On the Road Again!
It’s the end of April and we’re going on the road!
The winter was long and full of plotting and planning. Now it’s time for us to go on the road again. Between now and June we seem to travelling the length and breadth of the country. So where can you see us and what will we be doing?
We spent the dark winter months putting together a summery Swedish themed show which starts touring on the 13th April.
Smörgåsballad is an evening of music and tales from the Sweden. Banish the winter blues by finding out about the tradition of the Easter Witches, what happens if you pick seven different wild flowers and put them under your pillow at Midsummer, the real meaning of the midsummer majstång and participate in some traditional drinking songs celebrating the crayfish season. Be introduced to the ancient cow horn, willow flute, Swedish bagpipes and the ethereal nyckelharpa.
A visual treat for the eyes and the ears be transported to the land of the midnight sun. Enjoy some “nordic noir tales”: fall in love with the heroes and heroines, at all costs avoid the devil and never cross a nyckelharpa player.
We’re really excited to be taking this show on the road and you can expect some unexpected things! Come along and see!
We’ve also got some standard folk evenings, a couple of festivals and we’re also out in historical alter-ego (three different periods of time!) So have a look at the list, come and see us and make sure you say hello! We start this weekend with The Whispering Road …
Smörgåsballad
13th May – Haverfolk, Romford – preview showcase slot
18th May – Croydon Folk Club, Croydon
19th May – Great Knight Folk Club, Northants
21st May – Duton Hill Folk Club, Duton Hill, Essex
29th May – Granary Theare, Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk
2nd June – Hoy at Anchor Folk Club, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
5th June – Milkmaid Folk Club, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
The Whispering Road with Nick Hennessey
23rd April – seriouskitchen at Bishops Wood Centre, Crossway Green, Stourport on Severn, Worcs, DY13 9SE
24th April – seriouskitchen at Malvern Cube, Malvern, Worcs, WR14 2YF
25th April – seriouskitchen at Chinley Community Centre, High Peak, Derbyshire, SK23 6DJ
26th April – seriouskitchen at The Fleece Inn, Bretforton, WR11 7JE
12th June – seriouskitchen in York
13th June – seriouskitchen in Cheveley, Suffolk
Vicki & Jonny standard Duo Stuff
28th April – Dartford Folk Club, Dartford, Kent
6th May – Red Lion Folk Club, Birmingham – (Joint headline)
8th May – Rhyl Folk Club, Rhyl, Wales
9th May – Tredgar House Folk Festival, Newport, Gwent, Wales
17th May – Forty Hall May Event, London (Concert 7pm)
11th June – Bromsgrove Folk Club, Bromsgrove
24th June – Dorking Folk Club, Dorking, Surrey
Historical Stuff
3rd and 4th April – Framlingham Castle (Medieval)
15th and 16th May – Apsley House (Georgian)
24th and 25th May – Witley Court and Gardens (Victorian)
27th and 28th May – Pendennis Castle (Medieval)
If you can’t get to see us live you can visit the shop and buy assorted duo albums and Scandinavian tune books. By the time the autumn arrives we’ll have recorded The Whispering Road, a new duo album and diverse other projects. It’s going to be a busy summer!
lots of love
Vicki & Jonny
www.swan-dyer.co.uk
www.smorgasballad.co.uk
www.seriouskitchen.co.uk
Back in Stock
Hello!
We’ve had a fine old time touring around the country for the past few weeks. Now that we’re back home we’re dusting out the cobwebs and trying to tidy the house! We have a quiet few weeks – which is just as well because our Summer Swedish themed show is just round the corner and we’ve got a lot of preparation to do for it! We’ve built a whole website dedicated to the show, but we’ll talk more about that slightly closer to the time and have a big reveal.
We’ve finally got our map back up and running and all colour co-ordinated and having completely run out of my fiddle book we’ve had a restock and are back in business again. Hurrah!
🙂
Vicki & Jonny
Troll slaying in Devon
Hello!
We’re on the road again. This weekend sees us in Devon slaying trolls with the awesome storyteller Nick Hennessey. We’re spending three days down south here, so do come along and be entertained with our epic Swedish tale. (Details on the gigs page). Then on Monday we’re up to Runcorn in Cheshire for a duo gig, Tuesday we’re off to Chester to celebrate international bagpipe day and Wednesday we’re up to Lytham St Anne’s, before finally heading home again.
Hope to see you at one of those places!
🙂
Vicki
March Already?
Hello!
I can’t believe that it’s March already! We’ve had a quiet time post Christmas, catching up on all the emails, the sleep, learning new stuff. Jonny has just completed a book for Schott – no prizes for guessing – Scandinavian Tunes for Accordion. It’s been type set at the moment, so will be out sometime in the summer. I’m now busy with my next Schott book, more about that when the collection is finished! We’re in the middle of a little seriouskitchen tour at the moment, Dorset last weekend and Devon next weekend. So join us for some troll slaying!
We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and developing this spring and we have our first outing for a new trio coming up in April. Together with John Dipper we are Purcell’s Polyphonic Party (that might become the name of the show and we take a different name, we’re at that stage at the moment!) The best way to find out about it is to visit our new website (still under construction) and listen to our soundcloud clip (of us rehearsing really!) This is all just a sneak behind the curtain, but it’s going to be very exciting when we finally get out on tour. To get a real live sneak preview come along to the Zesty Playford Dance in Coventry on Sunday 19th April to hear us!
Next up is a brand new Swedish themed Summer show – smörgåsballad. Best visit that website too to find out about it! This starts to tour in May and we’re busy brushing up our Swedish accents. We’ve got a photoshoot for the poster this evening!
