Writing a folk standard

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Andy7
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 04:52 PM

Yes it's a lovely tune, cleverly used by Bill Caddick for his moving words. I think there's nothing wrong with using a traditional folk tune for a new song, as he has (as long as it's good!)

Incidentally - just opinion, I know! - I think that, in the linked video, Bill Caddick pays just a bit too much attention to his clever instrumental work, and not quite enough to singing the song - both in the sound balance, and in the amount of time he looks at the instrument while performing.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 02:57 PM

Caddick is from Wolverhampton not Havering, but where he is from has nothing to do with whether it is a traditional tune,here he is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlDMBojZbpE so will the smart arse pedants listen to the man himself, it is an italian trad tune

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 02:02 PM

Nobody else seems to have thought it was anything other than an original tune. If he said different Caddick was havering.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 01:25 PM

McGrath, BillCaddick claims it is a trad tune that the composer used , go and discuss it with him

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 11:42 AM

Thanks, Jim.

Andy7

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 11:15 AM

"I meant a 'folk style' "
Fine Andy - I accept that and have set out how I believe Ewan went about it - it's not by any means the only way but it seems to me a convincing use of the vernacular holds the key to an approach.
It's ironic that one of his finest songs is a mixture if a Sicilian tune, personal retrospection and Shakespearean references (chicks = Macbeth).
Forcing both the style and the language leads almost inevitably to pastiche - listening to how the subjects of your songs express themselves can help avoid this.
One of the distinguishing features of traditional song is that the people in them invariably have names and identities - quite often occupations.
Anonymity comes with your song taking on an identity of its own, as have a number of MacColl's; particularly among Travellers.
All the Traveller and West Clare songs we recorded were anonymous, even though most had been made within the lifetimes of the singers.
In the case of the Travellers, some of them were less than a decade old, yet the singers referred to them as "old songs" - a reference to type rather than age.
Anonymity isn't a defining feature - it's just commonplace to most folk songs.
Your aim should be to write a good song - I find the folk forms adaptable enough for that purpose, but they are bn no means the only ones.   
Many of MacColl's good songs didn't follow any identifiable style - he used jazz for his John Axon songs ans some of his 'Festival of Fools' (and one of his 'Singing the Fishing' compositions was based on Gilbert and Sullivan.
G'luck with your writing
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 10:45 AM

Oops, clever maybe, but not clever enough to sign in! The above was from me, Andy7.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 10:44 AM

To clarify what I meant - yes, I meant a 'folk style' standard that would be sung, and welcomed, in folk clubs. Not a 'heavy metal' standard or an 'operatic aria' standard.

And by 'folk clubs', I mean the kind of club that welcomes a variety of styles and genres, including new compositions.

And obviously not a 'traditional folk' standard either, because talented and clever though I believe myself to be, it's a little beyond me to travel back in time 250 years and write an anonymous song! :-)

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 09:48 AM

"Musket doesn't have a hatred of folk music Jim. "
Yes he does - or he pretends to in order to destroy discussion - or shock, as a child does - "tit-trousers = Walter Pardon ot Harry Cox - what more proof do you need for your behavior Muskie?
Your schizophrenic identity crisis has destroyed more threads than I could ever hope to.
"Thin Lizzy sang a traditional folk song called Whiskey in the Jar"
And Vaughan Williams used a Norfolk Sea song to compose a rhapsody - what's your point?
Manners of performance have nothing to do with definition - origin and process does.
Are you really trying to rehabilitate yourself after your long ter abusive behaviour?
Bit late, I'd say
Like with folk song - you can'r rewrite history
Grow up - you are not even amusing
jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 09:34 AM

Tchaikovsky isn't really "traditional", Schweik. The tune used by Bill Caddock might have been a tune Tchaikovsky picked up which might have been traditional, but no one knows that.

