One of the UK folk scene’s most exciting young duos will be the headline guests as the highly successful Downend Folk & Roots continues its Autumn/Winter concert series.
JANICE BURNS & JON DORAN are an Anglo-Scottish duo who came together after discovering a shared love of traditional music. They find their songs in archives that span the depths of our history – songs that tell vivid stories about the nature of life and our place in the world.
Janice & Jon’s compelling storytelling comes alive through tight vocal harmonies and sensitive interplay between mandolin, bouzouki and guitar. Their arrangements have a spellbinding presence and an understated energy that transports their songs from the pages of books and manuscripts into the imagination of the listener.
The duo met whilst studying folk and traditional music at Newcastle University, including a year spent at the University of South-East Norway together. Since then, they’ve gone from strength to strength, with recent performances at the likes of Sage Gateshead, Manchester Folk Festival and Edinburgh Tradfest. Their self-titled EP was released in 2020 to overwhelmingly positive feedback, including airplay on BBC Radio 2.
Folk songs have always travelled, put down new roots, borrowed and evolved. Janice & Jon’s upcoming album No More the Green Hills, set for release this month, brings together songs that have survived through the ages, shapeshifting and adapting to changing environments as they’ve been passed from singer to singer. Exploring man’s relationship with nature, love and loss, these are songs with an enduring resonance for audiences everywhere.
Joining Janice & Jon on the bill will be Bristol songwriter DAN WELTMAN, whose new solo album Rivers In My Mind is a stark but affirming meditation on love and loss, displaying a flair for beautifully poised, folk-influenced songcraft. The singer with Bristol band Snails, as well as one third of old-time stringband The Ninetree Stumblers, his solo material branches away from Snails' quicksilver psych-pop into darker emotional terrain while retaining the same gift for a melody that seeds and blooms in the listener's memory.
Produced by Lukas Drinkwater, Dan filters American influences (1960's Greenwich Village via 1970's widescreen country) through the same gently surreal English lens once peered into by Ray Davies, Bill Fay and Nick Drake among others. Dan will get the music underway with a 25-minute set at 7.45pm.
Tickets for the event, which takes place at Christ Church Downend on Friday 18 November 2022, are available online HERE and from MELANIE'S KITCHEN in Downend (cash only). They are priced at £14 each in advance or £16 on the door. Doors open at 7.30pm and the music starts around 7.45pm.
There will be a bar, stocking cider, soft drinks, wine, hot drinks and locally-brewed real ale from locally-based HOP UNION BREWERY. Audience members are encouraged to bring their own glass/mug/tankard, as well as reusable bottles for water, as part of the drive to be more environmentally aware. There is a 50p discount for those that do. There will also be sweet treats available at the bar courtesy of the Radstock-based GREAT CAKE COMPANY, as well as a prize draw, which helps to fund the support artists for each concert.