Spiers & Boden with Saltfishforty at Orkney Festival 2009

We’ve just had confirmation of 8 dates in Scotland this coming summer with the Orkney hi-octane fiddle/mandola duo Saltfishforty.  We’re incredibly excited with this news for 2 reasons:

1. Every time we send out a newsletter with our UK dates on we get a lot of emails asking why we never play in Scotland.  While not completely true, it’s a good 5 years since we toured there and we’re really looking forward to coming back again.

2. We first saw this incredible act back in 2004 while doing a live session for BBC Radio Scotland with Eliza Carthy.  We immediately saw an act that was treating the music with exactly the same attitude as we try and give ours.  We were invited to play with them at last years Orkney Festival and the results were really promising, you can read a review of the gig here … this tour is really going to be exciting.

The tour will be funded by the Tune Up scheme from the Scottish Arts Council to whom we are very grateful.  Many thanks also have to go to our agent, Terry for putting this together at a time.