Ninebarrow

Duo Ninebarrow will be performing on Friday 30th June at St Laurence Church in Upwey as part of their extensive national tour this summer and autumn.

In a few short years, the Dorset-based duo have carved themselves a distinctive niche on the folk roots scene for their outstanding harmonies, delicate instrumentation and engaging songs. In 2017, they were nominated at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in the ’Horizon’ category for ‘Best Emerging Artist’.

Named after Nine Barrow Down in Dorset’s Purbeck hills, the duo have released four critically acclaimed albums with their most recent, ‘A Pocket Full of Acorns’, which they released to a raft of four and five star reviews in the folk and mainstream media in March 2021. Within just a few days of release, the album had already reached No. 1 on Amazon’s Folk Best Sellers Chart.

In the week leading up to the arboreal-titled album’s release (March 5, 2021) Jon and Jay fulfilled a long-held wish to address their carbon footprint by planting 1000 native English trees and 200 shrubs to form ‘The Ninebarrow Woodland’. Funded partly by the Woodland Trust’s MOREWoods scheme, and partly by the incredibly generous donations of their beloved ‘Barrow Bods’ fan base, the duo embarked upon an epic, five-day planting project during the third national lockdown. Sited on three acres of land near Gillingham in north Dorset, the ambitious project saw saplings of 10 different species planted, half of which were English oaks.

Because of the strong link between Ninebarrow’s music and the Dorset landscape, the duo were invited to record a segment for BBC1’s Countryfile in March 2021. Following the broadcast, all four of the duo’s current releases immediately jumped into the Amazon’s Top 40 Folk Releases, with the new album ‘A Pocket Full of Acorns’ cemented securely at the top of the chart.

Ninebarrow have also received high praise from folk legend Seth Lakeman and Mercury Music Prize nominee, Kate Rusby, who have both been supported by the duo.