Ninebarrow (Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere) are a multi-award-winning folk duo, who are impressing audiences across the country with their innovative and captivating take on the folk tradition. Described by Mark Radcliffe as sounding ‘like two halves of one voice’ and by Mercury Music Prize nominee Kate Rusby as ‘absolutely amazing’, Jon and Jay combine breath taking vocal harmonies and melodies, delivering original songs that are inspired and rooted in the landscape and history of the British Isles. As well as crafting unique and engaging original material, Ninebarrow also take a wide-range of traditional folk songs and rework them in their own, distinctive way.

Having relinquished their respective full-time jobs as a teacher and GP back in 2016,  to take a leap of faith into the music business, their gamble almost immediately paid off when a year later, they were nominated for a BBC Radio 2 Folk Award: one of the highest accolades in the world of folk music and clear recognition for their outstanding harmonies, high production values, poetic lyricism and magical instrumentation.

But we have been teased more recently with news far bigger than any of their awards …. The news that in April next year the duo are going to become a trio.   Intrigued ? … Here is their important announcement:

We’re certain that many of you will have already heard our exciting news via our social media channels, however, for those of you who aren’t on platforms like Facebook, we just wanted to drop you a quick message to let you know that we’ve got an incredibly exciting announcement: in April next year, we’ll be eagerly awaiting the arrival of a baby boy! 👶

Now – that’s a statement that requires slightly more explanation than an email will allow, so we’ve popped a link below to a video we released just before Christmas on our social media platforms to give you a bit of background to what has been a long but incredibly exciting journey for us over the last few years.

It’s safe to say, we’ve never been more excited about anything in our lives and we just can’t wait for our little one to join us. 🥰 Once our new band member arrives, we’ve decided that we’re going to take quite a lengthy leave of absence from touring so that we can really focus on being a family, so our tour this spring is going to be our last for quite a while. In fact – after these 9 dates are complete, we won’t be hitting the road again until 2025. So – we really hope you’ll be able to join us for our last tour as ‘a duo’! 😊  

Here’s the link to the announcement www.ninebarrow.co.uk/baby

We couldn’t be more thrilled for them, in the meantime we can look forward to their last tour before becoming parents. 

Dates as follows:

SPRING 2024 TOUR DATES

Thursday, February 29, 2024
Stowe School, Buckingham

Friday, March 1, 2024
St James’ Church, Poole

Saturday, March 2, 2024
The Goods Shed, Tetbury, Gloucestershire

Thursday, March 7, 2024
St Leonard’s Church, Sheepstor, Devon

Friday, March 8, 2024
St Mark’s Church, Woodcote, Croydon

Saturday, March 9, 2024
Melbourne Assembly Rooms, Derby

Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Ely Folk Club, Arkenstall Village Centre, Haddenham

Thursday, March 14, 2024
South Luffenham Village Hall

Friday, March 15, 2024
Harwell Village Hall, Didcot

For further details and ticket links please visit:https://www.ninebarrow.co.uk/