Bob Dylan started me singing, with three chords and a coathanger harmonica holder. But folk music...
With a pal Andy Finch, unaccompanied singer from the Isle of Wight, in a battered green Bedford van, Friday nights to Chichester in West Sussex. There, at a singaround in the New Inn, Whyke Road, I unfurled my guitsr and plunged into 'Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall'. The reception was polite and encouraging.

Throughout the evening, however, I heard a voice which I recognised as having far greater resonance to me than the urban Americans (or the urban British for that matter): Bob Lewis, George Belton, Jimbo, Chalky, and I think a Marion- singing traditional songs with the characteristic refrain lines- later I came to know them as Copper songs.

I felt I had come home. I'd grown up in a Kentish village in the 1950s, not in the streets of a dirty old town, nor in the docks of Liverpool. These songs spoke to me. Twankydillo- Just As The Tide Was Flowing- Sportsmen Arise- Sorrows Away. It was the rich harmony of strong voices.

Martin Wyndham-Reed I remember as one of the first guests I saw- and he's still at it. It's the lyric, the deep-down resonance, the heart of being, beyond analysis. Hooked? Found the right pool, I think.