Award-winning folk supergroup heads south to conquer Wickham

But it was his only recent win for the BBC Radio2 Folk Awards Musician of The Year that has reduced him to tears.

Nominated alongside such stars of the genre as Martin Simpson, Ross Ainslie and Tim Edey, the concertina player couldn't believe it when they called his name at the ceremony in Belfast.

'˜That was great, that was the biggest thing I've ever won. It's the one I'd always wanted to win, but it was something that I never thought I could achieve, so I was in tears. The rest of the awards are great, and I'm very appreciative, but I've never cried at them '“ that was absolutely massive.'

And now he's playing with his two main bands, Imar and Talisk at this year's Wickham Festival.

'˜It's quite a happy coincidence, it's happened a couple of times, but not that often. They're not the same band at all, they're very different musically, but people see the same members in bands so they think they won't put them on at the same festival because they think they'll be getting the same thing twice over.

'˜Dependent on the project and depending on the festival we do crossover, and then it's great because all of your friends are there instead of half of them.'

Imar, the newer of the two, was only formed in early 2016, and has been described as something of a celtic music supergroup. The line-up is completed by Adam Brown (Rura), Ryan Murphy (Mànran), Tomás Callister and Adam Rhodes (Barrule/Mabon).

'˜We all come from the same backline of trad music '“ we all played Irish music basically, through an organisation called Comhaltas, myself, Ryan and Adam Brown, more so than Tom and Rhodesy, but they did come through the same movement.'

Over time, the various musicians found themselves drawn to Mohsen's home town of Glasgow, and taking part in a regular session he put on in a bar called Sloans.

'˜We would all end up going and playing all of the time and the music was really good, and we gelled really well. Things would work really easily, and nothing was forced. We all became really good friends and we were like the mates who'd get together and say we should start a band. And we kept saying it for ages, but never doing anything with it. Tom and Ryan got together one day and played a couple of tunes, Rhodesy went round that day and I went round the next day, and we put it together. We asked Adam Brown if he wanted to join a band  because we wanted a singer and guitarist. We ended up weirdly, looking for a guitarist who sang, but we've ended up completely instrumental. It's actually worked out much the better for us, so it's all great.'

Named after a Viking king who ruled over much of the region the individual members come from, they released their well-received debut, Afterlight, last year.

But fitting in recording sessions around their other bands was the hard part.

'˜Luckily enough it did come together fairly easily. Because we're all so busy, we didn't have a lot of time to do it. Whatever schedules we had, we found a week to do the album. The album came in at 34 minutes, but we wanted it longer. Ryan wrote two tunes that night and [Northern Irish folk musician] Damien O'Kane gave us a tune, and we just put them together.

'˜Because we all know what direction we're going in, it came together fairly easily. We have a veto rule in the band. We'll all bring tunes and we all write. For example, we needed a tune at the end of the set and it was in E major. Me and Ryan both came and presented the tunes in the morning, and it was like: 'That's a nice tune Mohsen, Ryan, that one's better. Let's not use Mohsen's',' he laughs.

'˜It wasn't harsh, it just works better and feels better for us.

'˜And now that tune we didn't use for Imar has become the next tune for Talisk instead, it's kind of nice. There's no ego-trip in the middle of it. It's really lucky.'

And with both bands releasing new albums this autumn, Imar due first in September, then Talisk the following month, it looks like Mohsen's going to be busy for a while yet.

Wickham Festival 

Blind Lane, Wickham

August 2-5

wickhamfestival.co.uk