Free Songs in Radnorshire

We present a selection of songs from our winter shows and gigs.

Our winter was not all rock and roll, it is true. Radnorshire is a pretty quiet place, with probably more sheep than humans. Nonetheless, we had intentions, when we arrived in the woods, to establish a settled routine of Water, Wood, Fire and Food, and to allow plenty of spare time for song in the local community.

But the cold, the rigours of house-building, and older fatigues (ourselves and each other) soon made things trickier than we’d guessed plausible.

The upshot is, we gigged far less than we hoped. Indeed, in the bleakest depths of winter, our brotherly resolve broke down entirely. But the wheel turns, as it must, and we’re now hoping our deep empty leaden foolishness might turn to gold. If not, it’s all character building stuff.

Even busking was tricky (in that we didn’t manage to do it much). Our main venue, when we tried, was in Llandrindod Wells, an old Victorian Spa town, which is a portrait-photographer’s dream, full of incredibly varied and interesting people. Some locals told us that the council sent all the troublemakers here, the people who caused community disturbances, which is a fitting myth. We learned, from Van, the owner of the town’s good food shop, that 1960s Llandrindod was a post-London mecca for weary hippies, and even the Incredible String Band (Ed’s faves) were here for a spell.

Busking in town won us few pennies, but the unpredictable social interractions made it always worthwhile.

Ryb An avon – Llan Dod

We also sung in a few Care Homes, the British Legion in Rhyader, the Bupa in Llan Dod, and in these places we faced our harshest audiences yet. If the majority did enjoy the old songs, they remained mostly silent; but the outspoken few were greviously embittered at the imposition of folk song on their restful afternoons, and told us so repeatedly.

“Is it over yet? Why’s the TV off?” was the chorus for every song.

There was also a slightly darker side to one care-home, for when no staff were about, an old lady, with spite and sufficient agility to pursue it,  told a frailer co-habitant: “You be quiet now Betty, or I’ll give you a push!”

Amongst OAPs, this was tantamount to a murder threat, and its sinister implications chilled us.

We also sung in Churches, three times on Easter Sunday. We thought it would be a good way to make friends in the local community, and it was; although the congregations were mostly countable on 2 hands.

for the third time today...

The vicar’s eye gleamed when he related how the non-conformist chapels, traditionally more popular than the Church of Wales, were nowadays doing even worse for ‘bums-on-pews’. It seems that Britain is not especially keen on churchgoing these days.

Ed and I enjoy diverse social rituals, and grew up within an Anglican tradition of worship, so we thought we could handle this triple dose of Church. But three services in one day is a startlingly difficult trial. Our bones ached, and our heads hummed with the same sermon told thrice. Our endurance levels just couldn’t cope with all the sitting, standing, muttering, and singing.

For the hymns were appalling, turgid lumps of Victoriana, whose unexpected melodic jumps were beyond the ability or ken of any singer there.  These hymns were actively depressing, and they were the same in all three services.

“Music makes the Church, the Church doesn’t make the music” someone once said, but here the music was un-making the service, and deflating any sense of wonder or awe that might accompany the most Holy day in the Christian calendar. Oh well. We contributed with a Shaker song, a methodist song, and a Gypsy song, for it is always a pleasure to sing good songs loudly in a well-built stone church.

The Good Old Way (Charles Wesley)

outside Cwm Hir Church

The above song was sung in the village church of Abbey Cwm Hir, which is a lovely little village north of Llandrindod Wells. We had hoped to find the public house open after the service, but were told that this village maintained the Welsh tradition of no sunday opening. Forty years ago, we were informed, such a thing was the standard all across Cymru: “But once one pub started opening, and taking all that extra money, well everyone else just had to follow suit”

In Abbey Cwm Hir lies the grave of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last King of independent Wales, who was tricked in battle by dishonourable Royalists, and whose death heralded the end of a period of fierce Cymraig resistance to English Dominion.

The Last King's Grave

Cromwell did the Abbey, the Forestry Commission did the Woods

But not all gigs were OAPs and Churches. We sung for beer too. The pub scene is notoriously reliable for welcoming old songs, and this is as true in Wales as anywhere. At the Oxford Arms in Kington, we sang alongside Kington band Ragged Glory, in a musical opening to the Kington Energy Week, which looked toward post-oil energy strategies for the villagers.

and they called them Ragged Glory

a song and dance

Bigmouth and the Slacker

And as a final gig in Radnorshire, we sung in the Fforest Inn at Nant Melan, which is a most excellent pub. We were not on top form, but the audience were having fun, so everything else followed.

