John Spiers
English musician
title: "John Spiers" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1975-births", "musicians-from-birmingham,-west-midlands", "alumni-of-king's-college,-cambridge", "english-folk-musicians", "living-people", "date-of-birth-missing-(living-people)", "english-melodeon-players", "21st-century-british-accordionists", "bellowhead-members"] description: "English musician" topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spiers" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary English musician ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox musical artist"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | John Spiers |
| image | File:Bellowhead's John Spiers (6001872234) Crop.jpg |
| caption | John Spiers performing with Bellowhead in 2011 |
| birth_name | John Spiers |
| birth_date | 1975 |
| birth_place | Birmingham, England |
| death_date | |
| genre | Folk music |
| occupation | Musician |
| associated_acts | {{flatlist |
| website | |
| :: |
| name = John Spiers | image = File:Bellowhead's John Spiers (6001872234) Crop.jpg | alt = | caption = John Spiers performing with Bellowhead in 2011 | image_size = | birth_name = John Spiers | alias = | birth_date = 1975 | birth_place = Birmingham, England | origin = | death_date = | death_place = | genre = Folk music | occupation = Musician | years_active = | label = | associated_acts = {{flatlist|
- Bellowhead
- Spiers and Boden
- Peter Knight | website =
John Spiers (born 1975) is an English melodeon, concertina and bandoneon player.
Early life
Spiers was born in Birmingham but moved to Abingdon at an early age. His father is a Morris dancer. He attended John Mason School in Abingdon, and then went on to study genetics at King's College, Cambridge. As a child he learned the organ and piano and when he was a university student he began to play the piano accordion and melodeon. After spending some time busking he started a new career selling melodeons, of which he owns several.
Career
thumb|left|Performing with [[Jackie Oates]] at Purbeck Valley Folk Festival in 2021 Spiers is best known for his work with Jon Boden in the duo Spiers and Boden and the band Bellowhead. He also played with Eliza Carthy's former band The Ratcatchers in the mid-noughties. After Bellowhead's dissolution in 2016, Spiers released two albums with Peter Knight: Well Met (2018) and Both in a Tune (2021); the latter has been described as "an extraordinary collaboration between two musicians at the absolute top of their game". Spiers also plays regularly with Knight's Gigspanner Big Band, whose 2020 album Natural Invention was described by Folk Radio UK as "some of the most important and exhilarating art ever to sit under the banner of folk music". Spiers performs regularly in a duo with Jackie Oates, mostly but not just at Nettlebed Folk Club; Oates and Spiers released a joint album in 2020 called Needle Pin, Needle Pin. A Christmas album, A Midwinter's Night, was released in December 2024.
Compositions
Several of Spiers' compositions have become English folk session classics, most notably the jig "Jiggery Pokerwork" (a homage to his first melodeon), and a tune encapsulating his views of the Conservative Party. The former piece is well known among melodeon players for its notoriously unplayable B-section, particularly the infamous "B of doom".
Other publications
- The John Spiers Tunebook (2002) – 32 tunes with chords
: 59 original tunes with chords
: a collection of 94 popular session tunes with chords
References
References
- Hodgkinson, Will. (19 September 2008). "Folk has a new sex appeal". [[The Guardian]].
- "John Spiers - About".
- Hartley, Emma. (2011-08-03). "The Glamour Cave: How squeezy is John Spiers?".
- John Spiers. (2020-12-01). "Squeezebox Advent Calendar with John Spiers - December 1st - Eric Martin 2 row in D/G".
- (2018-03-07). "Peter Knight & John Spiers: Well Met".
- Wilks, Jon. (2022-02-21). "Knight & Spiers, Both in a Tune - a review".
- (2020-04-01). "Gigspanner Big Band: Natural Invention (Artist of the Month)".
- "Jackie Oates on new album Needle Pin, Needle Pin, working with John Spiers and 'lace tells' – Folk Witness".
- "Bandcamp : Jackie Oates and John Spiers".
- John Spiers. (2016-11-21). "Fuck The Tories".
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