Music was part of home, school and life from an early age...my family loves music and my siblings and I were lucky enough to have ready access to instruments and lessons. I have had some amazing teachers, notably Peter Ellis and Duck Baker, who enabled my whole approach to music, which is curious, collaborative and evolving. I love to improvise, write and explore, but always informed by a sense of roots and traditions.

 

These days I play folk and bluegrass music with guitar, banjo, anglo-concertina and voice. After three decades of performing, recording and writing with various bands in many genres, exploring the rich traditions of American folk, blues and bluegrass , West Africa with Sefo Kanoute, and my own songwriting as part of Nobodaddy, my focus as a solo artist is now on folk music with links to my native East Anglia and the wider British Isles. Alongside this I am lucky to get to play in bands and as a session player with some fabulous roots musicians.

​

I am interested in the ways that music, people and place intertwine in music that explores themes of our relationship to the natural world, our land and each other. For years I couldn’t find a way into the music of the country I live in, but since the pandemic, something has shifted; I feel deeply drawn to the songs and tunes of my ancestors in Britain and Ireland, songs that have been survived because they may carry deep wisdom and knowledge that can help us face the challenges of the 21st century…or just tell a good story!

 

Alongside that, and intertwined increasingly with music, is my passion for natural history and social justice. This informs my creative life, through projects like Lutestring, as well as my work as a person-centred coach and facilitator, in which roles I love working with creative and changemaking humans.