John Roberts and Tony Barrand

Widely acclaimed for their lively and entertaining presentations of English folksongs, John Roberts and Tony Barrand have performed at major festivals, colleges, clubs and coffee-houses throughout the United States, Canada, and their native Britain. They sing the ballads and songs of the sea, of rural pursuits, of social and sociable situations, of industrial toil and strife, and much more, typically arranging their material thematically to better illustrate the lives and the social history of the people who made and sang the songs. Their songs are punctuated with tales, monologues, dances and tunes, giving a more complete appreciation of the wealth, diversity, and vitality of the English folk tradition.  Both are active in the folk dance arena as well as in song. Tony is well-known as a Morris and clog dancer, and though he has now hung up his bells his teaching is still in demand across England and North America. His book Six Fools And A Dancer has been hailed as the definitive work on Morris Dance in the United States.   

Throughout the more than thirty-five years they have performed together, John and Tony have made full-length thematic presentations a meeting point for their educational interests as well as their performing and entertainment skills. One of their early recordings, Across The Western Ocean, was distilled from a presentation of songs and readings illustrating life on the transatlantic packet ships of the early 19th century. Their celebrated Christmas pageant, Nowell Sing We Clear, gives a version of the Christmas story through traditional folksong, plus illustrations of traditional midwinter customs, including a mummer’s play. Other seasonal productions include To Welcome In The Spring They devised and performed in An Evening At The English Music Hall.

 They also specialize in programs documenting the work of some of the major folksong collectors: for example, they have presented lecture/concerts illustrating the legacy of Cecil Sharp for the Smithsonian Institution, and the work of Percy Grainger in a symposium at the Salem College of Music. They were invited, by the curator of an art exhibion of the works of Maxfield Parrish, to prepare a program of songs complementing the exhibit; they presented this at several of the museums hosting the collection, includingh the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.   In their many years together as a professional team, Roberts and Barrand have recorded with a number of companies including Swallowtail, Front Hall, Folk-Legacy, and National Geographic. Latterly, Naulakha Redux is a selection of Kipling lyrics, mostly in settings by the late Peter Bellamy, who reunited Kipling’s poetry with the melodic styles of traditional folksong and music hall that Kipling was familiar with. This recording developed from a presentation of several sets of Kipling songs John and Tony sang at the re-opening of the restored “Naulakha,” the home Kipling had built in Vermont. Heartoutbursts, is a selection of the songs collected in England by Percy Grainger, including all the pieces he included in his famous Lincolnshire Posy suite. And most recently, Golden Hind released an expanded CD version of their classic “pub singing” recording, Live at Holsteins; their latest Nowell Sing We Clear CD, Just Say Nowell, was also released in time for their 2000 Christmas tour And this year Twiddlum Twaddlum was released to celebrate their 35 years together.