Franny - vocals, keyboards, octave mandola, flute and whistle. Franny does the arrangements of our tunes and songs and has also composed original songs and tunes which we play.
Ted - vocals, guitar and 5 string banjo. Ted has also written some of our tunes.
John - fiddle and occasional mandolin - also (trainee) webmaster and sound engineer.
John and Ted are regular guest musicians for The Woodsiders barn dance band and John also plays with The Haymakers. They both play in a pub band, the Billy Dooz, which appears at The Vine in Hambledon on the last Wednesday of each month at the Traveller's Rest on the third Friday of the month. They are are also musicians for Wickham Morris.
Where we play
We play mainly in folk clubs in the area. These include Forest Folk at North Boarhunt, with less regular visits to the Fo'c'sle in Southampton, the Nonsuch at Bishop's Waltham and the Broadside in Portsmouth. From time to time, we also managed to get to the club at the King's Head in Gosport. They kindly invited us to do a guest spot in July 2007. The club closed in early 2008, but we have started going again, as it has re-opened at the Bun Penny in Lee-on-the-Solent. We were regulars at the Titchfield folk club, which unfortunately closed in early 2007. Also in 2007, we started going to the Abbey folk club in Romsey, which has also closed. Hmmm - can you spot a trend here?
The picture below was taken at a sing around at the Fo'c'sle folk club.
Schiehallion play occasional gigs - the picture below was taken when we appeared at Fernham Hall in Fareham. In September 2004, we played in the evening concert at the Solent Folk Festival. Click here for more information about the festival.
In July 2005, we played in the opening evening Folk Club concert at the Winchester Folk Festival, where the rather grainy picture below, was taken.
When Waterson:Carthy visited
in 2008, John took a few photos
during the evening, which can be seen on YouTube,
together with an accompanying soundtrack which we recorded.
He has also taken pictures of the Doonan family, Little Johnny England
and Belgian folk rock band Folgazán, which are accompanied by
their own songs.
In April 2008, we were invited to do the musical spot at Tongues and
Grooves, at The
Florence Arms in
Southsea. This was an enjoyable experience for us, giving us
the opportunity to listen to nationally published poets, as well as
local poets from around the area. The advert for the event is on the
right, where our name can just be made out, in this much reduced copy
of the flyer.
George Gardiner
At the beginning of the 20th century, George Gardiner collected a large number of traditional songs, including songs from various parts of Hampshire. We appeared at the Coach and Horses in Titchfield in October 2006, where we played some songs collected locally by George Gardiner, as part of a presentation by Bob Askew and Paul Hawkins. Other songs collected by Gardiner were sung by the Askew sisters and Tangle. We also played some Gardiner songs when Bob made his presentation to the Titchfield History Society on September 16th, 2008. Following on from this, we also supported Bob when he made his Gardiner presentation to the Wickham Society on February 14th, 2009. See report (page 24).
Franny has arranged a number of Gardiner songs for us, which you can hear on this website - please see below.
Bob recently set up an exhibition on Hampshire Songs at the Fareham Museum in Westbury House. It included a number of recordings of local songs - some recorded many years ago, while others are modern interpretations. We provided Bob with three tracks for the exhibition, which can all be heard here - please see below. We subsequently performed these and several other local songs at the Village folk club at the Limes in Catisfield, on Saturday, 7th November, 2009.
The music
We have kept intending to make a CD, but so far this has not happened. We now have access to suitable technology (well, an eight track digital recorder) and a studio (Franny's back room, actually) and have been working on recording a few tracks. The trainee sound engineer is having lots of fun trying to work out his graphic EQ from his reverb, but maybe the CD is not so far away!
If you would like to hear some of our latest efforts, please click on a song title below
Songs collected by George Gardiner
Song written by Franny
Cornfields - (excerpt)
Songs from other sources
Roslin Castle/Raggle Taggle Gypsies
If you would like to contact us, please email us by clicking here.