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Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer

Venue: Bothy Folk Club
Town: Southport
Date: April 15th
Website: http://www.swan-dyer.co.uk/

Tonight Fatea visited the Bothy Folk Song Club in Southport. The Bothy is one of the longest-running folk clubs in the country, having been in existence continuously since 1965. Recently, the Club, and in particular, one of its excellent resident singers, Kevin Littlewood was in the spotlight when Christy Moore's version of Kevin's superb song " On Morecambe Bay" was nominated for one of the 2012 BBC Folk Awards.

Our host tonight was Clive Pownceby who has been the Organiser of the Club since the mid-1970's. Clive is also one of the resident singers and is the house percussionist.

The Bothy convenes on Sunday nights at Park Golf Club, Southport and alternates Singers Nights with Guest Nights. Tonight was one of the latter and the Special Guests were the extremely talented duo of Vicki Swan and Jonny Dyer.

At the present time, there are a number of excellent male/female duos on the folk scene - Nancy Kerr and James Fagan; Katriona Gilmore and Jamie Roberts [coming to the Bothy on 8th July] and Jonny Kearney and Lucy Farrell, to name but three. However, Swan-Dyer [as they are sometimes known] have something that other duos do not have- the Nyckelharpa. For the uninitiated, the Nyckelharpa [literally "key harp"]is a traditional Swedish instrument, also known as a "keyed fiddle". It is a close relative of the hurdy gurdy, in that they both employ key-actuated tangents to change the pitch [at least that is what Wikipedia says].

Vicki, who is half-Swedish, plays the Nyckelharpa [in fact she has two] .As well, she also plays the Scottish Small pipes and the English Border pipes [not at the same time] and sings, Jonny plays guitar, accordion and sazouki [no, this is not a Japanese motorbike but a unique cross between a saz and a bouzouki ]. Jonny also sings.

Together, Swan-Dyer make a glorious sound, whether it is a combination of accordion and pipes or guitar and Nyckelharpa. Their two sets comprised [mainly] songs and tunes from their excellent 2011 album "Stones On The Ground". The songs range from English Traditional [Broken Token and Billy Boy] to murder ballads [Lord Randall] to Swedish songs . Of the latter, Vicki sang En Gang, a song about marriage, in Swedish, her mother's native tongue . They also sang Herr Hillebrand and Proud Lena, a chilling Swedish murder ballad which Vicki has translated into English. Epic stuff! Another of my favourites was the traditional English Train Song "The Oxford and ' Ampton Railway" about an ill-fated railway line which didn't even survive long enough to be closed by Dr.Beeching.

As well as being fine interpreters of song, Swan-Dyer are wonderful instrumentalists, as demonstrated on the several sets of tunes they played and which were chiefly their own compositions in a traditional style.

We had Vicki's gorgeous Viggo's Vaggvisa [Lullaby] and the joyful Dancing Out. We also had a lovely pair of tunes by Jonny [Emily's Waltz and Gilwilly -named after a trading estate where his guitars are made].

We also had a set of as yet unrecorded tunes called Trad3. To cap it off, we were treated to a self-composed "medieval sea shanty " called "Roll Out The Barrels Oh! ".

All in all, it was a great night, summed up by our host in one word-"Magic".

Peter Cowley