December 2025

December? It can’t be!

Another year gone by, festivals done and dusted, workshops completed and flash mobs flashed, gigs gigged and sessions sung at.

We’ve driven hundreds of miles, sung about a million words and met a whole load of absolutely lovely people.

And it’s been just great.

So now the festive season is upon us and we’re sorting ourselves out for our Christmas bookings, blowing the dust from our sparkly trousers and bad-taste sweaters and trying to remember the arrangement of ‘Twelve Days….’.

The big news right now, though, is the fact that we’ve been in the recording studio again. Over the years we’ve often wondered whether a disc of Christmas songs would be of interest and we’ve finally gone ahead and done it.

It’s an EP of five tracks from our Christmas repertoire, short enough for it not to cause indigestion after lunch. There’s a Latin one, a pair of French ones that we’ve nailed together, a Welsh one and two that you should definitely be able to join in with.

There’s more information on our CD page and, if the mood takes you, you can buy one or two from our Rapsquilliestore page.

Happy Christmas!!

February 2025

….. and just like that, it’s February, and we’re on the eve of our first proper concert of the year, at home at the Bishops Castle Arts Festival.

We always enjoy this one, and this year we’re in concert at the Town Hall on Wednesday 19th, and we have a harmony workshop on the morning of Saturday 22nd.

We have some material which will be seeing the light of day for the first time as well as plenty of our favourites.

It’s been great to get back together after our various travels in the last couple of months. Preparing for a gig really does get us back in touch and helps us to remember why we do all the running around that being part of Rapsquillion means.

Hope we get to see you at some point in the not too distant future.

January 2025

Goodness! Is that the time! Better update the website, sorry.

Probably the reason that we weren’t able to keep this page up to date in 2024 was that we were just so busy – our most active year yet.

We sang at nine festivals and at folk clubs and events the length and breadth of the country, from Cornwall to Lincolnshire, with side trips to Wales just to save ourselves from getting bored!

And, of course, having resolved to have some time off over the winter, we also had our busiest ever November and December – we just can’t say no.

Along the way we met some lovely people, heard some great music (and pinched a bit!) and had a whole load of fun.

We can’t imagine we’re going to be as busy this year but the calendar already has a few things marked so we hope we’ll make your acquaintance on the way.

June 2024

Gosh!

Half way through 2024 and its ages since we posted on here!

So, we’ve already had a ball this year, with performances at Bill’s Kitchen in Ludlow, Bishops Castle Arts Festival, an absolutely great weekend at Fishguard Folk Festival and a lovely couple of days at our very local Bettws Triangle Arts Festival. Thank you to all the wonderful people who work so hard to make these events happen – without their commitment and dedication we’d have nowhere to share this music that we all love, or make and remake acquaintances with friends and colleagues all over the place.

A small slice of Rapsquillion (Raps Lite) is heading for Cornwall for a bit of singing in Philleigh on 6th July but Rapsquillion’s next big outing is to The Festival At The Edge. This is one of the oldest and most popular story-telling festival in the country and we’ve sung there a few times in recent years.

This year we’re there on Saturday, 20th July. We’re running one of our workshops in the morning, in the afternoon we have a concert and we’re running a singaround in the bar that evening.

Hopton Court, near Cleobury Mortimer, is a superb venue and the whole weekend is magical – it would be good to see you there.

‘Kindling into Red’

We’re very excited about this week’s release of our new album ‘Kindling into Red’!

We’ve been working on it for the last two or three months and we’re very pleased with the outcome. There are sixteen tracks which, we hope, sum up Rapsquillion – the fun we have together, the enjoyment we get from making our music, the breadth of music we love and, of course, if we’ve not had the pleasure of meeting you lately, to introduce you to the current Rapsquillion line-up.

We’ve been so lucky to be able to rope in Ian Tengwall to record and mix the album and to persuade none other than authentic folkie legend John Kirkpatrick MBE to produce it for us. John has also contributed some great original songs and arrangements, and there’ll be a prize for the first person to identify where his voice can be heard adding to the vocal ensemble!

