Our Story

How the Karafolkie Project came to life!

What is Karafolkie and how will it be useful to me?

Formed in 2020, karafolkie.com is the brainchild of guitarist Jenn Butterworth.

Whether you’re a beginner just starting out or an advanced player looking to develop your skills and push yourself, Karafolkie has something for you.

Our library has high quality backing tracks for a huge range of contemporary and traditional tunes recorded at a range of speeds.

With them you can focus your practice and kickstart your tune playing, get yourself ‘session ready’, build confidence, extend your repertoire, develop your groove or practice some improvisation.

At karafolkie.com you can access our huge ever-growing database of folk tune accompaniments, jam along with your favourite tunes and find a new repertoire in the Karafolkie Sheet Music Shop.

“At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, my touring schedule pretty much disappeared overnight. When considering what I might do over the coming months, I tried to think of ways I could still work as a folk accompanist from home.

I thought about all the musicians who might be feeling lonely and isolated during lockdown, and the concept of Karafolkie emerged as a way to both keep me occupied, and bring folk accompaniment to people at home.

Between April and December 2020, I learned how to record my own guitar tracks, reached out to composers around the globe for permission to accompany their fabulous tunes. With the help of Paul Galbraith at 16k Design and Marissa Waite Creative, I built and launched Karafolkie. It’s very much a work in progress, but it’s been very exciting to see it take shape and I have loads more planned for the project in the future.”
Jenn Butterworth

About Jenn

The musician behind the Karafolkie project

Jenn grew up playing Irish and Scottish music, travelling around UK festivals with her family. She would spend hours upon hours in sessions, learning a huge range of repertoire and honing her skills in rhythm accompaniment for folk tunes.

Now based in Glasgow, she has spent the last 20 years studying and working as a musician in a city that has one of the world’s most vibrant traditional music communities. She has gained a great deal of respect for her accompaniment style, being awarded ‘Musician of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards and nominated in the same category at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

She has worked with top class folk players and bands including Kinnaris Quintet, Liz Carroll, Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton, Treacherous Orchestra, Fiddlers’ Bid and Songs of Separation to name a few – it would be easier to ask Jenn who she hasn’t played with, rather than who she has.

All of this experience has made Jenn one of the most sought-after folk accompanists on the UK trad scene, and she is fast developing a worldwide reputation for her work.

During the Coronavirus outbreak of 2019/20 and subsequent lockdown, Jenn began exploring ways to support and develop the folk music community online.

The concept for Karafolkie arrived after she uploaded a few backing tracks to provide company for tune players missing their regular sessions; many people responded to say they really enjoyed the opportunity to play along with high quality backing tracks, and have regularly logged on during their instrument practice.

With a little help and a lot of recording hours, Karafolkie was launched.

For more info on Jenn Butterworth, please visit:

www.jennbutterworth.co.uk

If you are interested in learning guitar from Jenn, she regularly uploads tutorials to her Patreon page.

Or follow Jenn’s social media channels:

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Our Story

How the Karafolkie Project came to life!

About Jenn

www.jennbutterworth.co.uk

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Karafolkie.com