Mat Green: fiddle
Andy Turner: anglo-concertina, one-row melodeon, vocals
Mat and Andy are both founder members of Magpie Lane providing the instrumental drive at the heart of the band's dance music repertoire.
Born and bred in Bampton in Oxfordshire, Mat Green recently celebrated 50 years of dancing the morris, including 25 years as Squire of Bampton Morris. He took up the fiddle at the age of 14, learning from Bampton musicians including Arnold Woodley and Frank Purslow. For many years he played with the Woodpecker Band, favourites on the English Ceilidh scene. He has developed a unique, utterly danceable, quintessentially English fiddle style.
Andy Turner developed a love of traditional song in his late teens. Like Mat, he has many years' experience playing for dance, having originally been strongly influenced by dancing to - and later playing with - the Oyster Ceilidh Band. He has played with Polkabilly, Geckoes and most recently The Oxford NAGS. He danced with Canterbury-based Oyster Morris in the 1980s, and is now the musician for Headington Quarry Morris Dancers. Andy has a punchy, rhythmic concertina style, but is also able to play in a slower, smoother style to accompany his own fine singing.
Together, Mat and Andy play mainly traditional English dance tunes. They specialise in little-known tunes from eighteenth and nineteenth century village musicians' tunebooks, but essentially will play any good dance tune from almost anywhere! The tunes are interspersed with songs - again, mainly from English traditional sources.