The CD will be on sale for the first time at Shrewsbury Folk Festival either direct from us or from the festival merchandise tent , Roots. If you can’t make it to the festival and want to order a copy using our online shop, if you do it before Tuesday 29th August, we’ll pay the postage and packing for you.

We hope you enjoy listening to ‘Kindling into Red’ (the title comes from a line in the track ‘All Among the Barley’) as much as we do singing the songs – come and tell us what you think next time you see us.

Shrewsbury Folk Festival 2023

So here we are, Shrewsbury Week at last.

Our wonderful local festival kicks off on Friday 25th August, and Rapsquillion members are doing their thing throughout the weekend.

We’re involved in the goings-on for the opening of the Siskin Folk Club marquee on Friday afternoon, we have our fantastic harmony workshop in Siskin on Saturday afternoon from 16.15 to 17.30, our concert is on Saturday on the Sabrina stage at 20.30 and we’re also performing on the Village Stage on Monday at 13.15.

In addition, those of us who dance with Shropshire Bedlams and Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish have a full programme of dancing to fit in, Kay is MCing in Sabrina and Trevor is organising sessions, singarounds and tunes in Siskin.

And – drum roll – we’re launching our new CD, ‘Kindling into Red’ over the weekend. We’re very excited about it and there’s more news above.

See you there!!

August 2023

We had a great time at Warwick!

Singing on the Living Tradition stage on Friday was good fun and the audience helped us along with most of our programme – luckily, just in the places where they should have been.

And then a new experience for us on Saturday in the Unitarian Chapel (or the ‘Utilitarian Chapel’ as one of our number christened it!) – a ‘meet the band’ event. There were quite a few in the audience who were kind enough to want to find out a litlte more about Rapsquillion (or maybe because they were there because the event was billed in the programme as a ‘concert’). Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves singing and nattering, and we actually found out a few new things about each other.

Our final effort was a singaround punctuated by short sets from Raps, Thrup’nny Bits and, in the chair, the lovely Jim Mageean. I think between us we managed to raise the roof a little with a few rousing choruses, to the point where we stayed longer than we’d planned – altogether a great sing. And we discovered that Jim had links with Shropshire Bedlams and Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish – excellent to have a catch-up.

Next for us is Shrewsbury Folk Festival and, excitingly, our latest addition to the merchandise list is almost upon us! Watch this space…..

July 2023

We enjoyed singing at the Bettws Triangle Festival. It’s always good to sing with the beautiful acoustics in Black Mountain Chapel and it was good to meet up with old friends again.

Now we’re girding our loins for Warwick Folk Festival.

We’re looking forward to what is going to be a fairly busy time….

On Friday evening we have a 45 minute concert set in the Living Tradition Tent, 8:45-9:30pm; on Saturday it’s an informal singing / meet the band thingie in the Unitarian Chapel (in town), 12:00-13:00pm; on Sunday we’re taking part a ‘Raise the Roof’ singaround with Thrup’nny Bits and Jim Mageean in the Songhouse (on site) from 13:30pm to 14:15pm.

The full programme is now available on the Festival website at https://warwickfolkfestival.co.uk – come and say hello if you’re around. Fingers crossed for a bit of good weather after a cool and wet spell for us here in The Marches.

And there’s going to be more news on the CD in the very near future……….

June 2023

We’re having an exciting time in June. We have bookings to sing at the lovely Bettws Triangle Festival on Saturday and Sunday of the third weekend in June.

Our real big news, however, is that we’ve been in the recording studio!! We’ve decided that six years after ‘Earthly Joys’ it’s about time we had a record of Rapsquillion’s current line-up and set. We’ve been working at Backyard Studios in Sarn – just down the road for most of us – and we’ve secured the services of Ian Tengwall for the engineering of the recordings.

A massive thing for us is that we’ve also persuaded none other than folk music legend John Kirkpatrick to produce the album for us and his mentoring and support has already proved invaluable.

We’re hoping to have the finished product available before Shrewsbury Folk Festival in August. Watch this space and our other social media platforms for information about the launch.