Finishing Dance Lord, into 3 Drunken Maidens

The Burning of Auchidoon

My Husband’s Courage

It was lot of fun, but the show was fairly stolen by the 2 kichen girls, each aged 14, who sung rock and roll crooners with their grandad (Uncle?), a sort of ‘Saint Elvis of Preseli and the Kichenettes’ show. It blew us away, and rightly so.

Here is them, singing a Beach Boys number:

And here they are again:

And here is the man singing, without the girls. It is a quite amazing track, so do please listen:

We wish we could give you details of this family group, who have recently recorded something. To track them down, your best bet is probably through the Forest Inn, where they wash up.

Curiosity got the best of my idle moments, and a list was made, of where we have so far sung on this particular journey.

If you want to know where, and how often, we are singing, read on reader…

We left about 5 weeks ago, and we’ve had periods when weve been unable to sing, due to illness. We left for this journey is such over-excited unfitness, that some minor crashes were, probably, inevitable. Mind-over-body tricks are not best replayed too frequently.

But anyway, the list. This is every performance, whether to one person, or many hundreds, a performance being defined as singing in one particular location for any amount of time, at least for one complete song, and to at least one listener. Every little chips away at the old ennui, at the lazy forgetfulness that WE HAVE A NATIONAL BODY OF SONG, and we should all learn those that we love best, for the cause of more and greater singsongs.

But the list. Here we go:

1.for a farmer in Larkey Valley; 2. outside a cafe in Canterbury; 3. Canterbury High Street; 4. the altar of Canterbury Cathedral; 5. Canterbury war memorial; 6. simple simons (now the Parrot) public house, Canterbury; 7.Faversham, in a house; 8. Faversham Town Centre; 9.By a cafe while leaving Faversham; 10. Charing High Street; 11. The pub in Biddenden; 12. In the 3 Chimneys dining room; 13. In the 3 chimneys bar, for Emily and Stafford; 14. Cranbrook High Street; 15. Tunbridge Wells, for Radio Kent; 16. Tunbridge Wells High Street, for BBC South East Television; 17. The Half-Moon Pub, Ashdown Forest; 18. Cowborough Town Centre; 19. Cooper’s Arms, Crowborough; 20. Hartfield, the Waggon Inn; 21. Forest Row market; 22. A cafe in Forest Row 23. Plaw Hatch farm for dinner; 24. Windy Ridge, at a picnic; 25. For a gang of Anarchist post-apocolyptic Feminists, Windy Ridge; 26. For Sam, of EFDSS, in the woods at Windy Ridge; 27. For a circle of people around the supper fire, Windy Ridge; 28. Home Education group, Plaw Hatch Farm; 29. For an Africa Party at Plaw Hatch Farm; 30. For a Phil Kay TV interview, Plaw Hatch farm; 31. East Grinsted, in the old town; 32. East Grinsted, in the modern shopping tunnels; 33. The old House at Home, Dormensland; 34. Crawley Down Village; 35. Crawley town centre; 36. Outside Horsham hospital; 37. Horsham town centre; 38. Horsham, the next day; 39. Elsewhere in Horsham (we liked it here); 40. to walkers on the path after Horsham; 41.Outside the Fox at Rudgewick; 42. to Col and Trisha near Rudgewick; 43. Cranleigh Town Centre; 44. in an Organic farm shop before Dunsfold; 45. In the pub at Dunsfold; 46. in Vann gardens, for a breakfast concert; 47. the mothering day lunch in Hambledon pub; 48. to the tennis players and gardeners in Vann at lunch; 49. Hambledon pub in the evening; 50. to pathway families prior to Hazlemere; 51. the High Street in Hazlemere; 52. Roadside to a tea donor on the way to Lodsworth; 53. Midhurst High Street; 54. the Three Horseshoes, Elsted; 55. to Paul Kingsnorth and his photographer, and walkers, on the South Downs; 56. on Petersfield High Street; 57. at the Harrow inn, Steep; 58. To a family dinner in South Harting…

And that is pretty much it right now. Ed’s lost his voice for a few days, so were having time in a kind family’s field, relaxing and stretching and catching up on this sort of typing thing. There is a big bag of internet for us to delve into here, which we’re just loving.

We hope to sing much more. We have performances, for a family and a Boy Scout Troupe, arranged for Friday and Saturday, and perhaps tomorrow will be spent learning a song or two. We have a backlog.

