What Brought You to Trad?

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 09:11 PM

Best I recall it was a a Yellow Cab I hailed on 42nd in around 1967 or so............


Spaw

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 07:18 PM

Addlestone Folk Club, late 60s.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Sean Belt
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 01:42 PM

Many years ago (1963 maybe?) I picked up a copy of a Roscoe Holcomb record at the local library. I haven't been the same since.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 11:38 PM

Bob Dylan then Harry Smith Folk Anthology.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 05:33 PM

I thought it was a darts, but I'm dyslaectic.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 05:49 PM

nice to see Barry Skinner get a mention - I came across his LP in the attic the other day, Three Martin Graebe songs on it.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: MartinRyan
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 05:20 PM

A dearth of jazz when I moved from Dublin to small town Athlone about 40 years ago. No jazz there - but an excellent folk club run by a guy with a huge repertoire of traditional songs. It was all downhill after that...

Regards

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 05:14 PM

I quite like many of the people and think they're very talented.

I'm not keen on a lot of the music and songs. Though there are some great songs.They keep me coming back - but its a bit like blues - I can't listen to it indiscriminately for long periods.

Its a music that requires you to be interested in the story and the means of telling - and that's quite demanding. You could listen to quite a lot of music and songs withouit doing that.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 04:46 PM

I started going to the local folk club (at the tender age of 43) because I wanted to sing in public & I couldn't see where else to do it. I got on well, but I was never that much into the music I heard there; I used to do songs by people like Peter Blegvad and Robyn Hitchcock (unaccompanied), and as time went on I started writing my own. I gradually started getting a taste for traditional songs; we used to get two songs on a singer's night, and I'd typically do one trad and one of my own.

Then two things happened. One was hearing John Kelly do a set, and realising just how good traditional songs could sound. I started concentrating on the trad repertoire and catching up on some of the recorded music I'd been missing. Then I started going to a mostly-traditional singaround. What tipped me over the edge was a song I'd never so much as heard of before, which (as far as I could work out) was called Ranzo. Ranzo, sung by every bugger else in the room, and sung loud. With harmonies. (And it was a small room.)

I never looked back.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 04:17 PM

I wanted to be cowboy when I grew up. So obviously I had to learn cowboy songs. Then I wanted to be Davy Crockett.

After that, I wanted to be the Kingston Trio.

Insidious.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 01:43 PM

Even though my mother and grandparents sang the stuff and I picked up a lot from school and radio in the 50s none of this hit home until I heard the Watersons and that was it!

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 11:11 AM

Melody and History are two of my favorite things. Melody plus History= Traditional Music

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: ian1943
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 10:36 AM

At Junior School we sang to William Appleby's 'Singing Together'. At home my parents were singers and at Christmas and New Year we joined with their friends and sang. Then it was blues and traditional jazz and Lonnie Donnegan and the establishment of a folk club in the locality in 1969 but the Damascus Road moment came when I called for my pal Jim one Friday night and he invited me in to listen to tracks from his new record which was the red Waterson's record and I've never looked back, met some wonderful people,drunk countless pints, sung even more songs and, at 68, really look forward to each folk club night. There has been Durham City Folk Festival, Durham Folk Party, Ryder, McCulloch, Ryder and the increasingly venerable Durham City Folk Club. It has been and will continue to be FUN!

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,Claire M
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 09:49 AM

Hiya,

I liked it as a child, and seemed to like Steeleye Span a lot. I loved fantasy and wrote a lot, mostly poems and short fantasy stories. I developed a lot of silly ideas in my teens, mostly that young people didn't like or listen to it.

I wore black nail varnish and blue lipstick, listened to some truly awful stuff I found on my own, and snapped at everyone. I stopped writing. I went to college and got really ill. I'm sure at least some was to do with not listening to what I was used to.

