John Kirkpatrick occupies a leading position among British folk musicians, drawing on extensive knowledge of folk traditions together with exceptional command of his instruments. He demonstrates particular command of the button accordion, Anglo concertina, and melodeon while pursuing solo recordings, joint projects with ex-wife Sue Harris, a performer on hammered dulcimer and oboe, during the 1980s, and studio appearances alongside an extensive roster of artists that encompasses Richard Thompson, Pere Ubu, Steeleye Span, Tarika Sammy, Gerry Rafferty, Tony Bird, and Loudon Wainwright III. As a founding member of Brass Monkey, the band he established with British guitar virtuoso Martin Carthy, Kirkpatrick has merged longstanding folk material with contemporary sensibilities.
His engagement with traditional music began after he entered a morris side organized by a neighborhood church youth group. He started on melodeon and shifted to button accordion inside fifteen months. Following the establishment of a reputation through semi-professional groups such as the Troubadours, the Rhythmics, and the Dingles Chillybom Band, he first appeared on record as a supporting musician on Tony Rose’s 1970 release Young Hunting. The next year he contributed to Rose’s Under the Greenwood Tree, Roy Bailey’s self-titled album, and Shirley Collins & the Albion Country Band’s No Roses. In 1972 he issued his debut solo album, Jump at the Sun, assisted by Ashley Hutchings and Richard Thompson; shortly afterward he took part in Sandy Denny’s Sandy, Thompson’s Henry the Human Fly, and the multi-artist morris collection Morris On.
The year 1974 proved especially productive for Kirkpatrick. Beyond issuing his initial duo album with Sue Harris, The Rose of Britain’s Isle, which Folk Review named album of the year, he performed on Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and Hokey Pokey as well as Hutchings’ The Compleat Dancing Master.
Kirkpatrick’s association with Martin Carthy originated during their shared tenure with the Albion Band in 1973. That same year Carthy appeared on Kirkpatrick’s collection of Cotswold morris tunes, Plain Capers: Morris Dance Tunes from the Cotswolds, issued in 1976. The rapport between the two musicians led to Kirkpatrick’s invitation to join Carthy’s electro-acoustic group Steeleye Span. In addition to his contributions to the album Storm Force 10 and the 1977 farewell tour, Kirkpatrick participated with Steeleye Span in a National Theatre staging of Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise.
After Steeleye Span disbanded, Kirkpatrick and Carthy joined trumpeter Howard Evans, whom they had encountered during the Lark Rise production, to create the trio Brass Monkey in 1979. By the time their self-titled debut appeared in 1983, trombonist Richard Cheetham and percussionist Martin Brinsford had joined the lineup. Although they completed a second album, See How It Runs, in 1986, individual commitments prompted the group’s dissolution the following year. Ten years later the members reconvened for a brief British tour in 1997 and recorded their third album, Sound & Rumour, in 1998.
During the intervening period Kirkpatrick’s command of traditional British music led to his selection as presenter of the six-week BBC radio series Squeezing Around the World in 1991. He maintained a range of other activities, performing with the John Kirkpatrick Band—whose members included Michael Gregory on drums and percussion, Graeme Taylor on guitar, mandolin, and banjo, Paul Burgess on fiddle, keyboards, recorder, and backing vocals, and Dave Berry on bass guitar, fretless bass, and tuba—while also touring in a melodeon trio with Italy’s Riccardo Tesi and France’s Marc Perrone and appearing with the Shropshire Bedlams Morris Dance Team.
Entering the new century he sustained a consistent program of recording and concerts. Releases from the 2000s include the 2003 collection Garrick’s Delight, containing forty-eight traditional English songs along with jigs, polkas, and additional dance tunes, and the 2005 album Sultans of Squeeze recorded with accordionist Chris Parkinson. The Christmas recording Carolling & Crumpets appeared in 2006, followed in 2007 by Make No Bones, which combined traditional and original material. The subsequent decade brought further albums such as 2011’s God Speed the Plough, devoted to songs about farmers, 2015’s Tunes from the Trenches, featuring material from the two World Wars, and 2017’s Coat-Tails Flying, a mixture of concert favorites and previously unreleased songs.
