Bio & Press
Within Danish folk and roots music you will find Andreas Tophøj and Rune Barslund to be some of the most interesting artists. In collaboration for almost two decades, they’ve developed a highly personal, musical and comedic style of storytelling, rooted in both Danish, Scandinavian, and Irish traditions. Still, they give a breath of fresh air to the age-old genre. Their performance is intimate and funny. It starts from good melodies and instrumental skills, and it is allowed the space to be molded by the moment. And Andreas and Rune will never stop honing their musical craft.
Musical forays have led the duo all over, to concerts and festivals home and abroad. Various collaborations with other musicians have meant a great deal to Andreas and Rune, and their artistic endeavors have earned them several distinctions. Important milestones include the collaboration with Mike McGoldrick, Dezi Donelly (UK), and Jim Murray (IRL), which yielded the album “Ties that Bind” in 2025. In the same year, Rune was nominated for a Danish Music Award (Track of the Year), the same award Andreas and Rune won together in 2012 for the track “The Danish Immigrant.” In 2015, Andreas himself received a nomination for Artist of the Year.
Andreas and Rune were both schooled at the folk track of the Danish National Academy of Music (Odense). They originally met, however, at the intersection of completely different (and often circuitous) tracks. Classical music, including organ and choir music, was front and center in Andreas’ early childhood, and he also made the classical entry into music as he picked up the violin at the age of seven. Fed up by the violin at the age of sixteen – and more keen to impress the opposite gender – he’d rather play the guitar. Folk music soon caught his attention; that’s where he fell in love, seized the violin once again, and became an apprentice of Harald Haugaard. In the beginning, it was also the social aspect – festivities and close friendships – that dragged him into the twisted and colorful world of folk and roots music, but the music has kept him around ever since. He met Rune early on, and the two established their lasting companionship. Rune himself was shaped, almost grew out of, the Scandinavian music heritage, and both traditional music and schlager hits played in his childhood home. At the age of six, he started playing the accordion, and later in his childhood, Irish folk music had him tightly spellbound. This also marked the beginning of a lifelong journey to master the Celtic musical style. At a tender age, he traveled to Limerick, Ireland, to study under Derek Hickey, who played the accordion in the legendary folk group De Dannan. To draw an analogy between music and language – that every village and region has its own tongue – Rune’s quest was learning to speak with the “right accent.” Meanwhile, more distant shores beckoned Andreas, who went to the US to study Oldtime, bluegrass and jazz music at the Berklee College of Music.
Travels and impressions of various traditions, and different adventures as a duo or in larger constellations, have all colored the style and character Andreas and Rune present today. Apart from traditional tunes, their pieces are mostly self-composed. A good melody is cornerstone, but each melody can obviously be arranged and performed with various kinds of stylistic embellishment, as the mood allows. As such, their delivery is varied and anchored in an open, musical dialogue, resting on the shoulders of traditional music, professional craft, and the enormous musical skill they possess.
Finally, music has many inherent semantic layers to the duo. Music can convey pure emotion but also be a medium of storytelling in a more tangible sense. So, it’s only natural that Andreas and Rune has now evolved into more than musicians: They’re entertainers and storytellers, too, who fancy amusing their audience with more or less truthful tales.
