What started you off...

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Mark Ross
Date: 24 May 02 - 07:17 PM

The WEAVERS AT CARNEGIE HALL on Vanguard in the nid '50's. That sent me down the track for life.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: 53
Date: 24 May 02 - 05:17 PM

I like folk but country and early Beatles and some Southern Rock and some classic rock are my bag.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Allan C.
Date: 24 May 02 - 05:07 PM

Related threads here and here.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: fogie
Date: 24 May 02 - 04:40 AM

Were talking trad here I guess. It was the John Peel radio program when by chance I taped the first performance of Anthems in Eden, with birds in the spray, and all those wonderful Dolly and Munrow accompaniments. It changed my life.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: GUEST,Dagenham Doc
Date: 24 May 02 - 03:29 AM

It was always there for me. My dad was a singer(he died a couple of years ago aged 95}and my grandfather was a singer {he died in 66 when he was 96}so there has always been singing in my family. We would sit around the front room and sing, I just picked up the songs. I never planned to make a career of it.

Doc

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Abuwood
Date: 24 May 02 - 01:56 AM

Hull Sea Fever 1999 hometown celebration. Gorgeous sunny day, lots of songs to sing finally made sense of the wierd vynyl he brought with him! Wish I had found it when I was younger , wasted 30years without it.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 23 May 02 - 06:41 PM

Actually, I think it was more that I wanted to impress the guy by singing. Ended up singing better than him and he got the arse with me.

He also got bored with buying me beer cos he had to drive me home and had to stay sober!

LTS

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: GUEST,Phil Cooper
Date: 23 May 02 - 06:38 PM

Sorry, finger slipped. My folks listened to classical music, or folk music. The folk stuck with me and I haven't really been interested in any other genre particularly. I like some rock and country songs that I've heard, but I always imagine them played in a folkier style.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 23 May 02 - 06:35 PM

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Amergin
Date: 23 May 02 - 01:58 PM

not quite sure how it happened...in high school i was into the hard heavy stuff...like suicidal tendencies and dead kennedys and such...though it started mellowing out by the time I graduated...then I went to college fell in with a group of folks who liked all sorts of music...like bob dylan and the grateful dead...and reggae...but I think what happened the most was my parents love joan baez...and I heard her sing the song joe hill....well a few months later I came across a book in the college library about joe hill...i read it...and found out about the songs he wrote...and then got a copy of utah phillips "we have fed you all for a thousand years"...and loved it...also got into woody guthrie from listening to his son do alice's restaurant....found out woody did this land is your land and went looking for him...and read about him and found out about pete and cisco...and such...

also a a couple of years later i was watching the bob dylan 30 year anniversary special on pbs...and saw the clancy brothers do when the ship comes in....a few years later came across a liam clancy album called freeborn man....and got it and went downhill from there....

there is more but it confuses even me....

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 23 May 02 - 01:53 PM

My mother raised me on folk, and good old rock & roll...

and I've never looked back!

;-)

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 23 May 02 - 01:42 PM

HI, Greg:

Rock Island Line was one of my strongest first impressions about folk music, although I had heard Burl Ives, the Weavers and Harry Belefonte. It wasn't until I heard Lonnie that I realized it was alright to sing with energy and abandon. I can still pretty much recite the whole talking introduction. I just got back from Wisconsin early this morning, and it seemed like everywhere we went, we crossed the Rock River, which runs through my home town. Now the Rock River, she flow down to the Mississippi and join the Mississippi at Rock Island. On occasion I've had reason to pass through Rock Island, and that song always come to mind.

The only other song that hit me with such an impact in my life was Gee, by the Crows...

Jerry

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Deda
Date: 23 May 02 - 11:19 AM

My maternal grandfather, who died when I was about 8, was a guitar player and folk-singer who taught my mother and aunt to sing harmony when they were tiny -- singing old hymns, and pure schmaltz like "Wait till the sun shines, Nelly", as well as old folk songs. He knew hundreds and hundreds of songs -- as do probably most mudcatters. Because of him, my mother raised us singing -- in the car, in the bathtub, in the living room, in the kitchen, on holidays, on trips, before we'd go to sleep, on the way to school. Family legend, with only slight exaggeration, has it that older-bro Amos' first words were "Jimmy Crack Corn an' I don't care." We also had a boatload of old folk records like Burl Ives, Mirais and Miranda, early Pete Seeger and Leadbelly, Alan Lomax, Sons of the Pioneers, etc. Amos started playing guitar at about 12 or 13, which coincided with the early beginnings of the folk revival. I had the misfortune of being the only member of the family who could change keys three times in three bars without having any idea that I had done so--so I'm an ardent fan, and folk music is hard-wired into my soul, an unfailing joy and comfort for me always, but I can only participate as a background "la la la" / chorus voice and only on tunes I know well, or among people I know and love -- which lessens my error rate. One of my great joys is that my son is a folksinger, too, and has that amazing memory for lyrics and incredibly wide-ranging eclectic taste and fabulous guitar licks.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Mooh
Date: 23 May 02 - 11:00 AM

Not sure, entirely. My Dad sang the odd folk song when I was young, and he wrote in a folk music style for church music purposes sometimes, played the autoharp a bit too. An older sister played a bit of guitar and since a drum kit was out of the question I gravitated towards guitar. This was about the same time as I discovered rock music, mostly through my older brother, so guitar seemed a natural choice. A far cry from my years of classical piano up to that point.

