Megson’s family-friendly folk show gets the children up and dancing

Cambridgeshire-based husband and wife folk duo Megson, who originally hail from Teesside, will soon be bringing their Family Folk Show to the Cambridge Junction.

Aimed primarily at younger children, Stu and Debbie Hanna’s entertaining concert features children’s folk songs, old and new, from their When I Was a Lad and Little Bird albums.

“When our daughter was born, we marked the occasion by recording an album of children’s folk songs,” explains Stu, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from the couple’s home in Melbourn, where they’ve lived for 14 years, moving there two years before their daughter was born, “and a few venues including the Cambridge Junction approached us and said ‘it would be fantastic if you could do a concert with these children’s folk songs’.

“So we tried it and we really enjoyed it, and the kids did too. We learnt a way of involving everyone, each of the songs has got its own interaction and things like that.

“We get them singing along and we even have some of the children writing some of the songs as they go along.”

The duo – four times nominated in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and double winners of the Spiral Earth Awards – have been working on some new material for the next tour, which starts at the end of January.

“We mainly travel around folk clubs and venues and folk festivals singing folk songs for adults – that’s our main thing,” says Stu, who sings and plays guitar, mandola and banjo (Debbie sings and also plays whistle and accordion).

“But this year we also worked on a play that was set within a folk gig. It starts off as a folk gig and then a journalist kind of breaks into the gig and starts telling their story.

“We mainly are the songs of the people that are writing into the journalist telling their stories, but we also play ourselves in the play, trying to get the journalist to come and review a folk gig. It’s quite meta but it works really well.

“So we did one of those at the Junction – they helped us develop the show – and we did some down in London and then we’re going do some more shows next year as well.

“We also had a new album out at the start of the year, and that was kind of linked in with The Herald, which is the name of the play. What Are We Trying to Say? was the name of our new album.”

The duo have toured the family-friendly show a number of times previously.

“People love it and keep coming back,” notes Stu, who first picked up a guitar at the age of 11, “and I think one of the reasons is because we don’t compromise on the way we approach the music in any way.

“We approach it musically the same way as we approach an adult concert, in terms of getting it absolutely spot-on musically, and so both the adults and the children enjoy it.

“And it keeps us interested as well because we work really hard on the music as well as the interactions and getting the children involved.”

Do the pair adapt any of their ‘adult’ songs for children, or is it an entirely separate repertoire? “There’s one song that tends to go across both of the shows, and that’s a song called Baby and the Band,” replies Stu, “which tells the story of a baby who plays the banjo!

“That one seems to work in both adult and the family shows – but mainly they’re separate songs.

“The children’s ones have a lot more actions and interactions and the adult songs are a bit more darker – adult stories, I suppose.”

Megson are bringing their Family Folk Show to the Cambridge Junction’s J2 on Sunday, February 11, at 11.30am and then at 2pm. The show is around 45 minutes long.

Tickets, priced £13.50 for adults and £9.50 for children, are available from junction.co.uk. For more on Megson, go to megsonmusic.co.uk.