Other news about bookings – we’re going to be at Warwick Folk Festival at the end of July, we’re performing on both Sabrina and Village stages and running one of our workshops at Shrewsbury Folk Festival at the end of August, and we’re going to be doing our thing at Bromyard Festival in September.

Keep an eye on our social media feeds for more information.

Spring 2023

It’s been such a long time since we brought this page up to date, sorry……….

The South Wales tour in autumn 2022 was great fun – we had a ball and met and sang with some lovely people along the way and had great hospitality once again from our great friends Greg and Lindsey Rowlands who let us invade their lovely home for a few days.

Christmas came and went and included a couple of local gigs, again, great fun and it was lovely to share a stage once more with Val Littlehales, the writer who performs her monologues in the beautiful South Shropshire dialect.

Most of us were involved once again in John Kirkpatrick’s brilliant ‘Castle Carols’ project which aims to resurrect the tradition of carolling in pubs in our part of the world. Around 200 people turned up to watch the superb dancing of Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish and Shropshire Bedlams followed by a good sing of the wonderful old songs.

February saw us involved once again in Bishops Castle Arts Festival with a sold-out concert where we shared the stage with the very talented Rowan Bartram, and a very well attended harmony workshop where we taught one of Mr Kirkpatrick’s arrangements to the poor unsuspecting victims!

In March we went away for a weekend together staying at Greta and Nick Howell’s house next to the sea at Parrog, near Newport in Pembrokeshire. We got through a fair amount of work on some new material and had a very welcome trip to Gwaun Valley Brewery for a sing with Sarah and Leonard Davis and their regulars at the Saturday session there.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to go to our usual haunts at Fishguard Festival this year as some of us were on dancing duty at Chippenham Folk Festival, but we hope to be back in Pembrokeshire in 2024.

We also sang at a new folk venue, Bill’s Kitchen in Ludlow. There’s a regular Monday evening concert in the restaurant and we were lucky enough to be asked to perform. Again, it was a full house, Raps seemed to be very well received and it was great to bump into Keith, one of our founder members in the audience. Thanks to Martin Thomas for the invitation.

October 2022

We have a little trip coming up….

Now that we’ve had a chance to have hols (well, some of us anyway) we’re working hard on the sets for our mini-tour to South Wales.

We’re going to be doing short slots at Llantrisant Folk Club and Newport Folk Club on Wednesday and Thursday, 16th and 17th November respectively, and a couple of forty five minute sets at Valley Folk Club on Friday 18th.

We’re really looking forward to meeting and singing with old friends again and, if anyone happens to be passing, it will be good to see you as well.

August 2022

What a fantastic Shrewsbury Folk Festival!!!

Quite apart from all the fantastic acts we’ve been able to see and admire, all the dancing we’ve done and all the lovely friends and acquaintances we’ve made and met, we had the most wonderful workshop as part of The Siskin Folk Club agenda.

200 people were crammed in to the marquee and, despite the fact that our voices were already on the way out, we were able to help them have a great sing, culminating in a ‘flashmob’ that we sprung on the poor unsuspecting victims in the food tent.

We’re afraid that the little clip we’ve posted below isn’t brilliant (Trevor realised that he needed to conduct the final couple of bars, hence the weird ending!), and if anyone has more we’d love to hear from you please, but it does give a bit of a feel of how we all managed with John Kirkpatrick’s lovely arrangement of ‘On Yonder Old Oak’.

We also ran out of workshop books. We’re ever so sorry – there were four times as many people as we were expecting – but you coped magnificently by using smartphones to photograph words and music. We’ve made the book available to download here.

Thank you so much for coming – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you do have time to give the Festival a bit of feedback that would be greatly appreciated. And of course, thanks to the Festival organisers for having us back again.

And finally, we love doing these things – if you’d like us to come and have a sing with you somewhere, sometime, please get in touch – there’s a Contact form here.

May 2022

Wooh! After a two year break because of the unmentionable, Fishguard Folk Festival returns this weekend.