For what it matters - anyway I tend to think that any good tune must have been used before in some variant.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Ian Mather
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 09:26 AM

Musket doesn't have a hatred of folk music Jim. Or at least I don't and the other two Muskets haven't exactly indicated that way. In fact, none of us refuse to go to folk clubs and prattle on about folk being dead, as you do. We all go to folk nights in our respective necks of the woods and enjoy the huge revival and exciting young talent out there, possibly writing tomorrow's folk standards. You are the one who criticises bloody good music.

Stop telling lies, eh?

Oh and stop ruining decent threads with your verging on the fanatical crap regarding folk music. You don't know and I don't know what it is, because it is a subjective term to denote a musical genre of various types of music. Logically everything is folk but we have to trim it down so if it isn't too left field when performed by people in pubs, that's not a bad start. If some of those songs are a couple of hundred years old, we are getting there.

Kevin. I disagree. They are still folk songs after Vaughan Williams arranged them. Your logic would dictate that me singing The White Cockade slowly with a Celtic styled DADGAD guitar is a folk song but a couple I know who sing it as an up tempo unaccompanied chorus song isn't? Or vice Versa?

The arrangement changes nothing. Thin Lizzy sang a traditional folk song called Whiskey in the Jar, which is and remains a folk song whether the late Phil Lynott was screaming it or Jim mumbling it through his waistband.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 08:08 AM

John Tams has an enviable catalogue.

I would like to put forward Rolling Home.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 07:29 AM

Iwould like to nominate JOHN OF DREAMS, It uses a tradtional tune and in my opinion has a good set of lyrics.
JimCarroll quote,
"You really do need a humility transplant Dick - your arrogance in telling clubs that they need accompaniment to put bums on seats ranges from big to mammoth-sized."
provide an example of where i have said that, your dishonest ,and a mischief maker liar,these are things you can do something aboutIaccept that you can do nothing about being of small stature, but please try and improve your intellectual stature by being honest. you intellectual dishonesty makes you look like a cerebral pipsqueak

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 07:16 AM

"Andy made it perfectly clear what he meant and you're deliberately twisting his intention."
No I'm not Jack - if misunderstood, enough people here took him took him to mean what I believe he meant and went on to defend the non-meaning of the term "folk"
We really do need to settle this question - hopefully without the mud-slinging.
Then maybe subjects like 'definition' will stop being no-go areas.
I have become increasingly sickened by the unpleasantness and dishonesty that surrounds this topic - even from people I otherwise respect.
The return of Muskett and his hydrophobic hatred of folk song and source singers (albeit in yet another persona) hasn't helped
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 06:50 AM

No, but it is a "standard" of the kind Andy7 was asking about
You've missed out the "folk" bit that was requested in the title Jack

Andy made it perfectly clear what he meant and you're deliberately twisting his intention.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 06:26 AM

"Read what Jim wrote, bloke, don't read into it what you choose to think he wrote. "
Waste of time Mac - guy has never produced an honest argument whatever persona he chooses o troll in
He's not even bright enough to hide his identity - no prizes for identifying him - he's just told us " trousers up to their tits".
Next stop - "I don't like Mondays"
Anybody here old enough to remember Lobby Ludd?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 06:34 AM

Read what Jim wrote, bloke, don't read into it what you choose to think he wrote. He didn't talk about what Vaughan Williams or Delius did using folk songs as "their crime". They used folk materials to create something very different from a fok song. In no way is the result a folk song, any more than a wooden table is a tree.

And Vaughan Williams would of course have roarred with laughter at anyone making that mistake, especially as he so loved and valued folk song and did si much for it.

There are particular features of the folk traditions that do set them part from other categories of music. They need to be respected and cherished.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 05:59 AM

I doubt Vaughan Wliiams et al turned traditional ballads into anything other than traditional ballads. Their crime according to Jim is that they didn't wear their trousers up to their tits or claim to have learned them at their mother's knee. Arrangements are presentation.

The pity is, Jim's lifetime of valuable work in a particular field of folk music isn't well served by his comical dismissal of western folk music in general on the basis he wants to reserve the word folk for a narrow genre that has merged successfully with other styles fairly successfully everywhere apart from in his head.