Dad was desperate to see Steeleye Span but because I thought they wouldn't be any good I said no. Maddy Prior didn't growl about how she hated everybody. My not going caused problems for Dad because I'm disabled and there was no care set up that night, so he couldn't go. Next time he said "you're bloody well going" and dragged me to their gig (not literally!)

When I heard what I now know to be 'Drink Down The Moon' I burst into tears, realising why I'd worshipped Ms. Prior since I was little. (I didn't think it at the time but I will regret not seeing the other Steeleye gig for the rest of my life.) I've been to a few folk gigs since, and I started writing again and haven't stopped.

Now I'm told to turn my music UP.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 May 09 - 04:54 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 07:06 PM

By which I mean duty brought me to trad in the sense that when I started it was "the done thing" to play some folk (1954 definition) to prove that you weren't just a wanker with a guitar who wanted to be Peter and Gordon, or, later, the Beatles. You had roots. You'd gone some way to paying your dues. Gradually I discovered the wealth of darkness in the tradition, not as obvious as modern dark metal, but much deeper, a parallel to the oppression in the blues - and of course the killer stories, the killer melodies, and the way you could build the stonking riffs in.

Then I realised that if some of us did not play it it would be lost, and our gene pool would be impoverished.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 May 09 - 07:00 PM

Duty. 100

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:35 PM

It was...

Poem 193 of 230: THE 35TH MORPETH NORTHUMBRIAN GATHERING – SPRING 2002

Toward Morpeth's Gathering,
    Either side of Great North Road,
Daffodils gleefully showed
    Their stalk-dressing flowering.

And then, at the Gathering,
    Another great flowering
Of English heritage, showed
    Through competitions that glowed
With competent folk-singing,
    Storytelling, bag-piping
(The small-pipes rapidly rode
    By hands, in staccato mode),
Clogdancing and stick-dressing:
    Things that are worth addressing.

From http://blogs.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse (e-book)

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 May 09 - 04:24 PM

My parents.
Burl Ives.
Putney School.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Leadbelly
Date: 11 May 09 - 03:11 PM

Lonnie Donegan, Vipers Skiffle Group, City Ramblers Skiffle Group, Slim Dusty from Australia and above all Huddie Ledbetter's Library of Congress Recordings.

Manfred from Germany

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,Smedley
Date: 11 May 09 - 08:58 AM

I think at first it was the voices of certain singers - Sandy Denny, Linda Thompson, June Tabor. From there, a growing interest in British folk, seen primarily through a folk-rock lens to begin with, but widening out later to include assorted Watersons, Anne Briggs, etc. Always liked bluegrass too (those harmonies.....). The stories the songs tell intrigue me more & more, especially the bloodier end of the spectrum ! I suppose on balance I still respond more readily to music that develops traditions in interesting ways (Jim Moray, Rubus, Megson, Kris Drever), rather than stuff that is rigid about 'authenticity'.

And, perhaps because of that, I listen to folk & folk-based musics alongside other genres. Some '''''manufactured pop''''' is fine by me, as long as it the best of its kind. It is possible to like Karine Polwart AND the Sugababes, though I realise that saying this might make me a heretic on this board. I've never been a fan of puritans, in any field.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 11 May 09 - 06:34 AM

The generally unrewarding search for the hedonistic life we saw as part of our heritage as art students in the early '60's usually peaked on a Sunday with the cup of coffee & toasted teacake in the Coffee House! [Sundays in Hull were like purgatory with the enjoyment scraped off!].

One particular Sunday we heard of a pub in the Old Town that had live music upstairs so in desparation we attended to find a packed smokey room with two blokes and two girls singing songs we'd never heard, unaccompanied, and with the strangest style of harmony/unison. The two girls especially at times sang with this one voice and you couldn't tell who was singing what! We had of course discovered the Waterson family.

Been a fan ever since and now looking foward to the reformation of the Waterdaughters when Eliza's daughter is old enough [2 or 3 years from now!]

