Proper folk, the good shit, has an aura of eternity about it. That’s the thought bobbing around my mind this evening as Harbottle and Jonas’ support act wallops through a set of bracing airs on fiddle and cittern. As Cornish as a stiff breeze this lad, the salt tang of history redolent in every nimble phrase and wry anecdotal aside. 

I duck out of the Barrelhouse for a pint and a cheeky smoke on what feels like the first authentically mizzley weekend of the year. I’m back, and Harbottle and Jonas are already on stage, keen as you like. 

They’re looking well, this actual real-life couple. I’ve seen them a handful of times over the years, first as a loved-up duet, later settling in with a full band. These days they have a two-year-old, and a four-year-old, at home. I wouldn’t dream of saying the stress is showing a bit. 

Their harmonies are dazzling, mesmerising. Not just tight. Better than tight – pirouetting through sonic space like some divine high-wire act, vaulting up the scale in sweet uncanny intervals. I write down the word ‘ambrosial’ – twice! – and I mean it. 

It’s pretty, and much better than pretty… there’s a gutsy Fleetwood Mac swagger on the quick tunes that holds the assembled spellbound. 

Song-wise there are plenty of acts out there ploughing this furrow. Dusting off old folk tunes, culled from the cottages and coves of the southwest. Bracing odes to devil-may-care smugglers and lighthouse keepers, garnished with crowdpleasing yo-ho-hos.

It would be tempting to dismiss this as genre fiction, but with Harbottle and Jonas the execution is so sublimely assured. Glimpses into their personal life – Freya runs a couple of choirs, Dave, we hear, spends a fair bit of time down the pub – are charming and real. 

Their forthcoming LP ‘From The Moor to the Sea’ celebrates the Devon landscape. Tonight we’re treated to gorgeous cut ‘Like The Salmon’. It has all the dimension and heft of a classic, so much so the dreadlocked lady in the seat beside me blubs with emotion. 

One teensy niggle. I’m giddy with joy as they strike up the intro to Johnny Cash banger ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’. You know, the one with all the place names? Tut tut, I can’t help but spy them reading the lyrics off a sheet. I know it’s hard, but come on. Harbottled it. 

Nevertheless, I meander home down the damp backlanes of Totnes thoroughly enriched, my thirst slaked from the wellspring of eternity.