Mind you, he always gives good entertainment and that can't be a bad thing. A pity his act gate crashes serious threads starting with genuine questions or propositions but there you go. There's a thread about under exposed artistes doing the rounds and he starts chirping about people who have been dead years and never in a million years were they "under exposed." Both MacColl and Pardon enjoyed being well known in their field.

Writing a folk standard. Beauty is as ever in the ear of the beholder. I heard a song again last night that a good friend wrote and it is still in my head this morning. I might ask him for the words. This is how it starts....

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 05:49 AM

"No, but it is a "standard" of the kind Andy7 "
You've missed out the "folk" bit that was requested in the title Jack
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 05:45 AM

Tunnel Tigers isn't a folk song - the author always insisted on that about everything he wrote.

No, but it is a "standard" of the kind Andy7 was asking about. So the ways you might perform it are relevant to his question. "What is folk?" grandstanding isn't, and there are many other more appropriate threads on this forum you could tack your manifesto on to.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Nov 16 - 05:20 AM

"There is a local singer-percussionist who makes a setpiece out of MacColl's"
There's little point of throwing up examples of who has done what to which Jack - George Butterworth took a fine English ballad and turned it into something else - so do Delius - and Vaughan Williams, and Kodaly, and Bartok....
All that is doing is using something in order to produce something else, there's nothing wrong with experimentation. if that's what you are implying..
Tunnel Tigers isn't a folk songs - the author always insisted on that about everything he wrote.
We are not an inch nearer your telling me what folk song has become
"To talk about "the folk tradition" is a bit of a nonsense,"
Not really Mac - whatever form traditions take, there is general agreement as to what it is, what made it as it was, where it came from and where it (probably) originated.
Living traditions evolve - dead ones don't, but they can be used to serve the purpose they once did - that was what the Folk Revival was about.
That is not what is being argued for here.
Changing the meaning of the product and discarding the old model doesn't work with folk song or music - especially if you can't explain the changes.
I believe MacColl to have been the best songwriter the revival produced, not because his songs were the ones that turned me on, but because he respected and understood the tradition and used it to create new pieces.
The best and most resilient of his pieces were those taken directly from the mouths of working people; Shoals of Herring (Sam Larner and Ronnie Balls), Freeborn Man (Minty Smith, Gordon Boswell, Belle Stewart and others), Shellback (Ben Bright), Tenant Farmer (a group of Scots Border farmers he met at a Hogmanay Party), The Big Hewer (Jack Elliot ad other miners)...... plenty more examples   
The Radio Ballads were groundbreaking creations that changed how working people were regarded by the media.
All of these creations throbbed with the language and vernacular of the working people before today's "progress" destroyed it with innovations like 'Estuary English'.
We learn from our past and use what we learn to go on expressing ourselves as human beings - no sensible person shows the contempt some have her for past creations because they prefer other forms and decide their new forms are "folk".
It really doesn't work like that.
MacColl once said during a period of depression that the thing that would destroy folk song would be for it to fall into the hands of people who neither respected it nor understood it.
That appears to be what has happened on the British folk scene - it will be terminal if those who don't feel like that don't do something about it
Let's hope that the Irish youngsters coming to the music make a better fist of it than we did
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 10:29 PM

To talk about "the folk tradition" is a bit of a nonsense, as if there was one single folk tradition. It's a way of talking that invites the kind of belligerency we get here, the "what is folk" squabbles.

There isn't one tradition, there's a host of them in every corner of the globe. Some are living, some are fossilized, some are rigid, some are the reverse. There is a kind of communality between them - if you're in an unfamiliar place and you come across some traditional music, you're likely to be fascinated by it even if it's totally remote.

But stuff like what kind of instruments it's played on, or not, and whether the words and tunes are ancient and no one knows who made them, or made yesterday or on the spot, that's all depending on how that particular tradition works, and it varies in so many ways.

