Dan Compton and Fran Slefer play traditional folk and dance music on fiddles, piano, guitar and button accordion. They specialize in the music of Ireland, the British Isles, Québec, Brittany, and other cold, damp places. They play for dances, concerts, and festivals around the Pacific Northwest, either as a duo or with other musical friends. In the past few years, they’ve ventured from their home in Portland, Oregon to play up, down, and beyond Oregon’s Willamette Valley, as well as in Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, Washington State, and Québec. Their performances currently feature music from their new CD, The Rambler.

In addition to playing as a duo, Dan and Fran play together in these bands:

  • Pied-à-Terre, which features Rob Barrick
    on Scottish small    pipes, fretless bass and
    African percussion. Pied-à-Terre plays
    folk-roots dance music for contra dances,
    ceilis, weddings, concerts, and your
    favorite event!

  • The Québecois-inspired dance band Rad Françine featuring the harmonica wizardry of Eric Schlorff.


Dan plays fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and button accordion. He has been active in the Pacific Northwest folk music scene for over 20 years, performing at many concerts, festivals, and music- and dance camps – as well as the odd pub gig, contradance and ceili. Dan also teaches extensively, does studio session work, and writes and performs music for film and theater.

Dan’s interest in fiddle music focuses on the styles of Ireland, Québec and Appalachia – as well as the dance music of Brittany – and he has collected much of this music in rambles to many of these places. These styles also surface in many of the tunes he writes. Many of his fiddle compositions are collected in the tunebook The Walk Home. Dan’s playing is in particular influenced by fiddle players such as Kevin Burke, Lisa Ornstein, and Matt Cranitch, from whom he’s had the good fortune to learn (either formally or informally – in the pub).

A lapsed classical guitarist (he has a master’s degree!), Dan has long explored adapting traditional tunes to the guitar – for some of that, listen to his solo guitar recording Walking in the Neighborhood. Much of his work in this area – including his guitar compositions – explores the application of many techniques used in classical guitar music, as well as the use of alternate tunings. Dan is also no stranger to the guitar's ability to accompany traditional dance music and has performed in this role with fiddle players such as Kerry Elkin and Randal Bays (he appears on Randal's recent recording The Salmon's Leap).

Dan also plays with the celtic band Raven (which has released four recordings, including the most recent, A Christmas Album and Five Days in April) and the contradance band Jigsaw (which recorded the CD Cut Up the Floor)


Fran plays button accordion, piano, and fiddle. She grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and lived in Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, and Dublin before moving to the United States. Fran began playing the piano at an early age, but left it behind for a number of years to explore instruments more commonly used in Irish traditional music, especially the fiddle. Her first fiddle teacher was Maire O’Keeffe from Tralee, Co. Kerry, and Fran picked up a number of unusual Kerry polkas and slides from her. From this beginning, Fran went on to play music from other parts of Ireland, Appalachia and Québec.

A few years ago Fran took up the piano again, inspired in part by hearing the playing of Montreal’s Benoit Legault.

Fran began C#/D button accordion while driving from Oregon to Québec a number of years ago – don’t worry, she didn’t do both at once. Since then, she has explored dance music from Ireland, Québec, France and Brittany, being especially influenced by the playing of Jacky Daly, Sharon Shannon, Andy Cutting and Yann-Fañch Perroches.

In addition to her projects with Dan, Fran also plays with the Portland-based contradance band Full Moon.