Peter Shepheard
Singer, musician and
enthusiast for traditional song

Pete is an acknowledged authority on folk song, a founder member of the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland (TMSA) in the mid 1960s, his enthusiasm as a singer and collector resulted in the creation of Springthyme Records in the 1970s specialising in the release of recordings of Scottish traditional song and music.

As a tutor at the Living Tradition Summer Schools he will give an insight into traditional folksong and Scots ballads as sung today. The class will be given an opportunity to listen to songs and ballads recorded from recent living tradition - from ploughmen, fisher folk, shepherds and from Scotland's traveller community. Selected songs will be provided as written texts with tunes. Several versions of some songs will be examined, traditional style will be discussed and participants will be guided into building selected songs into their own repertoire.

His contacts with the Scottish traveller traditions of the Stewarts of Blairgowrie and Jeannie Robertson's family in Aberdeen led to exploration of traveller tradition in Ireland and England as well as Scotland. He has presented lectures and workshops based on his song collecting, on ballad repertoire in the living tradition, traditional singing style, song repertoire among the Romany gypsies in Gloucestershire and among the Scottish travelling and farming communities in Fife, Tayside and Aberdeenshire.

Further information on Pete's Website

Pete is himself a fine singer and melodeon player with a song repertoire that includes songs he has collected in England, Ireland and Scotland but, living as he does in the ancient 'kingdom' of Fife, many of his songs are from local Fife and Perthshire tradition.

Although unaccompanied traditional song is at the heart of his enthusiasm, Pete enjoys playing button box / melodeon - and has developed his own variation on the diatonic keyboard layout suited to his own style of accompaniment of traditional song and their modal structures. Here he is playing his old 1960s Hohner Corona II (A/D/G) but he also plays two more recent Castagnari models - a small Castagnari Tommy in D/G and a Castagnari Fazzy 12 bass in C/F.

In 2003 Pete joined together with two other singer/musicians to form Shepheard, Spiers & Watson. Tom Spiers and Arthur Watson had both been members of the well respected Aberdeen based group The Gaugers along with founder member the late Peter Hall, noted folk song collector and folklorist. Tom was, at that time, living in Auchtermuchty in Fife and Arthur was living across the Tay in Dundee. After enjoying each others’ company at sessions, festivals, hogmanay and suchlike seasonal gatherings, they began to gain bookings together and formalised this in 2003 for an appearance at the great Whitby Festival. This led to other bookings and in 2006 they were nominated for Scots Folk Band of the Year in the Scots Trad Music Awards (not that they won).

Their CD Shepheard, Spiers & Watson: They Smiled as we Cam In has received excellent reviews. To play tracks from their CD in mp3 format go to their album website Springthyme SPRCD 1042. For more about Shepheard, Spiers & Watson and links to tracks