My first love is for traditional English song and music but my repertoire also includes some great songs from other traditions and more recent compositions. While I learnt my trade as an unaccompanied singer, I now also relish playing one of my English concertinas, both on its own and accompanying my singing.

I enjoy the formality of singing at festivals & folk clubs and I am happy to go a long way for my singing. For instance, at Easter 2007, I sang at the Canterbury Folk Festival in Christchurch, New Zealand. Not only that, I relish the rough and tumble of pub singing, where I mostly perform well-known songs, such as Drunken Sailor, Leaving of Liverpool, Lincolnshire Poacher, My Grandfather’s Clock and You are My Sunshine. I have also played cabaret spots at formal dinners, singing such rousing songs as Jerusalem, Over the Hills and Far Away and Swing Low Sweet Chariot.

My particular joy is singing sea songs & shanties. This has led me to sing solo at maritime festivals: for instance I performed solo at Harwich in October 2008 and at Enkhuizen in Holland in February 2009. In addition, I was a member of the now-defunked Shellback Chorus and Navy Cut, a shanty crew,. I have sung at folk & maritime festivals all over the UK, as far apart as Edinburgh, Lancaster, Great Yarmouth, Harwich, Falmouth, Bude and Portsmouth, as well as in Holland, New Zealand and the USA.

My interest in morris dancing has meant that I am a member of several teams. In recent years this has led me to play and sing at a number of large international festivals, including in China, Estonia, Inner Mongolia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine and the USA.

The English concertinas I play are my pride and joy, being a Lachenal extended treble Edeophone with metal ends dated c1920 and a Wheatstone Baritone with wooden ends dated c1903.