Bert was along time friend of mine – 30 years plus and we did a number of gigs together over the years. He was always turning up at my gigs as well and I usually persuaded him to do a guest spot without too much trouble. Some of you may not know that he was a qualified electrician and he not only did he re-wire my house he did my mothers too! They both took a week or so and Bert stayed at my house and we used to sit up to the early hours praising and running down the various luminaries on the folk scene.

I was always an admirer of Bert's own material and in February 1985 I arranged a recording session at my house. He wasn't the type of performer to excel in a studio type recording so I got some beer in and rigged up some mikes in my living room. Bert and Les (Bert's girlfriend) turned up and after a few beers we recorded an informal session whilst Les and I chuckled in the background. This consisted mostly of Bert's original songs, or parodies of well know folk songs at which he was brilliant. Apart from a few copies (which Bert sent to his friends and family) I did I did nothing with the recordings (other than nick one of his best songs – Indigestion Blues) until I re-mastered the original and produced a demo CD for Bert at Broadstairs in August 2001. He was dead chuffed to be on CD! I asked him to suggest a playing order for the songs and give me any feedback regarding the recording before I had it duplicated. Needless to say that was as far as it got!

I am giving the masters to Jim Ward to produce a run of CDs and if anyone would like a copy please send me an email and I will let you know when it will be available. I will convert some tracks to mp3's and put them on the web shortly.

Dave Toye 01403 266850 or 07710412118 dave@davetoye.com