We’re REALLY looking forward to unleashing Rapsquillion’s new line up in a singaround at The Ship on Saturday afternoon, a concert in Ffwrn on Saturday evening, a workshop on Sunday morning in HMS Skirmisher in lower town, and a soirée of folkie stuff with performances by a few friends at Gwaun Valley Brewery on Sunday evening.

All of our stuff is free and it would be great to see any of our mates from past festivals.

And we’re going to be introducing you to our two new members – Gordon and Chris. More news about them on our ‘Who Are We’ page.

Everything you need to know is at https://www.fishfolkfest.co.uk – see you there, we hope.

February 2022

We have bookings!!

The first is at Bishops Castle Arts Festival. We have a concert in the Town Hall on Thursday 24th February, 7.30pm and a workshop in the Methodist Hall on Saturday 26th.

For the concert we’re really happy that we’re going to be joined by Paul Frowen and Greg Rowlands, stalwarts of the South Wales folk world. Paul sings beautiful Welsh songs to an autoharp accompaniment and Greg is an accomplished guitarist and singer. We’ve had the pleasure of their company a number of times before – this one will be special after such a long lay off for us all.

Details are at https://bishopscastleartsfestival.com, and tickets are available on the door or from https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/bcth/t-kvdlke

(Some of us will also be found showing off at the Shropshire Bedlams and Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish workshop in The Three Tuns, Bishops Castle, on Sunday 27th. If you want to come and laugh at us, or maybe even have a go at wielding a big stick or a crisp, white handkerchief yourself, we’ll be there from 12.00 noon. And if you don’t like it, well, you’ll be in the pub anyway!)

Keep an eye on here and on our ‘Where Are We’ page for more information about what we’re doing, where and when.

Hussah!!

January 2022

Wooh! Another trip around the sun is well under way and it’s time for a little update.

Firstly, Katie Steggles has decided to leave Rapsquillion and will be exploring other avenues for her singing. Thanks Katie for your input over the last few years – we’ll miss you.

That, together with the sad loss of Dave Wright last autumn, means that we’ve been looking for a couple of people to help us out and we’re happy to be able to report that we’ve now been joined by Susie Stockton-Link and Marion Warburton.

Susie, who lives in Builth Wells, has appeared as a guest with us at a few events in the last two or three years. With her joining us properly from now on we’re going to benefit from her vast knowledge and experience of the folkie scene, as well as her fantastic tenor voice.

Marion lives in Bishop’s Castle and has also been around the folk music world for a long time. She’s a member of the brilliant Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish morris side, she plays the dulcimer and sings soprano and alto parts.

Welcome Susie and Marion – we’re looking forward to getting out and singing with you.

December 2021

When our little 2021 Christmas concert was cancelled we decided we wouldn’t let the hard work go to waste. We spent an evening singing into our smart phones, sent the results to our friends Gordon & Chris, who were also lending us a hand with the Tenor part, and, lo and behold, this is the result – our 2021 Christmas Card!

2021 has been something of a challenge on many fronts. We hope that you all can have a safe and happy Christmas and a brilliant New Year! We’re also looking forward to the fates allowing us to have a sing with you sometime, we hope, in 2022.

October 22nd 2021

Thanks so much to everyone who came to Dave’s day yesterday, or who sent us a message, or just thought about Dave – it was a great send-off for his next adventure. Far too many people to mention, and a sea of red after Jenny’s request to mark Dave’s connection with Rapsquillion – but you all know who you are.

Cheers!

#FlatlineDave #bestsylveste #seeyouwhenweseeyou

October 5th 2021

It is with profound sadness that we have to tell you that our playmate, fellow Rapsquillion and, above all, great friend, Dave Wright passed away on the evening of Tuesday 4th October.

Those of you who knew Dave will be aware that he’d faced a number of challenges to his health in the last few years, and you will also know that he faced them with fortitude, determination and, right to the end, good humour.