There's always a tension and a potential conflict between the need to draw lines, and protect the particular quality of a tradition, and the benefit that can come from being open to other traditions. Both are important, but the conflict and tension are always there. Some people will rightly focus on one side or the other. Both are needed. Blending everything together makes for mush. Different traditions do best to live alongside each other, rather than merging, much of the time.
........
To get back to the original point, the only thing I'm certain of is that no one can sit down and write a "folk standard". What you can do is make up songs, and maybe on occasion you'll find that some song you've made gets asked for, or you sing it somewhere and someone asks "was it you wrote that", or you find someone you've never met singing it. But there's no way to know why it's that song, and not others, not even others you might think are better songs.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 08:57 PM

Do you think that discouraging the use of a synthesizer a three piece chamber quartet or a bodhran as an accompaniment - is "restrictive"

There is a local singer-percussionist who makes a setpiece out of MacColl's "The Tunnel Tigers" (he's one of the very few people I know of who still performs any of MacColl's songs in Scotland). He uses a bodhran for accompaniment, in a spectacular and technically sophisticated style where it emulates the rhythms of a tunnelling machine. I can't imagine anybody finding it inappropriate.

Bodhran accompaniment is common in Scotland for the more militaristic Jacobite songs (like "The Highland Muster Roll"). Which makes a cruder statement with far less originality, but it fits. It's been an accepted way to do those songs for decades.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Norfolk Sky
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 08:01 PM

It shouldn't be about ego, because once your song in the folk tradition (different things to different people) is out there, anything can happen to it. It has a life of its own. All you can do as the author is to give it a good send off - people will probably forget you in favour of the person that sings it best.

I have a 'folkie' song that hasn't, to my knowledge, been sung by other artists but gets enthusiastically sung along with when I do it in local pubs and folk clubs.

I do think that the writer is often not the person best placed to sing it though.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 04:00 PM

"So it was ok for MaColl and Seeger"
No - it was and is good for anybody when it appropriate.
Stop twisting what I have aid half a dozen times.
Still waiting for a definition unless you are suggesting "anything that's played at a folk club" - surely nobody's that thick!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 02:33 PM

So it was ok for MaColl and Seeger, not for any cultural or minuted resolution reason but because she can stroke the necks of guitars and banjos. 😅😅😅. The inference being I suppose that it somehow makes her different to the many accomplished musicians playing folk since (and before) it kicked off big time in the '60s.

Interestingly I have just been listening to them on an old compilation of songs from the radio ballads. Good stuff and from a genre perspective, I'd put songs (and arrangements) of the likes of Cabin Boy as light operatic whilst Battle is Done With is pure jazz.

Yet of course, both folk, both played in folk clubs.

Oh, even the living tradition works. The only time I ever really recall hearing The Fitters Song prior to learning it as a teenager was the MacColl BBC rendition. Yet that album today, I notice I have inadvertently altered the words (he sings mend a broken tread whereas I seem to have altered it to tap a broken thread.) He often said that his songs are offered to the living tradition and if the songs evolve, that's good. I even have a tape of him saying it in an interview in January 1985 after a gig in Kiveton.

It's right and proper that MacColl pops up as he was the archetypal writer of folk standards. Hearing what he said on the subject in later years is more pertinent to this thread than his earlier thoughts before folk took off in a way his mates could never imagine.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Andy7
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 02:31 PM

Btw, when I've written my 'standard', I'm not going to post anything about it on here. I want it to stand or fall on its own merits just from being sung in clubs, with no 'marketing' of any kind!

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 02:09 PM

Whooooops""
Should read - " but I'm NOT - DEFINITELY NOT really interested in......."
******* keyboard.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 02:05 PM