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Diva
Date: 10 May 09 - 07:21 AM

And then I went to Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival with pals 1980 was my first year. I was completely besotted by the whole experience; it was amazing. Combination of the setting, its a beautiful village. The sessions and the singarounds and the kindliness of the Copshawholm folk. I haven't missed a year since and now I am chair of the festival and as we speak fretting about finding a judge for the Border Ballad competition. Any takers?

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 10 May 09 - 03:43 AM

What keeps me here
The taste of Beer
The Ladies
And the Cracce

L in C

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Crowhugger
Date: 09 May 09 - 11:28 PM

Born into it: trad & less-trad folk songs are how my mother & I did most of our singing together from my very early childhood onwards. Back then she added guitar or sometimes banjo; by the end of her life she was singing unaccompanied more often.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 May 09 - 09:47 PM

The chicks.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 09 May 09 - 07:35 PM

Sheer perversity. Also that thing it does to you.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Diva
Date: 09 May 09 - 06:52 PM

There was always music at home and I still remember bits of songs my gran sang. We had a huge collection of 78;s all sorts of music. I remember at one time my absolute favourite was Chuck Berry "Riding along in my automobile"

Got into listening to the radio and heard Steeleye Span and went out and bought the album, name escapes me at the moment and I wanted to be Maddy Prior but it doesn't really work with my accent!! Remember playing "All around my Hat" to my gran and she started singing different words to it.....

Then I found Travelling Folk on Radio Scotland and started going to the Kilmarnock Folk Club and made some good pals there who were generous with their time and recomendations of singers to listen to. First time I heard the Stewarts of Blair was at Kilmarnock.

Then I discovered folk festivals and first ever was Girvan and I remember hearing Lizzie Higgans there and was completely blown away by her and far to shy to go and speak to her. (it was a LONG time ago)

Met my now ex at a folk festival (where else!)and became part of his family. My late father in law was Bob Hobkirk the Border Fiddler and so the tunes fell in with the songs and I got the best of both worlds.

Its a nice community to belong to.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 09:07 PM

Slowly became besotted through firstly somehow discovering my local folk club in Addlestone Surrey, then later spending hours in my 20s sitting on the floor of my then boyfriend's bedroom listening to his albums - Steeleye Span, Fairport, Bothy Band, Five Hand Reel, Clannad, etc etc. Drove him crazy I think, listening to them over and over...

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Forsh
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 06:08 PM

Daddy Forsh.#
(Alan Forshaw of 'Rumbylowe' fame!)
I was into Reggae & Rugby songs prior, so, perhaps a natural progression? :)

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: bankley
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 05:42 PM

Johnny Cash...

I liked country when I was a kid, but there was something different about Cash that spoke to me.... I wore out his early concept record 'Ride this Train'... he drew on a lot of tradition with his songs, from the Natives, Civil War, coal mining, Americana in general... the music was simple and I learned to play along with his records..'boom chicka-boom' like a train rolling along.. then he did an album with the Carters, and introduced a lot of talented songwriters to a wide audience... he pretty well shaped my approach to music and of not being afraid of being myself or trying different styles.... a giant..

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,PeterC
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 05:40 PM

A young chap named Jones running Brentwood Folk Club was an important influence but specifically for unacompanied song it had to be Young Tradition.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 04:51 PM

Lonnie Donegan then back to Lead Belly, Woody & Cisco, then back across the Atlantic to Nic Jones etc.
Chris Barber etc then back to Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds etc.

Doc John

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 04:31 PM

1997 my daughter Andie joined Medieval Society for Creative Anacronisnt goup at her high school. Started learning trad stuff, brought it home to me. We started competing with each other finding artists like Kate Rusby to share with each other.

My honey added to my blossoming interest with Graham and Eileen Pratt, Peter Bellamy, Dave and Toni Arthur, Martin Wyndham Read. In 2007, I got up the nerve to perform at a sing around session during Rochester Sweeps (thanks Gastove and TDL for the encouragement). I have been hooked ever since.