We’re going to miss him tremendously – his smile, his wit, his caring, his clumsiness(!), his enthusiasm for life and, above all his downright niceness and being a good, good man. Together with Jenny he was a stalwart of the folk scene in South Shropshire – people came from miles around to enjoy the ambience which they created at The Sun and, not least, his spirited and much-heckled renditions of ‘My Brother Sylveste’! In their Kent days they were regular supporters of Travelling Folk.

The Rapsquillion family is a small one and Jenny is a lynchpin. She’s worked so hard to keep a good quality of life for Dave – we’re now going to be doing our best to support her through this crappy time. We’re sad, of course, but we’re also glad and grateful to have known Dave.

Last night Rapsquillion were playing at Llantrisant Folk Club and there was a big round of applause in Dave’s memory. Next time you’re out having a sing, why don’t you think about Dave when you’re applauding.

July 2021

Well, would you look at that – nearly two years since we were last together singing in public.

Two years of seasons, birthdays, births, marriages and, sadly, some deaths, twiddling thumbs, fixing things, breaking things and generally dealing, as most of us have, with the thing of which we will not speak by just getting on with it.

And now we’re out and about again!!

The weekend of 16th-18th July is when we emerge, blinking, coughing and very possibly spluttering in to the cool clear air of Festival at the Edge, being held this year at Hopton Court, near Cleobury Mortimer in good old Shropshire, pot-hole centre of the land.

We’re there on Sunday 18th with a harmony workshop in the morning and a set on stage in the afternoon.

We can’t wait – see you there we hope!

August 2019

Soundfile and clip now loaded
The soundfile of the harmony workshop is now loaded on our ‘Listen and Watch’ page, along with a clip from our concert on Friday evening. Enjoy!

Shrewsbury Folk Festival
Well, didn’t we have a wonderful time!!

We thoroughly enjoyed our concert on the Sabrina stage on Friday night. 800-plus, we’re reliably told, and they were a great help with choruses.

The couple of singarounds we hosted were good fun as well – a few more people attending than last year.

But, for us, the highlight of our bits of input to the Festival was definitely Sunday afternoon’s harmony workshop.

We counted 97 people crammed into the sweltering room with a load having to be tirned away because we just couldn’t get them in and unfortunately outside wasn’t an option because of our need for visual aids, and the fact that there was a performance going on about 20 yards away, so we’re sorry if people couldn’t make it.

Those who were in the room went along with all of the fun and games, unsuitable as they were for a sauna, and produced a stunning rendition of Sarah Morgan’s arrangement of ‘Crossing The Bar’. We’re working on getting the sound file here on the website – please bear with us.

As promised, the workbook is now available on our ‘Workshop’ page. Please let us know if you struggle to download it and we’ll send you a hard copy.

Thanks so much for coming and participating – we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And also thanks for the feedback – we want to come back with a bigger, better version in 2020 so, if you feel so inclined, maybe you could mention it to the Festival organisers.

Watch this space for news of the sound file.

June 2019

Shrewsbury Folk Festival, 23rd-26th August
It sounds as if we’re going to be having a busy old time at Shrewsbury!

We’re performing on the Sabrina stage on the evening of Friday 23rd, we’re running a couple of singarounds at times yet to be confirmed AND we’ve just been booked to deliver one of our harmony workshops on the afternoon of Sunday 25th.

Oh, and some of us will have our dancing shoes on for the various Morris sessions that are happening on-site and around the town over the weekend.

Pass the ibuprofen!

Abermule, 15th June
We’re pleased to say that we’re supporting the Marie Curie Trust by singing at a concert in Abermule Community Centre on Saturday 15th June.

We’re going to be on a ‘Meet the Folks’ bill with Bouzatina and Andy & Nancy Ketchen. Tickets are £9.00, and that includes a glass of wine. They’re available from group members Barbara Norbury (07732 860577) and Llinos Hughes (07814 834390), and all proceeds are in aid of Newtown area Marie Curie Fundraising Group.

May 2019

Great news!

Last year we ran a couple of singaround sessions at the fantastic Shrewsbury Folk Festival, one of the biggest in the country.

