Dogwatch are folk duo John (that's me) & Joy Rennie. We only found out about folk music relatively late in our lives but loved it so much we quickly took early retirement so we could do more of it.

I play English concertina, Joy plays Melodeons, recorders and digital piano (affectionately known as "The Beast" - the piano, not Joy!!). As the logo suggests, we play tunes and sing songs about subjects both at sea and on dry land. Some of these are traditional, some are made up of wonderful poetry set to music by Joy and some are all our own.

Joy and I were first introduced to the folk world in the mid nineties (the nineteen nineties, not our nineties), when we were taken to Ron Angel's club at The Sun in Stockton. After a period of being first silent audience and then chorus-singing audience, we began doing floor spots individually - I'd never sung since I was a kid but I was bullied into it by Ken Wilson when we started going to the Wilsons' club at The Welly in Wolviston. Eventually, we started performing together (if you'll pardon the expression) at the start of the new millennium and since then, we've appeared at various festivals, including Appingedam in Holland in 2007, and have done guest spots at lots of folk clubs.

Joy's just got a new C/F melodeon to go with her original D/G model. It's better for singing to so we've been doing little else since she got it but working up new song arrangements. We absolutely love it and it was definitely worth waiting the nine months it took to get it from Italy.

Joy also sings with a popular five part female group called "The Raffleites" who sing some lovely songs with very pleasing multi part harmonies. Until the end of 2007, I also sang with "The Endeavour Shanty Men", who've appeared at various festivals in this country as well as in Portugal, Holland, Norway and Germany. I've now retired from the Endeavours so I'll have more time for other things. We're both members of recently formed "The Otterby Band" (say it quickly to get the true meaning of the name) who've had a number of folk club bookings and performed at Saltburn Festival for the first time in 2006. As well as all that, we both play for a border morris dancing side called "Locos in Motion", who're also in great demand.