John Roberts and Debra Cowan

John Roberts performs in tandem with Debra Cowan, an American singer of both traditional and more recently composed songs, with strong ties to the British Isles. Roberts and Cowan did a tour of English Folk Clubs in 2011. Roberts and Cowan do not consider themselves a duo, though they often support each other’s songs vocally and instrumentally; they also recorded a CD together – Ballads Long & Short, which people have said nice things about.

“It all started with a question in 2009: ‘How are you getting to Chicago?’ And with that, folk musicians John Roberts and Debra Cowan decided to team up for a series of small concerts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois before arriving as separately booked artists at the Fox Valley Folklore Society’s annual festival. The combination of car-pool and mini-tour was successful enough that John and Debra continue to do more performing together both in the USA and in 2011, with a successful tour in the United Kingdom.” That’s our story, anyway, and since we continue to perform together as often as possible we thought we ought to sing some of our songs together as well.”