It’s hard to describe veteran English musician Brian Peters in just one quick phrase, because he does just about everything a folk performer can do. For nearly 20 years he’s been a singer of traditional and contemporary songs, a multi-instrumentalist whose specialty is button accordion and concertina, and a collector and reviver of old songs from the northwest of England. Plus, his resume entries include folk club organizer, music journalist, dance band guitarist, and record label manager. He’s a bespectacled middle-aged fellow who can be fairly serious-looking on stage, but the sunny spring in most of his squeezebox tunes belies that appearance.

Peters started playing professionally in 1981 with a gig at a Manchester folk club. He released his first album, Persistence of Memory, on the Fellside label in 1986. Its followup, Fools of Fortune, was voted 1988 Folk Album of the Year by Folk Roots magazine. His most recent recordings, on his own Pugwash label, are Sharper Than the Thorn (1996) and The Beast in the Box (1998). Both represent a thoughtful mix of well-produced vocal and instrumental acoustic music, mostly traditional songs and 200-year-old dance tunes with a few originals interspersed. Peters is joined by guests who include fiddlers Eliza Carthy (on Thorn) and Nancy Kerr (on Beast), Jenny Coxon on hammered dulcimer, and Gordon Tyrrall on flute and whistle.

I asked Peters what might attract him to a specific traditional piece. "I’m particularly interested in music of my own region," he explained. "So a lot of the time you’re dealing with old manuscript music. I think I started off with traditional melodeon music through people like the Old Swan Band, [who play] a southern English tradition based heavily on polkas. It’s great music, but after a while I started to look a bit closer to home, partly under the influence of Jamie Knowles, a tune collector whom I used to perform with, who has published several tune books based on old manuscript collections. Some of these old collections have dozens and dozens of tunes, and usually what makes one stick is little twists in them that maybe put them out of the ordinary, little sequences. Sometimes a very simple and straightforward tune on the printed page can be a great one when you actually sit down and play it. But generally I like them that are a little offbeat, that do odd things here and there."