Folk duo Megson play the Southdowns Music Festival

Folk duo Megson – Debs Hanna (vocals, whistle, piano accordion) and Stu Hanna (guitar, mandola, banjo) – are looking forward to a return to the Southdowns Music Festival this year (Friday, September 11).

“We are in our 21st year,” Stu says. “We were a couple first and we were looking for something musical that we could do together. Debs trained as a classical singer and I had played in punk bands. I had an acoustic guitar and Debs was living in London. She knew some folk songs as part of her classical training and we just started performing together. We kind of fell into the folk scene in a way and it was just a magical time. We were learning about it and exploring it and we just discovered there was so much to find out about folk. It was such a special time. There are just so many different aspects to folk music to explore.

“And I think we both loved the fact that you could perform to an audience that would really pay attention to what you were playing. Folk audiences are great for really listening.”

Also part of the appeal, Debs says, “is the storytelling element of folk. It was really good to get into that and especially to be telling stories about current life that people can relate to now. It's really nice to sing a song and get a good reaction because people understand it themselves and can see themselves in what you are singing about.”

Stu said: “We started writing straight away. I'd always written and it was not something that was new to us. It felt natural to do it, and when we were performing they wanted our own songs as well as our versions of traditional songs. It's great. It gives you a mixture, and the more you learn traditional songs, the more you want to write your own songs.”

They've now done something like 13 albums together. Stu admits he's lost track of the number.

As for their longevity, as Debs says: “We like to explore different things. We love performing and we love recording and I think that keeps us going. We like to have different projects. We stopped for a while when our daughter was born. She's 15 now.”

Inevitably it helps that they are a couple.

Stu says: “We get on. We know each other and musically we don't have to communicate in quite the same way because we know each other so well. We can read what the other one is about to do and it just makes it so fast.”

They are starting to think about the next album: “On the list of things to do is to plan when the next album will be. Once we've got that then we will need to work backwards and actually do it.”

As for the name, Megson is a reference to their old dog Megan who had died: “We decided to calls ourselves Ghost of Meg and we were Ghost of Meg for just one gig,” Debs says. “But we decided that that made us sound like a metal band! And so we became Megson!”

The main events at the Southdowns Music Festival this year will be live at Venue 24, The Pier, Bognor Regis.

Friday, September 11 offers Phil Beer and Megson; Saturday, September 12 offers Roving Crows and Sorrel Nation; and Sunday, September 13 offers 3 Daft Monkeys and Ed Goodale. Tickets are one night £20, three nights £45 available online at www.southdownsfolkfest.co.uk

Megson dates also include The Guildford Institute on October 16 and The Square Tower,

Portsmouth on November 21.