The programme for our 2026 festival is now almost 100% signed off, and tickets for the individual concerts and overall weekend deal will be available in May – watch for links on revised versions of this page.
Our dates are Friday September 4th to Sunday 6th, with the added bonus of our traditional tune group’s open session on Thursday 3rd making it well worth visiting Kelso from Thursday to Monday as a late summer break.
Friday evening concert – at the Old Parish Church (the Kirk), doors open 7.00 for 7.30pm start. We open with a wonderful new voice in Scottish contemporary folk, Miwa Nagato-Apthorp, accompanied by Sam Gillespie on guitar.
Miwa is followed by superband Heron Valley, formed in 2014 – “exhilarating live performances featuring high-octane bagpipe and fiddle tunes backed by an unrelenting rhythm section”. Knowing the acoustics of the Kirk we may not need our PA!
Heron Valley are Abigail Pryde (vocals/guitar), Alex Mackechnie (fiddle/accordion), Arlene Mackechnie (piano), Callum Cronin (bass/guitar), Euan McNab (bagpipes/whistle/guitar), and Nick Hamilton (drums/banjo).
After morning workshops in the Abbey Row Centre, Saturday features both lunchtime and evening concerts in the Kirk. For the morning at 11am we open with popular and highly entertaining songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Den Miller, who dropped into the club last year and won a request to be on our programme in 2026. He’s a regular collaborator with Tom Bliss and other luminaries of the scene south of the border.
We then have local stars with short sets for an hour, followed by our Tyne & Wear (Beamish Museum resident!) friends Kiddar’s Luck – John Dixon, Colin McLelland and Mike Davidson- with clogging from Alison Brydon. Mike rushes off to help with compering a singaround in the Cross Keys Oak Room for the afternoon.
To open Saturday night’s concert we welcome to Scotland East Yorkshire’s songwriter, singer and guitarist Katie Spencer – though it would be no surprise to find she’s lined up more gigs north of the Border now. Katie is a surprise. She was immediately compared to Sandy Denny from her early writing, singing and playing. She has interpreted John Martyn like few others. Her guitar work is studio quality, and for this set she is accompanied by clarinettist Alex as seen in this video.
Following on is our Saturday night star band, Malinky – no introduction needed, now with over a quarter of a century headlining Scottish sang all round the world. The line-up has included weel-kent names like Karine Polwart over the years and is now Fiona Hunter (vocals/cello), Steve Byrne (vocals/bouzouki/guitar), Mark Dunlop (vocals/whistles/bodhrán), and Mike Vass (fiddle/tenor guitar).
Sunday lunchtime is our final Kirk concert, with the energy and virtuosity of no less than four of Scotland’s top female fiddle players – we should say violin players, despite the name RANT this is no pub session ensemble! They describe themselves as ‘chamber folk’ but in the best auld tradition, that never meant ower douce. We expect to go out in a blaze of sound!
From their info: “Bethany Reid from Shetland, Anna Massie and Lauren MacColl from the Highland peninsula of the Black Isle, and Gillian Frame from the Isle of Arran join forces to showcase the combined resonance of their instruments with repertoire unearthed from both old collections and their own contemporary writing. RANT create a sound which is both spacious and lush, yet retaining all the earthy bite and spark synonymous with a Scottish fiddle player”.
Sunday afternoon means our closing open session in the Cross Keys Oak Room and if the sun favours us, more music outside Rutherfords, if not then in the Cobbles and the Cross Keys, for all singers and players.