Anyway, shortly after taking up guitar I started to jam with friends and share musical tastes and interests. One of us discovered Steeleye Span and the die was cast. Jethro Tull, and lots of readily available Canadian folkies were next (I was living in and around the time and place of the Perth County Conspiracy).

I always tried to bring some acousticness to every band I played with, no matter how electric, and eventually fell into a Celtic band about 10 years ago. I still play with them, though they gig rarely now, but I have 2 mostly acoustic duos happening too.

An early and significant discovery for me was the Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: GUEST
Date: 23 May 02 - 09:24 AM

A life-long love of music, especially singing, which is in no way exclusive to folk or traditional music. It began with the folk songs (Streets of Laredo, She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, etc) we learned to sing in grade school. Finding the book "The American Songbag" in the library when I was very young, suitably impressed me too.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: greg stephens
Date: 23 May 02 - 09:20 AM

Hearing Lonnie Donegan sing Rock Island Line in 1956, like everyone else of my generation!(or, to be strictly accurate, hearing William Webber at school imitating Lonnie Donegan singing Rock Island Line. I went and bought the record two days later, it was even better).

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: MBSLynne
Date: 23 May 02 - 09:05 AM

In my teens in Australia I was into Dylan, Donovan, Simon & Garfunkle, though not really aware of the "Folk revolution". Aged about 24 I started going to "Albert's Tavern" in Perth where a band called "Lincoln Park" (Not Linkin Park!) played. They were all poms and did mostly folkie stuff. Turned out that one of them, Moby, ran a folk club. I'd never heard of a folk club, so I went along with some friends. It was a load of mattresses on the floor in a church hall and "Bring your own booze". It was at the time when "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" was big and someone sang that. I was just totally blown away. Then a couple did a harmony thing and someone else did a song about a cobbler with a chorus that ended "And me lap stone gets bitten away" All of this was unaccompanied. It was just so fantastic that I have been hooked ever since. And just as a by the way, I found that it wasn't only the music, but the whole ethos...loads of people LIKE ME.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Bobert
Date: 22 May 02 - 09:12 PM

For those of you who have heard my stuff, I'm not too traditional. Having played in a rock group in the 60's and quit performing, a friend who had heard my music asked me to play a coffee house in 1974. Well, I said sure, having never really been to a, ahhhhhh, coffee house. Well, being the new kid, I led off and got a very respectful reception with my "grunge folk" style music I play so I was expecting more folk like me. WRONG. The rest of the night was one traditional player afetr anotjher and by the end of the night I just wanted to slip out the back door. Well, a number of folks came up and talked with me and said things like, "Hey, you've got your own style." So I kept at it...

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Harry Basnett
Date: 22 May 02 - 06:42 PM

Just read my initial message and realised I completely messed up my line breaks and it makes no sense at all!!
At college when I was 16 I was messing round on a guitar playing 'House of the Rising Sun' and thinking I sounded like Eric Burdon and the Head of Music, Mavis deMere brandished a Martin Carthy album under my nose and told me I had a good voice for folk!! It was the album I took home that got me hooked........

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 May 02 - 06:39 PM

Folk Clubs - Girlfriend #3
though I never sang till the wife left home ***BG**
Bodhran? Welllllllll I had just graduated on spoons and was looking for promotion. Where do I go from here?

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: The Walrus
Date: 22 May 02 - 06:35 PM

Miss MacIntosh, as I remember her a pretty supply (or student) teacher (I can't remember which) who came to Greenwrythe Lane Junior school back in the early 1960s. Looking back, the songs weren't much (I seem to remember one or two which were very like "Spinners" numbers), but she had the class singing with harmonies and part singing. Up until then we'd just been used to bludgeoning our way through Sunday-school type hymns. It was a revalation.

