[1] Its origins lie in the early 1970s with the English country dance band Oak, one of a tiny handful at that time that combined melodeon with fiddles.
Two members of Oak, husband and wife Rod and Danny Stradling (melodeon and vocals), went on to form The Cotswold Liberation Front, which became The Old Swan Band in 1974.
[2] They recruited fiddler Paul Burgess, percussionist Martin Brinsford and the Fraser Sisters (Fi and Jo).
Up to this point the English Folk Dance and Song Society had set the tone for polite decorum at Cecil Sharp House.
Broadening her repertoire to embrace European influences, she joined Blowzabella and its spin-off Scarp; she also plays with Token Women (as do her sister Fi and Heather Horsley) and with her own pan-European group called Freyja.