From their roots as a ceilidh act in the ‘70s, Oysterband have established themselves as one of the UK's most interesting folk acts, playing what they describe as 'a kind of modern, folk-based British music, acoustic at heart but not always quiet.' They've picked up a clutch of BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, collaborated with June Tabor, toured the world, and also set up their own festival, The Big Session, which they recently revived.

Their latest album is This House Will Stand, an unconventional 'Best Of..' spanning the years 1998-2015 and combining previously released material with rare and unreleased tracks.

Prior to their appearance at Moseley Folk Festival's opening night (Friday 2 September 2016), frontman John Johns answers a few questions.

You recently completed some dates in North America - how did they go?
They were really really good. We did a select number of festival and they were even better than last year's. We started in Canada about 20 years ago, so there’s some good recognition of the band, some of the festivals are big, so you play several stages as part of the weekend, some with bands you’ve heard of, and then you get to play the main stage at the end.

You seem to have two drummers at the moment - Dil Davies and also Bellowhead's Pete Flood.
Dil Davies has been with us for eight years, and he came with us to Canada last year, but he has two very young children and a thriving drum business and he said that touring would just be too difficult for him for the foreseeable future really. With Bellowhead retiring, Pete Flood became available, and he jumped and the chance, so he came out to Canada with us. Dil will play the UK festivals this summer and Pete will be with us for the autumn. It seems to be working just fine. We have tours booked way into next year … so we’ll see what happens next, but I think Pete will move into the fray more … but we’ll see what happens …

There's some really interesting rare stuff on This House Will Stand; were there any tracks that, hearing them again, really surprised you?
There’s a weird track called Scattergun, which is mainly mine, it has this ‘punky’ lyric … that sounds fresh and different when you hear it again. A complete opposite to that is I Once Loved A Lass, which is just me singing and Alan [Prosser] playing.

Do you think some of those ‘rare’ and unreleased tracks should have made their respective albums or received wider exposure?
In retrospect, yes, but you look at them in a very different way when you’re making an album. When you’re making an album you get into a particular mood, you do exclude tracks that sound rougher around the edges. Things that stick out you leave out, the way-out tracks don’t get included because they don’t fit a particular theme. That’d apply to quite a few of the tracks.

Do you think that reviewing those more ‘weirder’ tracks influence your next studio album?
That’s a really interesting question. The process of doing the album was quite cathartic, it opened up the possibility of being – not more adventurous, I don’t want to say that because we’ve always been adventurous – but going more leftfield … off the wall. You try and make things for the radio and that can get you stuck in a certain sound. At this point, being so well known for what we do, there’s no need to be conventional, so why not go off on a tangent? It makes you braver, it makes you foolish, it makes you want to take more risks …

After Moseley Folk you have Hereford 100: The Homecoming Tour (11-17 September 2016), one of your now famed walking tours. Can you tell us a bit more about the journey?
I’m doing two walking tours thing year. The first one was in May in South Shropshire, and this next one is in September in Herefordshire. Both are close to me as I live on the Welsh border. I’m doing them for Macmillian Cancer Support, partly because I had my own brush with colon cancer last year, and partly to give something back …. To try and raise as much money as we can.

It’s called Hereford100 because it’s 100 miles. On the Saturday (10 Sept) Oysterband headlines the Bromyard Folk Festival and then I walk off over the Malvern Hills to Ledbury. From Ledbury we walk to Hereford, playing gigs in The Barrels, which is where we played for the first ever walking tour seven years ago. We play a session the next night and go on to Yarpole Church, which is beautiful, and a brilliant venue, and then to The Sun Inn (in Leintwardine) and Kington, which has its own walking festival.

During this walk I’d have completed 1,000 miles since I began seven years ago. We totted it up and just as we get near Kington, it will be 1,000 miles. We’ll play at The Burton Hotel where there’ll be a celebration and some special guests.

As well as playing loads of festivals, such as Moseley Folk, Oysterband is back running its own festival ...
We resurrected the Big Session in Buxton, Derbyshire, which is great walking country. It has these wonderful spa town buildings. We get 1,000 people in the opera house, there’s a beer marquee, lots of great pubs for sessions. It’s on the first May Bank Holiday and it’s moved from one day, to two days, and now it will be three days.

Moseley Folk Festival runs from Friday 2 to Sunday 4 September 2016 in Birmingham and includes appearances from The Levellers, Billy Bragg, The Coral, The Proclaimers, The Jayhawks, Oysterband and more.