"Okay Jim, what would it take to compose a new song that would take off in the no-accompaniment clubs you like,"
Can we clear something up Jack - I have no problem with accompaniment - I sang to it for many years and am happy to hear it when it accompanies and does not interfere with the song - all too often not the case.
MacColl insisted on using it for the Singers club because he felt that, with Peggy's skill and sensitivity and the work they put into it, it could add to songs and also ring the changes in an evening's performance - it was always half-and-half with them.
But this isn't about what I like - for me it a balance between my love as a listener and my interest as a researcher into what I believe to be working-class music.
As for Irish music and accompaniment - I've said what I have to say about what I believe to be the attitude of the best of the singing clubs - personally, I tend to agree with them regarding traditional song for the reasons I have stated - I'm not opposed to experimentation and I'm not opposed to the principle of accompaniments, but it needs skill, sensitivity and intelligence not to make a pig's-ear of it - to be honest, I don't believe Dick is the man for the job.
Pat and I spent well over twenty years associating with and listening to Ewan and Peggy, and since Ewan died we have amassed an archive of his work - singing and talking - the bulk of it being the latter - seminars and long soliloquies he used to lapse into following the main body of work at Critics Group meetings (200 tapes worth of the latter).   
This archive will be handed over to the MacColl Family (hopefully later next year) and will be archived with the rest of ur collection when we shuffle of this mortal whatsit - anybody who is interested in any aspect of Ewan and Peggys work is, of course welcome to anything I can pass on to them - not much use to those who didn't like Ewan and not prepared to listen to what he had to say - their loss!!
I believe Ewan to have been among the best of our songwriters writing using folk styles - he was certainly the most prolific.
I've some idea of is views on songwriting and am happy to sum them up for those who will listen but I'm really interested in yet another unpleasant o boring necrophobic grave-dancing fest.
So - there you go - if you're interested - so am I.
If not, our stuff goes to Limerick Uni and the Irish Traditional Music Archive for future generations without inbuilt agendes to make sense of - it will anyway.
My offer remains as it has always been - we have a large archive of traditional song and music accumulated during the 10/15 years life of the London Singers Workshop.
Any traditionally based club which thinks they can use it to assist the development of their club is welcome to a copy - they only have to ask.
One of the things that Pat and I took away from The Critics Group was the desire to share when we have - we caught a nasty dose of that from Ewan and Peg.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 01:14 PM

"See The Elephant"


One positive thing about the yanks.. they seem to have fewer hang ups about what constitutes good modern 'folk' music...???

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 12:51 PM

Okay Jim, what would it take to compose a new song that would take off in the no-accompaniment clubs you like, and become part of their standard repertoire?

Has anybody done it in living memory?

Can you give Andy7 any pointers as to how he might go about doing it?

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 12:35 PM

Has that elephant poem been set to music,
because it scans perfectly to a 'standard folk melody format'©
and I can easily imagine the likes of any of the Carthy clan performing it very effectively... 😎

.. with or without single instrument or full electric band backing.... 🙄

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 12:17 PM

"I've died!!!!!!!"
Then stop making a noise and lie down!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some other bloke
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 12:06 PM

I've died!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 11:37 AM

Add the Goilín to that list - and long may it stay there
It chooses to not have accompanied songs - you really need to learn the difference between "restrictive" and "selective" and stop attempting to impose your own selfish agenda on a group of people who have been involved in Irish song as long as we have, have produced a body of work second to none in Ireland - and continue to do so, who are both knowledgeable and talented, who continue to provide a venue for the best of Irish singers and have inspired new talent and deep interest in traditional song.
All of the Singing Circles in Clare have an open policy towards accompaniment, but, as I said, accompaniment here i as rare as rocking-horse shit.
You really do need a humility transplant Dick - your arrogance in telling clubs that they need accompaniment to put bums on seats ranges from big to mammoth-sized.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 09:57 AM

The following Irish Singers Clubs that i have been to have a restrictive singing policy, no accompaniment allowed... Cork singers club, Skibbereen singers club.
that is a fact, the only other singers club that I know of the Góilín Traditional Singer's Club, at this moment in time appears to have a more relaxed policy,I understood that it used to have a more rigid policy.
I have never been to that club so of course I WAS TALKING FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 08:15 AM

"but the typed words can be somewhat restrictive eh?"
As you appear to be demonstrating
More later
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 08:00 AM

Still chuckling over sweeping statements that "Irish clubs are restrictive."

There are many folk standards written in Ireland. Granted, whether they were written recently by whoever or are lost in the trad mist of time, you can always find websites stating they were written by Christie Moore or a n other member of The Dubliners.