In 2019 we’re actually going to be performing, on the Sabrina stage on Friday evening in the great company of Geoff Lakeman, Chris Elliott & Caitlin Jones, and Granny’s Attic.

Can’t wait!!

May 2018

And now we’re all geared up for our next jaunt, off to our favourite festival at Fishguard, where we’re hoping to meet old friends and have a darned good sing!

We have quite a busy schedule – if you happen to be around any of the same places as us please come and say hello.

Oh, and all of our sessions are absolutely free!

Friday 25th May
The Ship Inn, Lower Town: Rapsquillion’s Legendary Singaround, 9.00pm
Saturday 26th May
Manning’s: Rapsquillion-Lite – Meet the Band, 1.00pm
Sunday 27th May
TS Skirmisher: Harmony Workshop, 11.00am
Ffwrn: 4.00pm
Gwaun Valley Brewery: Concert (with friends), 8.00pm

May 2018

We’ve been busy little bees for the last few weeks, singing here and there and generally messing about in some other places.

We’ve been off for a little trip to France. The idea was a kind of musical sabbatical, working on a few bits and pieces, polishing the odd chorus and working out a couple of arrangements for new songs. Punctuation was provided by a couple of bookings, sorted out by our chef d’equipe in France, Tim Boldry, where we were able to frighten a few of the locals in St Laurent-de-la-Salanque with our French accents and songs about the Napoleonic wars.

Needless to say, it did get silly at times and it’s taken us at least a fortnight to recover

Nevertheless, our thanks go to Tim and Gill for looking after us in their beautiful gites (there’s a link – on our ‘Links’ page surprisingly – in case anybody fancies a trip to the sun in the Perpignan area) and to the people who supported us at the couple of engagements we had.

April 2018

Well, here we are, with our brand new website, all glittery and sparkling, bells ringing and whistles blowing. There are even buttons to push if you’re that way inclined.

We can now show you the occasional video directly from the ‘Listen and Watch’ page, rather than relying on links to other sites.

Not only that but, should you be overcome with great foolhardiness, you can even buy one of our CDs by pushing a little PayPal thingie on, surprise surprise, our CDs page.

Some of you may have taken the life-defining decision to put your email addresses on our mailing list (or was it the lure of the free CD/bird scarer that we usually offer as an inducement at concerts?). If you have, you’ll know that we’ve promised faithfully never to share your information with any of those nasty advertisers who want you to buy something that’s usually nowhere near as much fun as one of our recordings, for a whole load more money. Just so that you know we know you know all of this we’ve come up with a privacy statement which has its own, special, private and serious page just here,  so aren’t we all goody-goody!

What else has happened since you last heard from us?

Well, the current line-up including Gary Frost, Katie Steggles, Scott Zwetsloot and Jon Bell has been going strong for over a year now and each of them has brought something new to Rapsquillion. We’ve been very busy with festivals and gigs all over the place, as well as visiting singarounds whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Sue Lawrence continues to sing with us whenever she comes back from Spain and we’ve been very lucky to be able to call on Susie Stockton-Link and Paul Frowen from time to time as well. (Have a look at our ‘Who Are We?’ page).

Just in case we get bored, three of us are now dancing with the brilliant Shropshire Bedlams and Martha Rhoden’s Tuppenny Dish, and a couple of us help out from time-to-time with The Wisiband, a branch of Mal Brown’s ‘Whack It Smack It’ empire, helping children to make musical instruments from recycled bits and pieces.

The Rosabella is still used as band headquarters/medical centre/bar/dance hall when we’re away.

Oh, and we’re all off to France for one of our famed ‘musical retreats’ (yeah, right!) this spring. First one home is a swot.

Please keep an eye on this page, and on our ‘Where Are We?’ section – we will try to make a better job of it than we have this last few months, and if you fancy getting in touch with us but find us a bit weird to talk to, you can always use the contact form on the ‘Contact Us’ page.

We hope our paths cross with yours at some point in the not-too-distant future – in the meantime have a great time whatever you’re doing!