Anyway – practise beckons! I’ll try not to leave it so long before writing the next update!
🙂
Vicki (& Jonny)
Happy Christmas!
Hello!
We’re now half way through all our Christmas work. It’s been a hectic time running around from Worcester to Salford to the Isle of Wight. In the middle we put out a mail shot and since then we’ve been running a well trodden path to the post box each day with our Christmas album. It’s been wonderful to finally be able to sell the album having recorded it 10 months ago! It’s now getting radio play and has been voted album of the month on two radio stations.
We have the first of our Victorian Winter Warmer Concerts on Monday and we’re really excited. Finally after nearly a month of performing the songs around the country at Christmas Fayres and other Heritage sites we’ll be performing our complete show to a sold-out audience in our own home village! The publicity photos that we’re using for the show were taken at the St Barnabas Church Hall – check out the stop motion video taken by our wonderful photographer Terry.
We’re taking the show to Skirwith in Cumbria and Bretforton near Worcester. So although our Essex show is sold out, you can still catch it elsewhere in the country. Otherwise you’ll have to wait until next year when we take to as many places as we can!
So it’s all systems go, we’re up and down the country, so if we don’t get chance to say it before then.
Happy Christmas everyone!
🙂
Vicki & Jonny
Summer turned into Autumn and Autumn..
Hello!
It’s been a good time here at Vicki&Jonny HQ. Lots of things are finally coming into fruition. Here’s a little list of the projects…..
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A Sound of Christmas Past – we worked on this in January/February and although we’ve been selling it since May, we are finally approaching it’s release date. We’re celebrating with some gigs around the country of our Christmas Winter Warmer. Not our usual set list, but a very Christmassy Music Hall evening. Check out our special Christmas website for more details of how to see us be Christmassy. Also check out the webpage for the album. |
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Scandinavian Fiddle Tunes – Vicki worked on this last February/March and it’s now available! It’s a book of duets and although it’s a fiddle book, the CD is recorded by Vicki on nyckelharpa and is perfect the nyckelharpa. It’s been written out in a very clear way with simple audio so that it’s perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about playing Scandinavian tunes no matter what level the player. Check out its webpage here on our website. |
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Scandinavian Folk Tunes for Flute – Vicki worked on this last March/April and this is now available! It’s a second edition to the fiddle book. Really it’s the same book, but perfectly arranged for the boehm system flute. The keys have been changed and altered so that it covers a large range of the instrument. No more adapting to cope with the bottom notes of the fiddle, this is the book that I wish I’d had when I was learning flute when I was younger. Check out its webpage here on our website. |
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Days ‘o Grace by Hector Gilchrist – Vicki and Jonny worked on this in July and it’s now available. This is an album of Hector singing the songs that he loves accompanied by us. It features the full range of instrumentation and lots of and lots of the newly added oktavharpa. (If you think you can hear a ‘cello – it’s not, it’s a nyckelharpa, you can hear an example on the wildgoose website, half way through this track) It was great fun and we’ll be playing for a launch event in January. |
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The Boy in the Clouds – Vicki worked on translating this during 2013 and it’s finally available. I had a lot of fun translating this wonderful children’s book. This book takes the reader in to a wonderful new fantasy world up in the clouds. Suitable for age 10 upwards it’ll make a superb Christmas present. You can buy it from the wetfootmusic publishing website. |
So as you can see we’ve had a really creative time this year, lots of things to add to the Christmas list. We’ve got some new projects lined up for next year with tours being set up. Watch this space – we’ll try to write something a bit more often!
😀
Vicki & Jonny
Recording with Hector
Hello!
We’ve just got back from a 9 day stint of recording at Wildgoose studio with Hector Gilchrist. It was hard work, but good fun. We brought out all the big guns, the car was packed to the gunnels. More nyckeharpa than you can shake sticks at and a really good
workout for Otto the Oktavharpa. The weather was incredibly hot, so we were grateful for the stream at the bottom of the garden. Now we just sit back and wait to see what comes out at the end of the day.
We’ll let you all know with a teaser track as soon as we get some tracks back.
🙂
Vicki & Jonny
Time to pre-order Vicki’s new Scandinavian tunes book!
Scandinavian Fiddle Tunes
It’s been a long time in the making, we fought bird song, we fought houses being built, we fought old driveways being dug up, but the time is here. It’s time to pre-order Vicki’s new Scandinavian Fiddle tunes book. Of course it’s also very, very good for the nyckelharpa too…. Get your order in now so that we can make sure we get enough copies from Schott as soon as it’s back from the press!
We’re really excited about this book!
The book contains many of the standard favourite tunes in the current Scandi scene in the UK and many more. Freshly harmonised and set for either nyckelharpa or violin.
All 73 tunes are included on a CD recorded by Vicki on the nyckelharpa.
If you are in the UK:
If you are overseas:
Free Ring Tones
Hello!
On our old website we used to have a few ring tones that you could download and use on your mobile phones. So we decided it was time to bring them back again! So here they are. Download and enjoy!
mp3s
iPhone
🙂
Vicki & Jonny
A Sound of Christmas Past
Hello all!
Since we got back from our December work we’ve been beavering away on a new album. We can now reveal that it was indeed a Christmas album. It’s now arrived safe and sound and we can store it away ready for the autumn. Of course we’re going to sell it throughout the summer, so you can visit the ‘Sound of Christmas Past’ webpage and order your copy right now.
Just like Red House you can also buy a book of all the words and music. Our hope is that families will join in with our Christmas Festivities and sing along with the help of the book!
We’ll keep some copies out for anyone hard core enough to get their copy now!
Visit the Sound of Christmas Past webpage.
😀
Vicki & Jonny