Walrus

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: tooligan
Date: 22 May 02 - 06:10 PM

I was in the RAF trying to get to grips with Home on The Range from the Tune a Day book when a mate said "why don't you play a song you like". "Cos they're too difficult" I said. "Whats your favourite song?" he asked. "American Pie" I said. "Right" he said "Get the words and I'll give you the chords" I did, he did. It was 1972. It took me 6 months to get up to speed but followed through with almost the whole Bridge over Troubled Water album, Dylan, Donovan, Don McLean. Then when posted to Germany, I went to see Cilla Fisher and Artie Tresize at a local Folk Club and heard good Scots music for the first time sang with humour, harmonies and enthusiasm. Much different from the Andy Stewart and Calum Kennedy I had been brought up with. Over the next year I saw and aspired to some of the best in the business. Happy Days! I've been full time myself since 1992 and had a ball.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 22 May 02 - 05:42 PM

My Dad sang in the Church choir and played piano occasionally. I started to take an interest in Fantasy novels (Tolkien, et al), and began listening to Medieval music on the "Nonesuch" label. Many of the books I read had Celtic themes to them, and I started to listen to some Irish folk. I also sang from the time I was in Jr. High, and some of what the Directors of our choruses would pick folk stuff (early 70's here...so the teachers were sometimes hippy types from the 60's).

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Brían
Date: 22 May 02 - 05:28 PM

My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Mansfield. She played guitar, piano, ukelele & banjo, none of them well, but she played songs by Woody, Arlo, Pete, The Weavers and encouraged me to enjoy simple home spun songs and performaces which I have preferred to this very day.

Brían

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 22 May 02 - 05:25 PM

Free beer at the Oak Tree in Newton Aycliffe for anyone willing to "Give us a Song." I'll still do just about anything for a decent pint.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Mark Clark
Date: 22 May 02 - 05:10 PM

A predilection for cowboy songs and the memory of the Weavers hit recordings of the early 1950s combined with the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

One night I wandered into a coffee house—the only one in the entire state of Iowa in 1959—and struck up a conversation with a fellow playing guitar and singing folk songs. I asked him how he learned to play and he told me he just found a book containing chord diagrams and applied the chords to the songs he wanted to sing.

I was dumbfounded. I had spent varying amounts of time studying piano, violin, trumpet and trombone but it had never crossed my mind that one could just pick up an instrument and play it without first going through many years of formal and painful lessons while carefully avoiding any music one would actually want to play.

Not only did it start me down this folking path, the revelation changed the way I looked at everything else as well. It was probably the most important lesson I've ever learned.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: RolyH
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:55 PM

In the late 60's I was badly into "progressive" rock.I bought a Harvest label sampler called "Picnic - a breath of fresh air".Amoungst the Deep Purples, Pink Floyds,Pretty Things etc.was a track by Shirley and Dolly Collins(Glenlogie)which was definitely a breath of fresh air.Been a folkie ever since.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:53 PM

Following some bloke, because I fancied him.... got into beer the same way.... familiar story??

LTS

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: gnu
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:48 PM

BLUES harps, that is. Or, maybe, you meant it that way.

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Zhenya
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:39 PM

- A few things stand out for me:

- My father's folk albums when I was very young - the Weavers, Burl Ives, Marais and Miranda.

- My first few weeks of college when a fellow freshman told me about Folk Legacy records (and happily had a few LPs around to demonstrate), and then a few weeks later invited several of us to a Gordon Bok concert.

- The first time I saw (and got to try) a mountain dulcimer.

- A radio show on a Saint Patrick's Day many years ago on which I first heard the Bothy Band.

- The first time I went to an Irish music class and realized the tunes were not just instrumental filler on song albums!

- The first time I saw a performance by: Altan/Martin Hayes/Bruce Molsky/Matapat/etc.,etc./ add your favorite surprise discoveries here!

All of these (and many other events) started me off on different pathways/aspects of traditional music. I can't pick just one! But thanks for letting me indulge in the memories! Zhenya

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: alanabit
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:33 PM

A group of folkies on a cultural expedition from Reading dropped into my Dad's pub, The Waterloo at Cholsey, one night back in the mid seventies and asked if they could play. They swapped instruments, sang harmonies and filled the room with good music and good company. Later on they founded the Downs and Outs folk club, which in its short career booked Downes and Beer, 1812, Stan Arnold, Wild Oats, Peabody/McNalty, Johnny Coppin, Bill Boazman, Steve Ashley, Johhny Silvo, David Qualey, Dave and Toni Arthur, Alan Taylor, Fiddlers Dram, Bully Wee and a few other quite useful players. Now, can you give me one good reason for not getting into the music?

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: Harry Basnett
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:24 PM

Hope your health problems are sorted out,gnu.I must say, fro harp to bodhran seems one hell of a leap!!

Subject: RE: What started you off...
From: gnu
Date: 22 May 02 - 04:10 PM

This is kinda the second time around for me : My wife bought me a custom made Bodhran with family crest and custom tipper after asking my cousins how she could get me back into playing and singing... I had given my guitars and harps away after a health problem which I have since overcome (I hope). Yeah, she was a nice girl before I started playing the Hran. I wonder what she's up to these days.

Subject: What started you off...
From: Harry Basnett
Date: 22 May 02 - 03:55 PM

Ashton College of Further Education, Lancashire, 1970.
Anyway...took it home, played it and got hooked...

That explains me...how did the rest of you get into folk?

All the Best.......

Harry.