Tell you what Jim, the voice may well be an unrestrictive musical instrument but the typed words can be somewhat restrictive eh?

I love an audience who will sit hanging on my every word as I describe the history and provenance of a song or tune before I play it but I also accept that most folk music is, as has been for the last sixty years enjoyed by bums on seats who like the noise it makes.

Off yer high horse

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 07:42 AM

"To have a different opinion is not bullying."
To persist in that opinion over and over again without qualifying it is.
"I am stating how it is, not attempting to change anything. "
]I am explaining why it is why it is and you are ignoring it.
"THE FACT IS THE RULES IN IRISH SNGERS CLUBS ARE RESTRICTIVE"
You ac repeat his as often as you like, but until you respond to the facts and show them to be restrictive, they are no more than your repeated opinion.
They mu#ight be described as "restrictive" if you could provide names and numbers of people they are restricting.
The exclusion of accompaniment took place after it had been tried and found wanting - it isn't as if it had been already a feature of the Irish revival - it just didn't suit the survivors who soldiered on after the Balla Boomers had gone elsewhere.
Dragging it back to do the same damage it had done in the first place would be folk suicide, and to foist it on a disinterested and reluctant clubs would be as RESTRICTIVE as it gets.
I went two Dublin singing nights a couple of months ago -
One was at the Cobblestones, which is exclusively non accompanied - a mixture of mainly young singers who welcome us odies.
The other took place the following night around the corner, in the lounge area of a pub and was made up entirely of young people who had been part of the earlier night - o club - no "rules" just a singaround.
The youngsters sang traditional songs and ballads all night and they all chose to sing them unaccompanied - it was heartwarming to hear so many young singers dipping their toes into the traditional repertoire - it was also heart-warming to har youngsters singing half a dozen Child Ballads in a crowded Dublin Pub.
Don't you dare attempt to to interfere with that wonderful progress in order to get a booking.
Would you care to provide any actual evidence of your claim of "restrictive" - no?
Thought not.
We know how many people walked away from an accompanied scene and we know what those who stayed around wanted - their choice
The music decides whether accompaniment is necessary - not the drive to put bums on seats.
"when does the choice of accompaniment make a song more successful?
"successful" in artistic terms Jack, or whether it will draw in more people?
The voice is the most versatile and accessible of all musical instruments, and it is a worldwide fact that it is quite capable of speaking for itself without outside help.
If instruments can add to its qualities, fine, but it takes a great deal of work for that to happen - I've become tired of hearing the old chestnut that "work spoils enjoyment" so I don't hold much hope for that one in a revival that calls in the pest-control firm whenever it is suggested that standards need improving.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 07:15 AM

"Attempting to pull something relevant to the question out of the clouds of smoke: when does the choice of accompaniment make a song more successful?"

What about Paul Brady's version of The Lakes of Pontchartrain - and Arthur McBride too?

Lakes of Pontchartrain

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 07:12 AM

Andy 7's post on 6th November sums it all up!
Now, job for the day: write a (prize-winning) folk standard to be my entry in songwriting competition this coming Thursday. Accompany or not? Guitar? Melodeon? Bodhran?
Come back in 30 years' time to see if it has become a standard. (However many of us will be up, still arguing, in the great folk club in the skies by then....or it might be an open mike?)

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 06:57 AM

To have a different opinion is not bullying.
I am stating how it is, not attempting to change anything.
I quite happily go and do an evening unaccompanied [less instruments to carry about] and giving the customers what they want, I also find it a challenge, because a different approach to the song is required.
THE FACT IS THE RULES IN IRISH SNGERS CLUBS ARE RESTRICTIVE,They prevent accompaniment, whether that is good or bad is debatable, and is not what I am trying to discuss, PLEASE PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION JIM
restrictions, prevent certain kind of development, whether that is good or bad is the subject for a different discussion, neither do we know how many people do not turn up because of the restrictiveness.
"Lloyd's concertina-accompanied songs work brilliantly but they're too hard to play to ever be folk club standards."
Alf Edwards accompaniments are not difficult, do you play the English Concertina, Jack?I do, and i am telling you they are not technically difficult.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 06:20 AM

