Info req: Band called 'Bodger's Mate'

Subject: Bodger's Mate
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 04:36 AM

When I was at uni in Leicester in the early 70s, I used to enjoy going to gigs by a band called "Bodger's Mate". They seemed to have a variable line-up, but sometimes had as many as 8-9 on stage to the best of my recollection (unless I was seeing double).

They played folk-rocky stuff and were great entertainment.

I notice that there's a ceilidh band around in the Midlands now, also called Bodger's Mate. Is this a direct descendant of the original band, or an entirely unrelated entity? Anyone know?

Subject: RE: Bodger's Mate
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 08:10 AM

Probably the same....they once were asked to do a mixed concert/dance. They pulled me in as caller. Seeing a lucrative line of activity open up, the fiddle player asked me for a set of dances, learned them, and they started to play them on their own. Dear old Ken Wilson ( doyen of leicester's 'Acoustic Alternative....remember Pete Zeugan?) played piano accordion for the dances.

Subject: RE: Bodger's Mate
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 08:18 AM

A quick check on Google shows that the band still features the musicians I knew in the 70's..Glenn Brown on guitar and Dennis Humphreys on Fiddle/calling. No more Ken Wilson. Now joined by sundry others, including multi instrumentalist Martin Cummins, who at the time played in my regular band, 'Nowt Special' along with John Price ( JP2).

Subject: RE: Bodger's Mate
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 01:48 PM

Interesting that it is Midlands based , as Bodger was originally a Buckinghamshire name for an indepedant Beech Wood Turner , making mostly chair legs for the Furniture Industry in the beech woods round High Wycombe .

Subject: RE: Bodger's Mate
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 03:00 PM

In their current incarnation they regularly played in my old village (braunston in Rutland), both at the pub and for barn dances.

Subject: RE: Info req: Band called 'Bodger's Mate'
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 05:02 PM

Thanks everyone! Good to know they're still around. I really enjoyed their gigs.

Leadfingers, I think this Wikipedia entry has to be wrong:

"The term was always confined to High Wycombe until the recent (post 1980) revival of pole lathe turning with many chairmakers around the country now calling themselves bodgers. Chairs were made and parts turned in all parts of the UK before the semi industrialised production of High Wycombe."

I knew the term "bodger" to refer both to shoddy workmanship AND to pole-lather turners in the very early 1970s. I didn't have to be told what the name "Bodger's Mate" meant when I first encountered the band in Leicester, and I'm originally from Yorkshire. My wife similarly knew a bodger to be a pole lathe turner, as we discussed it in 1974, one of our first "dates" being at a BM gig, and she's from Essex!

Subject: RE: Info req: Band called 'Bodger's Mate'
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 05:07 PM

Tug & Ruth:

I remember them doing a great version of "Fox Went Out" as mentioned on this thread:

Fox Went Out

Which is what brought them to the front of my mind and wondering what became of them.

Subject: RE: Info req: Band called 'Bodger's Mate'
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 07:17 PM

Bodgers round H W date from well before WW2 - The Furniture industry was well mechanised when I moved there in '56 , and I am pretty sure Bodgers were well out of date then

Subject: RE: Info req: Band called 'Bodger's Mate'
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 08:02 PM

I'm sure they were...but there were "craft bodgers" around much earlier than the 1980s referred to in Wikipedia.

And the term was certainly spread around much further than High Wycombe when I was growing up...so presumably there'd been "real" bodgers at some time in those areas.