Hope the list was good for you. I enjoyed every little bit, i tell you.

here we go

I’m not sure I’ve recovered from this one yet! It was definitely the busiest night we’ve ever had; standing room only in the hall and a head count of around 140 people at one stage in the evening. ‘The boys’ did us proud, thrilling the audience with two twenty minute sets of unaccompanied traditional folk songs in glorious three-part harmony, with gestures and theatricality and a terrific stage presence. The harmonies and diction were, as ever, immaculate; surely this trio rank with the finest folk acts in the country, or will very soon once they’re properly ‘discovered’. The lads insisted we clear the mics away, and entertained a packed hall with just their voices, proving that the old ways are the best! We hope they enjoyed what must surely have been their most exciting gig yet, as they are new to being in a headlining slot.

Other floor spots: Richard, who had arrived with the Old Down people on April 1st, sang a great anti-war song called 1973 (a somewhat better song than James Blunt’s recent song of the same name).
Shah played two numbers with a guitarist called Chris from Portsmouth; it was great to hear his blues harp played with proper guitar backing, quite a treat.
Emma and I did a song each, harmonising for each other. It being almost St George’s Day, and we with a gig to promote (we did a St George’s Day gig at the Hawthorns pub, Glastonbury the following evening, 23rd April), we decided to sing in honour of the dragon, and covered the Spacegoats’ ‘Dragon Song’, which has a lovely sing-along chorus, which just about worked. Emma sang ‘The Lampton Worm’, which is very jolly indeed and also had people singing along. It’s a kind of dragon (or rather wyrme) slaying song, but a very silly one.
Wayne who organises Glastonbury’s G.A.S. club did three numbers which were well received. I particularly enjoyed his original songs. He covered the classic Indigo Girls song ‘Closer to Fine’ (or whatever it’s called) too, though perhaps I’d like to have heard him sing it higher, perhaps with capo? I hope we hear from Wayne again as he’s great on stage.
Forcenra! played, ie Dora, Gem and Sophie, and did 4 numbers which were brilliant. This band get better and better, and Dora is performing her extraordinarily magical ballads with increasing confidence. I just wish I could remember to pronounce their name right – the ‘en’ is accented, apparently!
Richard Chisnall did two numbers following Forcenra at a prime time of the evening, and rose to the occasion splendidly, singing a song about a garden (‘Seeds of Love’?) collected from Cecil Sharp which is definitely one of the loveliest English folk songs I’ve heard. It suits Richard’s voice, and he carried it very well indeed. His new original ‘Song for You’ is recently complete, and was brilliant too. A very catchy song. This was the best non-comic perfromance I’ve heard from Richard; he’d really been working on his performance it seemed, and the work definitely payed off!
Then it was 20 minutes from Ed, Will and Ginge, who I’ve described earlier. They held the audience spellbound and delighted. I haven’t mentioned their table of paraphernalia, which included a statue of a cockerel, a 1000 year old oak wiggly stick which looked like a dragon, and a sign saying ‘Singing for our Supper’. Fortunately, due to a large paying audience, we were able to sort them out even more generously than that!
After the interval, Jamuna the Bard kicked off proceedings with a short poem which worked very well for that time of the evening, followed by Maya, lead singer of Dragonsfly, who sang three numbers that I’d never heard her sing before. The first one I can’t remember, except that it was beautiful; the second was a powerful, almost tantric sounding devotional song which was very effective, and the third was a well chosen song written by Robert Wyatt, which Maya sang with a lovely southern inflection that was just right. It was a rare treat to hear her sing solo, and I think the audience were very glad to hear her.
Ash the Poet did some shorter poems at my request, the evening being so full of performers, and – as usual – blew us away! His diction is spectacular, and as a friend commented to me, he has an amazing ability to put the meaning of each word across, even at high speed. He vibed us up well and truly.
‘The boys’ followed him (almost reluctantly as he was rather good!) and did more amazing folk songs, culminating in an encore that, like Ash’s poems, was a total tongue-twister, which they executed perfectly and with great gusto. ‘Here’s to the landlord, the landlady, the barmaid, good luck to the barley mow’ – it was one of those cumulative songs that adds more and more words on the chorus each time. Great fun!
And finally, last but not least, Stevie P surprised us all by getting a spontaneous band together for the final floor spot, featuring Gem on acoustic bass, Willow on percussion, Tre on amazing virtuosic jazz/funk sax, and Maya on backing vocals. They did three of Stevie’s songs, including a funked-up Heathens All song that had people dancing (unusually for a FFF night!). No-one could quite believe how good this little set was; it was a true piece of Avalonian tribal magic for Stevie to scratch such a good ‘band’ together with very little notice. It took great skill, bordering on genius (from him and all the performers) to pull this one off so well.
Surely the most successful gig we’ve done since Martha Tilston at Christmas. We heralded Beltane somehow with this one, methinks, and the evening had quite a full-on vibe. Well done everyone!