John Spiers (born 1975) is an English

melodeon Melodeon may refer to: * Melodeon (accordion), a type of button accordion *Melodeon (organ), a type of 19th-century reed organ *Melodeon (Boston, Massachusetts), a concert hall in 19th-century Boston * Melodeon Records, a U.S. record label in the ...

concertina A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It consists of expanding and contracting bellows, with buttons (or keys) usually on both ends, unlike accordion buttons, which are on the front. The ...

and

bandoneon The bandoneon (or bandonion, es, bandoneón) is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It is a typical instrument in most tango ensembles. As with other members of the concertina family, the bandoneon is held bet ...

player. He is widely recognised as one of the leading English melodeon players of his generation.

Career

left, Performing with Jackie Oates at Purbeck Valley Folk Festival in 2021 Spiers is best known for his work with

Jon Boden Jon Boden (born 17 March 1977) is a singer, composer and musician, best known as lead singer and main arranger of Bellowhead. His first instrument is the fiddle and he is a proponent of "English traditional fiddle style" and also of "fiddle si ...

in the duo

Spiers and Boden Spiers and Boden are an English folk duo. John Spiers plays melodeon and concertina, while Jon Boden sings and plays fiddle and guitar while stamping the rhythm on a stomp box. Spiers and Boden were founding members of the folk band Bellowhea ...

and the band

Bellowhead Bellowhead is an English contemporary folk band, active from 2004 to 2016, reforming in 2020. The eleven-piece act played traditional dance tunes, folk songs and shanties, with arrangements drawing inspiration from a wide range of musical style ...

. He also played with

Eliza Carthy Eliza Amy Forbes Carthy, MBE (born 23 August 1975) is an English folk musician known for both singing and playing the fiddle. She is the daughter of English folk musicians singer/guitarist Martin Carthy and singer Norma Waterson. Life and care ...

's former band The Ratcatchers in the mid-noughties. Since Bellowhead called it a day in 2016, Spiers has released two highly acclaimed albums with Peter Knight, Well Met (2018) and Both in a Tune (2021), which has been described as 'An extraordinary collaboration between two musicians at the absolute top of their game'; he also plays regularly with Peter Knight'
Gigspanner Big Band
whose 2020 album Natural Invention has been described as 'a piece of music that feels thrillingly, frighteningly, beautifully of our time... some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music'. Spiers also performs regularly in a duo with

Jackie Oates Jackie Oates is an English folk singer and fiddle player. Life Oates was born in Congleton in Cheshire in 1983 but grew up in Staffordshire. At the age of 18, she moved to Devon to study English literature at Exeter University and was based in ...

, mostly but not just at

Nettlebed Nettlebed is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire in the Chiltern Hills about northwest of Henley-on-Thames and southeast of Wallingford. The parish includes the hamlet of Crocker End, about east of the village. The 2011 Census recor ...

Folk Club; Oates and Spiers released a joint album in 2020 called Needle Pin, Needle Pin.

Compositions

Several of Spiers' compositions have become English folk session classics, most notably the jig Jiggery Pokerwork (a homage to his first melodeon), and a tune encapsulating his views of the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

Personal life

Spiers was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

but moved to Abingdon at an early age. His father is a Morris dancer. He attended

John Mason School John Mason School is a secondary school with Sixth Form in the town of Abingdon-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. History Established as a grammar school in 1960, Berkshire Education Committee named it John Mason School after sixteenth-century intellect ...

in Abingdon, and then went on to study

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

. As a child he learned the

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

and when he was a university student he began to play the

piano accordion A piano accordion is an accordion equipped with a right-hand keyboard similar to a piano or organ. Its acoustic mechanism is more that of an organ than a piano, as they are both aerophones, but the term "piano accordion"—coined by Guido Deiro ...

and

. After spending some time

busking Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is pr ...

he started a new career selling melodeons, of which he owns several.Squeezebox Advent Calendar, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkcjrfhh0DE He and his partner have two sons.

Other publications

*''The John Spiers Tunebook'' (2002) – 32 tunes with chords * : 59 original tunes with chords * : a collection of 94 popular session tunes with chords

References

External links

*
Spiers and Boden official siteBellowhead official site
1975 births People from Birmingham, West Midlands English folk musicians Living people Date of birth missing (living people) English melodeon players 21st-century accordionists Bellowhead members {{UK-keyboardist-stub