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Review: Peter Knight & John Spiers, Downend Folk & Roots – ‘More than a little extraordinary’
Over the years some incredible folk musicians have found sanctuary next to the altar in this church on the South Gloucestershire border. Glorious voices, wonderful fiddles and all manner of lovely stringed things have conjured some of the best music you will ever hear.
It comes as no surprise, then, that when two folk legends come to warm up a chilly evening, things get more than a little extraordinary.
To say that Peter Knight (Steeleye Span/ Gigspanner) simply plays fiddle somehow feels disingenuous. He makes it sing as though it were lifted from the pages of an enchanted fairytale.
John Spiers (Bellowhead) is his perfect foil, a series of melodeons holding the line, stretching the canvas that allows Knight’s magical colours free rein.
Peter Knight and John Spiers at Downend Folk & Roots club – photo: Barry Savell
Starting with Cuckoo Set, three tunes with a Cuckoo theme, the fiddle and melodeon build layer upon layer.
There’s a slow start, a Zen-like meditation, Spiers setting up a heartbeat-thrum while Knight trills and chirps. It flows like water, you blink and suddenly you’ve become entirely immersed, the sound is everywhere, a melodeon drone matching your internal rhythms, fiddle flitting through tree-tops.
You realise that if every woodland walk was soundtracked by this you’d probably go down to the woods way more often. Then it changes course again: two Morris Dance tunes swirl past with stomps and an irrepressible jubilation.
What the duo do to Scarborough Fair would have folk purists clutching their leather tankards in despair. Spiers says that they “play with” the tune rather than just “play” it, and he’s not wrong.
Knight improvises around the melody; you catch wisps of it every now and again as he chases down increasingly wondrous alleyways. Notes tumble from his violin, they float and soar, they creep and scuttle, they explode and cavort. This goes so far beyond your regular folk fiddler. This is astonishing.
Then it all changes again.
Both are acclaimed folk performers in their own right – photo: Barry Savell
A series of French dance tunes are sprightly and fun, Spiers’ melodeon to the fore, pushing toes to tap, feet to pound the floor.
Knight starts to twist the tunes in odd directions and Spiers grins while his squeezebox laughs an evil-goblin laugh. There are jaunty hornpipes, 800-year-old dance tunes and foot tappers of all types. Knight and Spiers are in perfect step, in perfect control.
For Knight’s From a Lullaby Kiss he fuses an Eastern European frenzy with classical stylings until his creaking voice adds an unspeakable poignancy; the contrast between the fluidity of the violin playing and the vulnerability of the voice is intense.
In many ways John Spiers seems quite content to allow Peter Knight’s dexterity to take centrestage – his shy grin suggests he’s loving it as much as we are – but without his melodeon backbone, Knight would have no support.
The drones on Bonny at Morn suggest a church organ or the howls of a Northumbrian Gale. The relentless rhythm for La Dance de Madam Meymerie is the dancefloor that allows for Knight’s mushroom-gathering abandon. It is the melodeon that circles slowly on The Hawsley Schottische while the fiddle peeks its head up, whipping at snatches of the tune.
The highlight of a brilliant set is Easter Thursday, a triple hornpipe from the 1600s. It’s just so much fun. The tune cascades from Knight’s fiddle, notes bouncing off down the aisle, grinning and stomping.
If a hornpipe was something that sailors danced to help with the rhythms of their work, then this ship must have been full sail strung the whole time. It fizzes and leaps, Knight and Spiers putting the whole thing, the whole night, into constant motion.
Before all of this virtuosity, a three-piece from Wiltshire were mighty entertaining. Fly Yeti Fly are a core duo of Lorna Somerville and Darren Fisher with Alex Pearson on double bass.
Their 60s flecked dream-folk-pop was beautifully November-scented. Ice cracked on Firewood as Somerville’s voice warmed the pews, her mandolin blowing winds in from less bitter places. Fisher’s harmonies complement her dreamy vocals on Mermaid Song, the two of them weaving tales as easily as breathing. They wrap us in a crushed velvet cape, one with a paisley lining. Lovely stuff.
That roll-call of brilliant musicians that have made their way to Downend just keeps getting longer. Tonight saw some of the very best.
All images: Barry Savell
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