Introduction

SIMPLY ENGLISH is a trio that plays vernacular music from England. Like so many of the good things in life, it was not so much created by us as creating itself. It all started when Andy and the Hungarian group Szélkiáltó were commissioned to make This Is The Way, a cassette of young English children's evergreen favourites - Old MacDonald, Bingo, Baa Baa, Black Sheep and all those hits - for early learners of English in Hungary. The release of the cassette was followed by a number of live concerts, in some of which both Andy and Szélkiáltó sang songs from their own repertoires. It was not long before Béla was accompanying some of Andy's unaccompanied folk songs.
That all started back in 1989. Meanwhile Szélkiáltó celebrated several jubilees, and Andy joined one of Hungary's first-ever Celtic bands, The Folk Tone Drum, named after some ancient Celtic burial mounds in Northern England and thereby, if cryptically and only to the initiated, announcing that it sang music from all over the British Isles. The band played all over Hungary and in a number of other countries (Romania, Austria, Italy, Slovakia) but in the mid-nineties its various members found that they had different directions to follow. It never died - just petered out - but occasionally a few of the old members still get together to perform, and when they do they sometimes use the old name. (In fact, after seven years the whole band of seven got together for a reunion tenth birthday concert in spring 2002.)

Andy was - and still is - constantly barraged by people asking "Are you Irish, then, or Scottish?" Being English, it was with some sorrow that he realized that, in Hungary at least, there persisted the belief that all Irishmen and Scots spent all their days (and nights) in song and general jocularity, whereas the English kept the upper lip stiff and wore pin-stripe suits and bowler hats and lugged furled umbrellas and attaché cases around with them. He determined to make it his mission to form a group that was confined to performing the songs of England - not Scotland, not Ireland, not even Wales, but England.

In 1995 Andy and Béla were asked to perform at the opening of Hungary's first Penny Market supermarket. The weather was bitterly cold, the performance out-of-doors, and we never got paid by the agency who had been employed to coordinate the event, but we did at least have to forge - or perhaps just solder - a name to go on the advertising material, and so Simply English - then a duo - was born. (Ironically, at that time the supermarket bore a German name, Pfennig Markt!)
In 2001 the duo became a trio with the addition of guitarist Bulcsú Babarci, who also warbles the odd refrain and delicately taps his udu. The first performance as a trio was a Valentine concert in Pécsvárad.

     In the spring of 2002, Béla announced that his other commitments meant that he would have to leave the band. His last performance was at the 2002 Pécs Festival of Gastronomy and Arts. A few days later, the new trio made its debut at the 2002 Pécs International Folk Days, only a few metres away.
     The new member of the trio was Tamás Zajzon, a founder member and the name-giver of The Folk Tone Drum, although he had left the group before it disbanded. With it, Simply English not only retained its new trio sound and retrieved the lost guitar, but became the richer by a strong voice, a mandolin, whistles and flute. Coincidentally, it also put a treble recorder back in Andy's hands - and mouth - after something of a lapse upon that instrument.
     The new trio's first thematic concert was at a likewise thematic international student camp. The camp's theme being the role of women in the 21st century, it was agreed with the organizer - a young lady - that Simply English would put the cat among the pigeons by creating a deliberately politically incorrect, antifeminist concert. It was a roaring success with encores.
     Since that freezing and unremunerated day at the opening of the Veszpém Pfennig Markt, Simply English has blossomed and been involved in spreading English music in a number of ways. Apart from the many concerts it has given and festivals it has been invited to perform at both inside and outside of Hungary, it has completed a number of projects:

1996-1997:: series of TV programmes on English folk music for Pécsi TV
1996:: Recording of two songs for accompanying cassette to Andy's book for learners of English, The Owl Who Sang
1997:: First Solo Album - A Story So Merry (CD/MC)
1998:: First thematic concert: Valentine's Day
1998:: Financing of a second re-run of the This Is The Way cassette
1998:: First appearance on Satellite TV (Duna TV)
1998:: Joint concert with John Faulkner
1999:: Second recording, Jolly Rogues Together, released at the spring Kaláka Festival in the Budapest Petöfi Hall, and then in a solo concert in Pécs
1999:: Joint Concert with Chris Foster
1999:: Third album - A Simply English Christmas - followed by concerts around the country
2000:: Christmas Video Clip: The Cherry Carol with Gizella Udvardy, the Bóbita Puppet Theatre and Pécs TV
2001:: January: Bulcsú Babarci joins the band, which becomes a trio
2001:: Concert, children's matinee and Sunday church appearances at the 22nd International Kaláka Festival in the castle ruins at Diósgyör
2001:: Special maritime concert for the Third Pécs British Days
2001:: Special Children's Concert for the 10th Anniversary celebrations of the Iron Rooster Puppet Theatre, Györ
2001:: Concert at the "Tolkein Day" celebrations in "The Swamp", Zagreb
2001:: Duna TV: "Folk Magazine" - Christmas Edition. Filmed at the Oxford University Press English teachers' Christmas refresher course, Budapest
2002:: Béla leaves the group. Tamás Zajzon joins it. First concert in new formation at the 13th Pécs International Folk Days; second at the Sellye Melon Festival. We did not guess the weight.
2002:: October 31. Special Halloween Concert at the Iron Rooster Puppet Theatre, Györ

Repertoire:
The band plays all kinds of vernacular music, from medieval lyrics and student songs, to the piquant urban songs from the 17th and 18th century, to 19th-century music hall songs and the folk music of the countryside and the industrial townships, as well as a handful of twentieth-century songs. As well as an ever-increasing repertoire, it can offer a number of thematic concerts: Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Songs of the Sea and a children's concert. It has also produced an "Antifeminist" concert by request, for a pro-feminist conference. Andy has provided some of the pieces with melodies.

Instruments:
Andy: lead vocals, Appalachian dulcimer, recorders, spoons
Tamás: Mandolin, guitar, whistles, flute, vocals
Bulcsu: Guitar, udu, vocal accompaniments