Two of folk’s finest instrumentalists join forces for duo debut that speaks volumes.
The credentials of Will Pound and Jenn Butterworth could never be in doubt – an outstanding acoustic guitarist and a harmonica wizard/melodeon maestro of off-the-scale brilliance. Glasgow-based Butterworth won the 2019 Scots Trad Music Awards Musician of the Year accolade while Pound has been nominated for the coveted Musician of the Year title at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards no less than three times, named Best Newcomer by Songlines Magazine in 2014 and won FATEA Magazine’s Musician of the Year title in both 2014 and 2015.
Both have been involved in an array of projects and collaborations – Jenn as a member of Scotland’s Kinnaris Quintet and as one of the Songs of Separation project’s 10-strong female line-up – their release won Best Album at the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Jenn has linked up with mandolin player Laura-Beth Salter and Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton while Will’s previous partnerships include duos with Dan Walsh and Eddy Jay.
Since his debut album ‘A Cut Above’ (2013) Will has also appeared on BBC Breakfast TV and his music has been played on Radios 2, 3 and 6 and BBC World Service. A keen exponent of the Morris tradition he released Through the Seasons: A Year in Morris and Folk Dance in 2018. Notably, he also played harmonica on the Hillsborough charity single, joining a line-up of pop and football stars, on He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (2012 Christmas No 1) and has featured on two Robbie Williams’ albums and the Sky TV comedy drama Breeders.
But it was a chance meeting at a folk session in 2018 which led to Will and Jenn’s music travelling around the world as a viral internet sensation. Subsequently Jenn guested on Pound’s A Day Will Come ‘E.U’ album (a MOJO Top 10 album of 2020) when he took on the huge challenge of learning 27 tunes from the EU member states.
Now Volume 1 (LuluBug Records) brings their high energy live show to life in a nine-track album of musical cat and mouse. They duck and dive, chase and hide in their intricate and intuitive question-and-answer conversations in an upbeat release sure to banish the winter blues. Produced by Jenn and Will alongside Keir Long it was recorded live at Glasgow’s GloWorm Studios over just two days.
With the tune sets mostly abbreviated to snappy one word track titles – ‘Blackthorn’ ‘Beggarman’ and so on, the album wastes no time in getting straight to the point. Original tune sets from Pound sit cheek by jowl with traditional Irish jigs and Scottish dance tunes while Jenn performs the only song on the album – lending her fine, clear voice to Peggy Seeger’s anti-nuclear weapons song Better Things (written in 1958 for the Aldermaston Marches – a song that still resonates 64 years on).
Album opener Reckoned melds Pound’s tune The Reckoning (inspired by the playing of fiddle legends Liz Carroll and Martin Hayes) with The Barrowburn Reel, composed by dance band leader Addie Harper and Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Backstep. Almost five glorious minutes of Pound’s dancing harmonica and Butterworth’s driving guitar.
Two infectious Irish jigs from the Rapper Morris dance tradition which grew in the pit villages of Co Durham and Northumberland conjoin on Blackthorn – the start with the traditional gentler The Blackthorn Stick before getting in a lather with The Irish Washerwoman. Will throws some bourrées into the mix with two tunes written in 2020 - All Roads Lead to Caernarfon recalls the trips he took to and from north Wales (where he now lives) following the lockdown while the Bb Bourrée takes inspiration from the French dance tradition.
With a quick switch to melodeon, Will’s composing also comes to the fore in The Workout Suite which opens with The Scoops Reel and ends in The Last Hurrah sandwiched by The Frenetic. It derives from a challenge Will set himself a few years ago – to figure out every single major scale on the D/G diatonic accordion! A curve ball follows as the pair turn their attentions to none other than German-British baroque composer Handel with their spirited Quebecois-inspired take on his classic The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba – a firm favourite in their live shows.
The only time the pace really slows is for the solemn retreat march The Battle of the Somme, penned by pipe master William Lawrie who died at 35 after the WW1 battle. The elegant legato of Pound’s melodeon is underpinned by Butterworth’s subtle and sensitive guitar. Then we are back to bouncy rhythms for Beggarman which opens with the traditional Soldier’s Joy, the old fiddle dance tune popular in the American tradition – but it has roots in Scotland where Robbie Burns is said to have used the melody for a song in his cantata ‘The Jolly Beggars’. This links to the title of the second tune in the set The Jolly Beggarman - a well-travelled tune which appears in multiple traditions.
Album closer Speedy pins together two great tunes from the English tradition, starting more sedately and wistfully with the beautifully judged Speed the Plough, collected by Cecil Sharp from gypsy fiddler John Locke in 1909, before the duo hit the accelerator again for The Hesleyside Reel which Will learnt from the playing of late harmonica legend Will Atkinson.
Two forces of nature. Two crazily talented musicians. A partnership made in musical heaven. And this is just Volume 1!
Photo Credits:
(1)-(2) Will Pound
& Jenn Butterworth
(unknown/website).