Where has this music been all my life?

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Ian Burdon
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 02:49 PM

For a long time I associated 'folk' with the usual suspects - The Spinners, The Corries etc. as well as Tom Paxton and Steeleye Span.

Then one day I heard Dave Burland on the radio singing The Shooting of His Dear and thought "f*^% me, that's good" and a new world opened up.

Ian

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Hamish
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 01:13 PM

Chris Wood and Andy Cutting.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Valmai Goodyear
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 11:56 AM

In my schooldays I listened to John Peel's 'Top Gear' programme on BBC Radio One and grew to like Fairport Convention. This prompted me to make my first visit (illegally, because I was under age) to a local folk club, The Lewes Arms, on 11th. September 1971. I was bloody lucky: it was Scan Tester's 93rd. birthday bash. The place was packed; I stood throughout the evening with Bob Copper singing heartily immediately behind me. Traditional music gripped me: not only the music itself, but also the social nature of it.

The date is a matter of record, because Alan Day's 'Anglo International' CD set includes Scan playing tunes recorded that evening by Vic Smith.

Valmai (Lewes)

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 10:38 AM

hermetically sealed bubble

aka Cultural Autism, wherein righteousness & pedantry are wont to thrive along with the idiosyncrasy, which I find so much more compelling. Folk accommodates both the eccentric & the purist, very often in the same skin; it is this bewildering duality that ensures I'll keep going back for more...

Nu-Folk, call it what you will, is a wonderland of possibility. A good place to start is the John Barleycorn Reborn compilation on Coldspring which finds Traditional Song alive and well in some quite surprising places!

Here's our version of True Thomas from 2003; we field-recorded Rachel's voice part actually by the actual Eildon Tree near Melrose, unaccompanied, along with incidental ambiences, processing it back in the studio with loops, drones and all manner of spectral leakage. Mention was made elsewhere of Diana Wynne Jones's supernatural novel Fire & Hemlock to which the ballad of True Thomas is pretty central; I see this is our Fire & Hemlock version. Best through headphones...

Venereum Arvum - True Thomas 2003 : Free & secure MP3 donwload via YouSendIt

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 10:15 AM

My parents would occasionally listen to music from their own era but
had no interest in making music themselves. I have always sung, in the Sunday School choir as a child and around the house ever since. I think that singing was the thing that kept taking me back to church for a while. I first heard folk music from Steeleye Span and The Spinners in the 60's and 70's. I didn't really get involved then, for one reason or another.

In 1999, just going through the end of a, by then, unhappy marriage, I took guitar classes at the local college. At the end of the first year we were told that they would not be continuing the classes and I found a group that got together to play at a nearby village hall. That went well for a while but than started falling apart but a small group of us continued meeting at the home of one of the guys.

We were playing a mixture of stuff, folk and relatively modern fringe pop at that time. One of the guys happened to mention a folk club that met at a pub in the town. I couldn't get anyone to go with me - my friends at that time didn't really have the interest - so, one August Bank Holiday evening, I decided to go on my own.

Haven't looked back since then. The guitar playing went by the board when I developed very painful eczema on both hands, although I will get back to it if I can get my fingers into better condition. I've concentrated more on learning and singing new songs, from both the UK and USA.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: matt milton
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 10:10 AM

"One thing I do find though, is that whilst I might be able to slip a Traditional Ballad into a performance of Free-Improvisation or Experimental Ambient Electronica, one could never return the favour. I guess non-folk audiences are more open minded as regards musical possibility."

Hmmm, well thinking of the free improv folk treatments on the violinist Sylvia Hallett's album "A boy leaves home", it's hard to tell which camp you'd place them in (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/labels/mash/mash004.html)

(or I could have similarly mentioned Martin Archer's album "Heritage & Ringtones" http://www.discus-music.co.uk/dis18cd.htm)

What I mean is, if it's a successful hybrid then you shouldn't be able to describe it as "an interjection of folk into free improv" OR "an interjection of free improv into folk". It's just a something.

