Jon Boden

Biography

Jon Boden (born 17 March 1977) is a singer, composer and musician, best known as lead singer and main arranger of Bellowhead. His first instrument is the fiddle and he is a proponent of "English traditional fiddle style" and also of "fiddle singing", both of which he employed in Bellowhead, in the duo Spiers & Boden, and previously as a member of Eliza Carthy’s Ratcatchers. Boden has been the recipient of 11 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, more than any other musician. He was awarded honorary doctorates by Durham University and the Open University in 2019. Boden also fronts his own band the Remnant Kings, put together in 2009 to perform his post-apocalyptic song cycle Songs From The Floodplain. He has also made contributions as a fiddler, singer and guitarist, to three albums with Fay Hield & The Hurricane Party. In 2010 he launched a project to record and deliver A Folk Song A Day on line, aiming to inspire others to build a repertoire of songs and engage in social singing. Boden holds a master's degree in Composition for Theatre and has worked on theatrical productions, including two plays with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2012 he was commissioned to create a stage show based on The Ballad Of Little Musgrave And Lady Barnard as part of the Benjamin Britten centenary celebrations.