"I am not telling anybody how to run anything."
That is exactly what you are doing Dick
It Irish singers wifh to take up instrumentation of their own volition they are quite capable of doing so without your bullying.
The fact that clubs here book you is their choice - a matter of taste, I suppose - 'à chacun son goût' as the French say.
You are entitled to your opinion as I am mine - I am telling you as it is - you are attempting to change how it is, for your own benefit.
There is no groundswell of change back to instrumentation - or the Aran Island sweaters (been there, done that - got the exodus of audiences to prove that).
Leave it out Dick - I think we've both said all we have to say to each other.
"I've lost the will to live!"
Know the feeling - I've always found that a healthy dose of honest, thoughtful debate works wonders - beats cupboard-full of Philosan any day!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 06:16 AM

Attempting to pull something relevant to the question out of the clouds of smoke: when does the choice of accompaniment make a song more successful?

The obvious example (which I owe to somebody here whose identity I forget) is The House of the Rising Sun, which hardly anybody knew when it was just sung solo, didn't go anywhere fast with Leadbelly's original chording, but took off as a major hit with the Animals' re-harmonization.

Not sure what the corresponding British examples would be. Lloyd's concertina-accompanied songs work brilliantly but they're too hard to play to ever be folk club standards. Ditto for Jim Eldon's fiddle accompaniment of his own voice - there's a very long history of that, from the iconographic evidence, but it's like rubbing your belly and the top of your head in opposite directions to do it, and the resulting sound is too idiosyncratic (given contemporary expectations) to be taken as the normal way to perform. Dido's My Love Has Gone is often sung in folk singarounds (fair enough - it's sort of a rewrite of Fear A Bhata) but unaccompanied - the drony backing her producer used didn't contribute very much. So, where is the British Isles song where a guitarist does something essential and unforgettable?

The last time I heard something in a pub session which had a distinctive backing in the original which had been retained was when there happened to be a bass available and one of the bar staff knew Peggy Lee's Fever.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Sol
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 05:48 AM

Instead of calling it "Folk Music", let's just refer to it as "Elephant Music".
Sorted.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 05:38 AM

I am not telling anybody how to run anything. I am stating facts, the irish singers club rules are restrictive [fact].
I GET BOOKED AT IRISH SINGERS CLUBS AND PERFORM UNACCOMPANIED, how is that lacking respect?
As for your statement about being a guest of the country?
Jim, I pay tax the same as any Irish person, I believe that entitles me to an opinion, your argument would mean that irish people living in England are not entitled to comment on English folk clubs, I think that would be construed is a racist comment.
My comment is an honest comment.I AM TELLING IT HOW IT IS
JIM , WILL YOU PLEASE STOP TRYING TO ALTER MY WORDS.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some other bloke
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 05:18 AM

I've lost the will to live!

