Arts & Culture
Fellow Pynins Oxford show

By Ben Morris

Fellow Pynins is a contemporary folk duo that has been dwelling deep in the mountains of Southern Oregon, USA.

The duo, comprised of Dani Aubert and Ian Van Ornum, performed in their former years as a 7 piece folk orchestra called Patchy Sanders, which took them far and wide through the journey of songwriting and touring.

After the folding of Patchy Sanders, the duo decided to take their love of songwriting and performing down to the bones, and used their acoustic instruments and voices to write the material for their first album, “Hunter & the Hunted.”  They quickly received accolades for this 2016 release from the likes of BBC, fRoots Magazine, and Country Music People.  Lisa Dunn of BBC exclaimed, “Fellow Pynins will transport you into their haunting and beguiling world of love tales and spine-tingling harmonies…They will have you traveling far and wide to hear them again.”

Their first tour through Europe in 2016 brought them from Spain to Ireland hitting small towns, far reaching islands, and the greater metropolitan areas.

Fellow Pynins traveled with a nanny and Eowyn, their 5 year old budding fiddler daughter, playing at cultural centres, pubs, and popular concert series.  This trip was a reconnaissance for the duo as they discovered their family history in Ireland and Scotland and began to collect the traditional songs of the people.  This spark of song collecting re-inspired their love of storytelling and performing intimate, acoustic concerts and infiltrated their repertoire of original songs with a smattering of uniquely interpreted traditional songs.

Fellow Pynins’ “Spellbinding” music employs the sounds of the mandolin, banjo, guitar, bouzouki and their voices in harmony to tell the stories of this human existence: the hardships of farming life to the eerie edges of dreams and the gallant joys of pleasantries and love.

They will be touring through the UK and Ireland, playing 26 concerts in August.  In the words of Frank Hennessy of BBC Wales: This is “Fascinating Stuff!”

They will be playing at The Wilderness Festival on 4 August

Take a look at their latest video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOiyqRZ3Ap8

  • Fellow Pynins Oxford show