Dogwatch are folk duo John (that's me) & Joy Rennie. We both sing, I play English concertina and 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 but there's a good old mixture of serious and light hearted stuff and lots of those all-important "joiney in" bits.

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 been booked and appeared at lots of folk clubs and festivals. Since Ron Angel's heart bypass operation a while back, Joy and I have been running the Stockton Folk Club, ably assisted by the invaluable John Lawson.

Joy recently got a C/F melodeon to go with her original D/G model. It's given us much more flexibility and we've been busily working away at loads of 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. In 2005, we and several friends formed "The Otterby Band" (say it quickly to get the true meaning of the name) and we've had a number of club and festival bookings. As well as all that, we both play for a border morris dancing side called "Locos in Motion", who're also in great demand.

You can e.mail us by clicking here (johnandjoy@dogwatch.org.uk)