Sunday 23 October 2022

Folking Wonderful

I've been a folkie for as long as I can remember. 

I love folk music for all the same reasons that I love traditional festivals, arts and crafts. It's the fusion of storytelling, history and extraordinary skill that draws me in. I delight in hearing a good folk band in the same way as I enjoy watching a complex Morris or examining an intricate corn dolly. It's also quintessentially British. Every country has its 'native' music. Folk is ours. It's woven into the fabric of the nation.

When I was a kid, rock bands barely ever came to Cornwall. We didn't have many big concert venues and I had no transport (or money) to get to what shows there were. It was only in my late teens that my mates and I learned to drive and we would travel the 70-odd miles to Plymouth to see a band we liked.

Back then, live music in the far South-West consisted almost exclusively of male voice choirs, brass and silver bands, or folk. I was quite lucky in Helston as we often had impromptu sing-alongs in my local pub - the Blue Anchor - and I'd take my guitar along on the off chance. And we had a pretty good folk night every week at the Gwealdues Hotel. The resident band - Ruan Folk - ran it as an open mic affair and I got to see a lot of local bands and singers. I actually bought my first guitar from John Ellis, Ruan Folk's lead singer. 

Occasionally the hotel would also put on a guest gig by a Cornish celeb singer, such as John the Fish and the late great Brenda Wootton. I went to them all.

Ruan Folk made one album and, to my delight, I recently found it on YouTube. Hearing their voices again took me right back to those Wednesday nights at 'the Gweal'.


Of course, I eventually joined a band as creative teenagers do. I'd learned to play drums, guitar and a few other instruments so I got together with a bunch of like-minded friends and we looked for gigs. It wasn't easy, particularly as we had a penchant for plugging our equipment into amplifiers..

One of our first paid gigs was providing the music at a Harvest Festival celebration and a retirement party for the vicar of Gwinear, a village between Helston and Hayle. The vicar's name was Gordon Bennett - not a word of a lie. At this point none of us had a car but we did have mopeds so we took it in turns to strap our equipment to our backs and did eight mile (each way) relays to get it all there. But, by the time we were ushered on stage, the members of the audience - mostly farmers - were so drunk on home-made cider that they barely noticed us. I recorded the gig on a cassette player and, at one point, you can hear one of my band colleagues shout, 'This next song is a really quiet one and if you don't shut up you won't hear it!'  

They didn't. And they didn't.


The only regular outlet for us to play live was Ruan Folk night, so that's what we did. Even though it was unpaid, it was good stage practice. We combined acoustic versions of contemporary rock tracks with more traditional Cornish crowd-pleasers like Way down to Lamorna, My Son John,  Little Lise, An Culyek Hos and Bound for South Australia. We snuck in a few of our own songs too. And so that we didn't get accused of trying to muscle in on Ruan Folk themselves we changed the name of our band for every performance.

One extraordinary highlight of those heady days was the time we had to pay to get into one of our own gigs. Some of us smoked back then (teenagers, eh?) and we'd popped out to the rear of a village hall for a crafty ciggie and the fire door shut on us. Then the fearsome virago on the front door made us pay to get in as she didn't believe that we were the band.

There's a whole book to be written about those days, believe me.

We then took a risk and booked the local comprehensive school hall and sold out. So we did it again. And again. Happy times.


But then adulthood beckoned and, like so many Cornish youths, I had to leave my beloved county to find work. I moved to London in early 1980 and then to Buckinghamshire but the passion for folk didn't leave me. I got to see many of my heroes performing live such as Steeleye Span, Lindisfarne, Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention, The Watersons and Jake Thackray. I even ended up singing The Irish Rover on stage at a Soho basement club with Shane MacGowan before he'd formed The Pogues.

Then came the great folk revival in the 1990s and brilliant new artists to enjoy like Kate Rusby, Capercaillie, Martin Simpson, Bellowhead, Eliza Carthy, Katherine Williams, Show of Hands, and the Oysterband. 

And I kept my hand in by playing an occasional song or two at open mic nights. I wrote a few new songs too.


And so time has gone along and a whole new wave of brilliant young musicians and singer-songwriters has come along. Among my favourites are Jim Moray, Manran, Lau, Calan, Karine Polwart, Seth Lakeman, Cara Dillon, The Staves, and the Unthanks but there are so many more. I've seen many of them live and they count among some of my very favourite gigs.

And, in the past decade, I've teamed up with friends to play the odd folk gigs for beer money and to raise money for charity, but mostly for the sheer joy of playing together. I tend to play more percussion these days but I still pick up my guitar too.




There's just something so joyful in folk music. 

It's music by the people for the people. I love the melodies. I love the fact that every song tells a story. I love the musicianship. And I love the folk community, which is so welcoming and non-judgemental.

Sadly, we don't get a lot of folk on broadcast media these days. Mark Radcliffe still has The Folk Show on Radio 2 on Wednesdays (here) and the various regions have a few good shows, such as Lynette Fay's Folk Club on BBC Radio Ulster (here), Blas: Folk Radio Cymru (here) and Genevieve Tudor's Sunday Folk on BBC Radio Shropshire (here). BBC Radio Cambridgeshire has its own Folk Show (here), and there's Travelling Folk on BBC Radio Scotland (here). 

And while we're North of the Border, it's worth mentioning that the BBC Alba TV channel has some great folk shows like Seirm (here) and Cuirm: Celtic Connections (here). And over in Ireland, their BBC2 channel features shows like Ar Scáth An Cheoil (here) and Ceird An Cheoil (here). 

On the digital side of things I HIGHLY recommend Folk Radio (here), Celtic Music Radio (here) and, call it bias if you will, Cornwall Folk Radio too (here).

And there's the Tradfolk podcast too (here).

So there is good stuff out there ... you just have to hunt for it.


Photo: Mark Page

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a halt to my gigging and gig-visiting but I'm starting to get itchy fingers now that the world is coming back to a semblance of normality. 

So the cajon is being dusted off and my trusty Yamaha APX4A electric acoustic is out of its case.

Roll on the next gig.


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