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 05:13 AM

"it is not a question of regard, it is a question of a rule "
It is neither a rule, nor is is restrictive Dick, and it is extremely dishonest of you to claim otherwise.
Those who run music venues here do so for local singers - in general, people who turn up with instruments are as welcome as those who don't - as I said, it is extremely noticeable that very few do.
The few clubs who operate an unaccompanied policy do so in order to promote the style of singing that they learned from the older generation - up to fairly recently there were still a significant number of them around.
There has been a huge revival of interest in Irish language singing here over the last decade or so - solo singing that does not, by its very nature, lend itself to accompaniment.
That is the judgement of the organisers of these clubs and I respect that - it is extremely arrogant of you not to.
Personally, I have always been happy with accompanied singing - when sensitively done - in my opinion, nowadays, on the British scene, you can count the number of 'sensitive' accompanists' on two hands and be left with fingers over - far too often extremely skilful musicians dominate the songs with their skill and draw attention away from the lyrics - that has all too often been my experience.
Irish instrumental music is guaranteed a future, not because I.T.M.A. and the Willie Clancy Summer School rushed to put bums on seats - instead, they built a firm foundation on which the music could first survive - and then flourish.
Now - all the thousands of youngsters who have taken it up can do what they wish with their new-found skills - they can experiment away with it knowing that there is a firm base of tradition they can return to should they wish to do so - and there is a ground floor though which any newcomer can enter and make up his or her own mind which road to take.
That has to happen with Irish singing if it is to have a future
In my experience, experimentation damaged Folk Music in Britain because no foundation for the real thing was ever really established.
You forget your place Dick - you are a guest of this country, just as I am - it is not our place to tell Irish people how to run their clubs.
If there is a groundswell towards accompanied singing it should happen without our interference - it smacks of old British Colonialism for people like you to demand it without it happening naturally.
"Q. What does 'folk music' mean?"
Basically, it means music that has probably been created by and passed through the fingers and the mouths of large numbers of people - 'communities' has been accepted by them as their own, has been remade, adapted and added to over a long period of time, of te centuries, and had become theirs by right and practice.   
That is how it had been researched over a century, has been documented and defined - until it is re-defined and accepted, that is how it will remain.
If it means other things to other people, then we need to know what those things are and be able to discuss and agree upon those 'other meanings' if we are going to be able to communicate with one another.
These arguments become more and more like the BLIND MEN and the ELEPHANT
The rest of your points are very much open to debate Andy - long may that continue to happen - without rancour   
"More voice and trombone"
We are talking about English language tradition Jack, which is overwhenlmingly word-based and narrative and which requires its own nattarive voice if it is to work as narrative communication.
That is not necessarily the case with other traditions - Canto Hondo - which still knocks me out of my socks when I hear it well performed - is a mixture of the two, with each aspect sharing the attention of the listener separately - Middle Eastern Music is pretty much the same and, for what it's worth, has the same effect on me.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: GUEST,Some bloke
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 04:56 AM

Ok, we need a new standard and to see if it can be heard in folk clubs a few years hence.

I'll give it a first verse starter, those of a more eloquent style can chip in.

"Was it written on parchment in days of yore
Or was it just Tin Pan Alley pop hits?
Was it sung by four girls in leotards and glitter
Or a old bloke with trousers up to his tits?"

If you sing it unaccompanied, you can mangle the lines to scan.

The OP of course meant folk club. 99.999% of people realise the term folk is a broader definition than any committee of self appointed hobbyists could ever muster from their narrow experience, especially as the musical genre hadn't really kicked off in popular c20 culture by that point.

PFRis right when he mentions shunned instruments. Cecil Sharpe would have been bemused by the use of melodeon in Morris.

We had a bloke who used to come to a local club to play tunes on his squeeze box (I enjoyed that bit) and to have a pop, loudly and opinionated at anything that didn't fit in his mind box.

Salvation was when he said he would stop coming if anyone played electric. Four people independently of each other brought amps the following week (yours truly played a few jigs & reels on an electric mandolin in a poor attempt to inject irony) and sadly musically but thankfully in terms of the people coming back who he had insulted, the old bugger hasn't been seen or heard since.

Folk clubs can and do thrive. So logically, standards not yet written will carry that mantle in years to come. Yes, I can get nostalgic for older formats and attendances but I have no time whatsoever for fools who claim to know everything but decry what they admit they don't even go to and haven't for many years.

Subject: RE: Writing a folk standard
From: mg
Date: 07 Nov 16 - 02:37 AM

I agree totally with the sentiment but doubt it would become a standard. The first verse is not melodic to the ear. Last one you added I would substitute the line about sartorial for something else. I would fill in the blanks and rearrange things.

I am a loving memory,
Of a father or a son,
A permanent reminder
Of each and every one.

I'm paper or enamel
I'm old or shining new,
I'm a way of saying thank you,
To every one ---

I am not a badge of honour,
I am not a racist smear,
---
---

I am not ----
Of conflict or of war.
I am not a paper ornament
Or a token I am more.


I am a humble poppy
A Reminder to you all,
That courage faith and honour,
Will stand where heroes fall.


Just a simple red reminder
-----
The hope of generations
That they gave to gain a peace.