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Black and white photo Mat Green and Andy Turner sitting by the roadside, only their fiddle and concertina are in colour

Mat Green & Andy Turner

Traditional English dance tunes and songs

Mat Green: fiddle

Andy Turner: anglo-concertina, melodeon, vocals

debut album out now!

Mat and Andy are both founder members of Magpie Lane providing the instrumental drive at the heart of the band's dance music repertoire.

Born and bred in Bampton in Oxfordshire, Mat Green recently celebrated 50 years of dancing the morris, including 25 years as Squire of Bampton Morris. He took up the fiddle at the age of 14, learning from Bampton musicians including Arnold Woodley and Frank Purslow. For many years he played with the Woodpecker Band, favourites on the English Ceilidh scene. He has developed a unique, utterly danceable, quintessentially English fiddle style.

Andy Turner developed a love of traditional song in his late teens. Like Mat, he has many years' experience playing for dance, having originally been strongly influenced by dancing to - and later playing with - the Oyster Ceilidh Band. He has played with Polkabilly, Geckoes and most recently The Oxford NAGS. He danced with Canterbury-based Oyster Morris in the 1980s, and is now the musician for Headington Quarry Morris Dancers. Andy has a punchy, rhythmic concertina style, but is also able to play in a slower, smoother style to accompany his own fine singing.
More at www.andyturnermusic.uk

Together, Mat and Andy play mainly traditional English dance tunes. They specialise in little-known tunes from eighteenth and nineteenth century village musicians' tunebooks, but essentially will play any good dance tune from almost anywhere! The tunes are interspersed with songs - again, mainly from English traditional sources.

Recordings

Time for a Stottycake

'Time for a Stottycake', Mat and Andy's debut CD as a duo, released January 2024 on Wild Goose records.

Cover of Time for a stottycake CD

This is a wonderful record indeed...
James Fagan, Thank Goodness It's Folk

Time For A Stottycake is folk music simply, and well, performed by two accomplished and experienced musicians and that’s quite a rarity these days..
Dai Jeffries, folking.com

You would be hard pressed to find a recording of two gentlemen more deeply immersed in English traditional song and dance... This is a fine album which I very much enjoyed... If you don’t get the chance to see them live then do treat yourself to this CD, make yourself comfortable and sit back and enjoy two performers on the top of their game.
Malcolm Woods, Essex Folk News

Well, this is an absolute delight. One of the UK's finest Anglo players and a fiddler with tradition running through his veins. Andy Turner and Mat Green are a joy to listen to, great tunes and songs played with delightfully understated arrangements. No imposed big band shouty arrangements just a grace note here and a harmony there. You are drawn in to the performance, the interplay and, more importantly, the music. Two instruments, and jolly nice chaps, in perfect affinity. English music played by those who understand, respect and revel in it. Buy a copy.
Martin Ellison

This is just my kind of album: unassuming but self-assured in the quality of its playing, the sort of album that reminds you of the quiet passion, brilliance and persistence of traditional music-making...

The familiarity of many of the tunes, such as the Bampton sets of Flowers Of Edinburgh/Princess Royal and Glorishears/Highland Mary, highlights just how good these two really are. The arrangements aren't flashy, and they eschew pyrotechnics in favour of the joy of playing together with an evident rapport and sympathetic understanding, as on their particularly fine set of Battle Of The Somme, with its unshowy harmonies...

It would be invidious to pick a favourite track, as the album is a solid and consistent pleasure. Describing it as "a comfort" risks misunderstanding, but this album really makes you feel like you've come home. Splendid stuff.

Paul Cowdell, Folk London

Buy the CD

Tracklist

  1. Rosalie the Prairie Flower / James Winder’s / Lucy Farr’s Barn Dance  -  audio sample
  2. The Banks of Inverary  -  audio sample
  3. Bobbing Joe / Kempshott Hunt  -  audio sample
  4. Auchdon House  / Blue Eyed Stranger
  5. The Barley Raking
  6. The High Tea / Lemmy Brazil’s
  7. Flowers of Edinburgh / Princess Royal
  8. On board a '98
  9. Old Black Joe / Banbury Bill
  10. Muffin Man  / Quickstep in the Battle of Prague / Welch's Polka
  11. Saucy Sailor
  12. Battle of the Somme
  13. The Golden Glove
  14. Glorishears / Highland Mary
  15. Nottingham Goose Fair
  16. Stottycake Polka / Boyne Water

Hampshire Dance Tunes

Mat and Andy previously contributed tracks to a CD on the Wild Goose label, released Autumn 2006, and no longer available. This CD featured dance tunes from a single nineteenth century musician, Richard Pyle, played by - among others - Tim Laycock, Paul Sartin, Roger Watson and the Bursleden Village Band.

For more information see the WildGoose Studios website.

 

Make sure you also check out the recordings of Magpie Lane.

Gigs

Sunday 21st April
Oxford Folk Festival

'Three in One’ Concert with Ian Giles and Three Pressed Men
The Blue Room, St Aldate's Tavern, 108 St Aldate's, Oxford OX1 1BU
12:30 - 3:30pm
See the 'Three in One' concert flyer for details

Wednesday 12th June
Faversham Folk Club

The Limes (formerly The Chimney Boy), Preston Street, Faversham, Kent ME13 8PG
www.pigglet.co.uk/favfolk

Monday 24th June
Cheltenham Folk Club

Sandford Park Alehouse, 20 High Street, Cheltenham GL50 1DZ

Saturday 17th to Friday 23rd August
Whitby Folk Week

www.whitbyfolk.co.uk
including concerts on Thursday and Friday with Magpie Lane

Saturday 14th September
Lewes Saturday Folk Club
www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org
postponed

Monday 7th October
Cellar Upstairs Folk Club, London

www.cellarupstairs.org.uk
postponed

Contact us

Phone: 07850 283005
Email: andyturner.info@gmail.com