiggery Poker Work and Haul Away from BELLOW. John Spiers then took the lead with a couple of Morris dancing tunes from Headington near Oxford; the self penned The Gooseberry Bush and the oft recorded Prickle Eye Bush which brought Jon Boden back to the stage to help out with some great fiddle work.

This amazing second set closed with the pirate song Captain Ward, appropriately from VAGABOND and which brought prolonged and rapturous applause from the appreciative Folk Club gathering. Inevitably this highly talented duo returned to encore with ‘their only non traditional song’ the beautiful Tom Waits classic Innocent When You Dream. This brought the house down and the couple were persuaded to return yet again. This time they chose to celebrate the imminent release of Bellowhead’s new album HEDONISM with a superb version of New York Girls which finally brought to an end a glorious sixty minute long second period. Spiers and Boden are seasoned performers with an engaging stage presence and this highly polished performance meant no one went home disappointed.
John Roffey