You won't remember me as a performer--Frank McCall once described my singing as "a guitar solo with a slight buzz above it"--though I did sing with Helen Anderson and Dick Hebden for a bit doing 3-part stuff.
But all these names bring back memories, and I hesitate to ask, is so-and-so still with us.

Gron Humphreys dragged me over to Oily Joe's. He used to show up at Bob Buckle's club in Wallasey, and after the innumerable 12-year old girls singing The Boxer ("there were times I was so lonesome I took some comfort there"!), and Phil Guy singing John Denver, Gron would get up, looking like an archetypal dirty old man from Monty Python, and sing "Sheath and Knife" or some such, unaccompanied, then whip out his tin whistle and play a tune. Blew my mind.

And so to Oily Joe's I went, and frequented it for a few years. Barbara Bennion singing like an angel. Bernie Davis playing the 4-Poster Bed on his accordion, and doing the bow bounce bits with the air valve open and whacking the four corners of the box. Pete Rowley imitating Martin Carthy. Christy McHale singing the Death of Cathal Brugha (and then Christy McHale getting me stoned and introducing me to Willie Clancy and John Coltrane on the same night). Mary Black taking her turn like anyone else. Shay singing Lord Gregory. Frank McCall singing Saucy Sailor and I Wish There Were No Prison. Les Trenery singing Searching for Lambs. Davy Brennan singing When A Man's in Love (and auditioning for the Chieftains). Bruce Scott singing The Herring Song. Alan MacMahon singing the Haughs of Cromdale.

At Gregson's Well I remember the first time Clive showed up with a trap set instead of a bodhran with Jack Ketch, backing Queen of the Gypsies (?). Worse reaction than Dylan going electric as I recall.

The session at Ye Cracke was wonderful. Chris Ormston was at college in Liverpool, so he would show up and play (I asked him a year or two back if he remembered playing Rusty Gully with a long-haired fingerpicking guitarist in the Cracke in 1978 or so. "I don't remember the Seventies" he said). Mick Coyne of course, the first piper I saw up close. I remember him at one session, I think at Shay's, sitting on the bed fiddling with his reeds while the music roared. "Why doesn't he just play?" I thought. After 25 years playing the uilleann pipes I now know the answer!

Someone mentioned Martin Dunne. Anyone remember when Tony Rosney (is he still with us?) organized a set of non-Irish music for Gregson's Well? I played Lochaber No More on guitar with Martin on flute. Lovely man.

News of any of the above welcome. All the best.