dirty linen #94

Little Johnny England
Rocking Their Traditions
by Tom Nelligan

In Great Britain, as in much of the rest of the world, there's an ongoing if sometimes low-key revival of danceable music that's based on sounds and rhythms that predate flashing strobes and ear-damaging amplification. The classic mix of squeezebox and fiddle, reinforced as often as not by electric guitar, bass, and drums, is alive and well in the hands of ambitious new bands that build on both their cultural traditions and on the contemporary folk-rock catalog of the past 30 years. One of the newest and best practitioners in this category is the quintet called Little Johnny England, whose music gets audiences up on their feet and who sums up its mission with the slogan "rocking the English tradition." On the strength of a well-received debut album and steady touring, this band is building a reputation as one of the U.K.'s most promising new-generation roots bands.

Based in the Oxford/Banbury/Northampton folk-rock belt, Little Johnny England comprises melodeon player Gareth Turner, singer/guitarist P.J. Wright, fiddler Guy Fletcher, bassist Mat Davies, and drummer Edd Frost. Turner is the band's founder and the composer of most of their instrumental sets, a soft-spoken man who wrestles his squeezebox like a sturdy blacksmith working a bellows. The tall, angular Wright is a master of screaming Stratocaster slide runs and flinty vocals, a witty musical veteran from Leicester who's a couple decades older than his bandmates. Fletcher is a hyper-kinetic dancing fiddler, fond of speed and soaring ornamentation. Like Turner, he comes from the village of Moulton in Northamptonshire, where they played in local ceilidh bands. The rock-hard rhythm section of Davies and Frost, who formerly worked together in the Oxfordshire band Clarion, recall both the energy and the creativity of two of their role models, the longtime Fairport Convention team of Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks.

"I've written tunes in all kinds of genres," Turner explained in a phone conversation last January. "There's various different influences born out of having an interest in every different style for the squeezebox. There's a Cajun influence, a Celtic influence, an Eastern European feel on various bits and pieces — just basically having a go and seeing what the instrument can do. As soon as I got a handle on it I just listened to everybody and anybody that had ever made an album." He mentioned John Kirkpatrick as a particular influence, as well as Albion Band and Edward II box-squeezer Simon Care, an old friend with whom he recorded a 1997 duo album called Two's Up. "I basically grew up with him. He was playing before me and we lived in the same village," Turner explained.

Turner originally conceived of Little Johnny England as an electric country dance band, taking the name from a children's skipping song heard around Northamptonshire. But during its formative stages, it acquired another dimension with the addition of Wright's voice, guitar, and songs. A 25-year veteran of the English rock scene with a resumé that includes stints with the bands Family and Halcyon and two decades backing rocker Steve Gibbons, Wright in 1999 was championing a set of songs written by his old college mate Pete Scrowther. "At the time I was playing with the Steve Gibbons Band," Wright recalled, "and I had a 70s Burritos country rock thing called The Flying Tortellinis. And then, lo and behold, I bumped into Gareth and this band, and it was just so obvious that we had to do some of Scrowther's songs because they were so fantastic — folk-rock for the next century."

This is an excerpt from issue #94.

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