I take your point though: musicians from other musics experiment with folk in a way that folk musicians don't seem too with other musics.

...though typing it, I'm not sure how true that is...

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 09:43 AM

For me it was Television ! The Hootenanny Show on BBC TV from 'The Place' in Edinburg on a Saturday evening at my parents home when I was on Disemb leave from Germany . Then I joined a Folk Club by accident (Joint Membership of Jazz Club) where I met Louis Killen .
I drifted off abit when I realised that I wanted to sing a lot of Humourous Stuff , and learned guitar etc , but still enjoy a good Traddie Sing , and 'do' the odd Unacc song still !
      Forty Five years and STILL Loving ALL the music !!

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 08:14 AM

Once upon a time it was a matter of paying one's dues - you could do contemporary songs but it was de rigeur to do a "folk" (Karpeles definition) song or two to show you were not just a popster manque (I wonder where the acute accent is on here).

Then I found fewer and fewer people even nodding the the "roots" of what we were doing, and so I started doing more and more of them...

I also found the horse definitioners so infuriating...

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Sleepy Rosie
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 07:59 AM

"I might be able to slip a Traditional Ballad into a performance of Free-Improvisation or Experimental Ambient Electronica, one could never return the favour. I guess non-folk audiences are more open minded as regards musical possibility..."

It might be interesting to see how some so-called 'nu-folk' (I think) might evolve and tackle that?

Though I'm guessing your broadly on the button with non-devoted folk audiences v's devoted folk audiences. Folk - and perhaps English traditional music in particular - does indeed appear to exist in something of an hermetically sealed bubble?

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 07:58 AM

My primary school teacher Dorothy Bennet [wonderful woman] used to play thr piano for us to sing too. Lots of 'pretty-pretty' songs, but her favourites were Traditional, mainly, chanties. Quebec, Girl with the Blue dress on, Maid of Amsterdam, all of course the cleaned up version. She didn't call them folk songs, just 'old' songs, but these were the ones I enjoyed. But it was Joan Baez on the BBC singing [I think] Peddy Gordon, when I was 16 that opened my eyes that Enland had trad. songs, alright I know she sang an American version, but she said the song had come from over here. Aince then I.ve never looked back.   Ron

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 07:22 AM

I still get a real kick out of good solid electronic music, but I've got a feeling that Trad Song is with me to stay

During my various exiles from the Folk Scene my love of Traditional Song & Balladry has never once wavered; on the contrary. Back in 2002, for example, it found a new energy with respect of the sort of virtual ambient electronic landscaping I began working on upon discovering the delights of Sound Forge Cubase & Ableton Live... One of my golden rules is Traditional Song transcends Folk - however so drawn to the latter I might be by way of context. One thing I do find though, is that whilst I might be able to slip a Traditional Ballad into a performance of Free-Improvisation or Experimental Ambient Electronica, one could never return the favour. I guess non-folk audiences are more open minded as regards musical possibility...

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: GUEST,Mr Red
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 06:29 AM

Either a girlfriend years ago. Or

Divorce years later.

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: CarolC
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 06:05 AM

My French great grandmother singing traditional French songs to my sister and me when we were little, and teaching us some of them. After that, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which I first attended some time in the early 1970s (probably 1972).

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Barry Finn
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 12:58 AM

could u=you explain guest???

Barry

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 12:28 AM

The money.

Seamus

Subject: RE: What Brought You to Trad?
From: Amos
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 04:34 PM

My mother taught me to sing the songs her father had song for her when she was growing up, taught us to sing in three-part harmony, and to play the uke. I was walked to sleep by Huddie Ledbetter one night in New York City in the 40's (my father had a habit of bringing strange entertainers home of a late evening for a nightcap). Or so I have been told by herself.

A