About FiddleBop

We're a jazz group based in Oxfordshire, England. And we love playing music!

Dave Favis-Mortlock plays fiddle (violin) and sings, Jo Davies plays acoustic guitar and sings, and Roger Davis plays double bass.

We play jazz standards from all periods: Black Bottom and The Charleston from the early years, Ain't Misbehavin' and Night and Day from the swing era, through to John Coltrane's Giant Steps and Naima; as well as some of our own songs.

Background. FiddleBop was born in 2004, in a field at beautiful Poppit Sands, near Cardigan in West Wales. Dave had recently met Jo. While camping together, they tried playing some jazz. It sounded good.

Dave's musical background is mainly folk-rock. He has played fiddle for The Rollright Stones and Tricks Upon Travellers, and was one half of the duo Mortlock and Underwood. He is a geomorphologist and lectures at Queen's University in Belfast. Dave enjoys hypothesising, procrastinating, playing his fiddle, and being married to Jo.

Jo is from a more folky background, playing and singing with Cathy Hattam in the duo JoCa in the 80s; also participating in more adventurous musical projects such as The Gig For The Curious fronted by the amazing John Cunningham, together with the late Steve Harris. She is a one-to-one support worker for a charity called The Clive Project. Jo enjoys painting large pictures, spending time with her son Reuben, playing her guitar, and being married to Dave.

In 2005 Jo and Dave were lucky enough to stumble across a marvellous jazz double bass player called Roger Davis. Roger has played bass for many years, with several bands. Currently, he also plays with Richard Leach’s 7 Stars of Jazz and Dave Morwood's Rascals of Rhythm.

The name FiddleBop was Jo's idea. Nice! Ours alone as far as we know¹.

The future. FiddleBop is still a work in progress. We're still developing our style and sound, and building up our repertoire. But we're getting there! One urgent task is to do some more recording. This is planned for 12-13 September 2008 at Hats Off studios.

¹Altho' there is an album called Fiddle Bop (by the Rhythm Rockers), also Fiddle Bop tunes by David Williams and Hardrock Gunter, and a Fiddle-de-Bop tune by Lincoln Mayorga.