•’To Begin At The Beginning’
I was born in the spring of 1953, at BANGOUR general hospital, BROXBURN, in the Scottish county of West Lothian. I was the third of what turned out to be five siblings, having a brother and a sister when I emerged on the scene, with two more sisters still to come. My first 18 years were mainly divided between the family home in LIVINGSTON and the royal blind School at Craigmillar Park in EDINBURGH, - alias “the RBS’ or “Craigmillar’. From about four-and-a-half years of age until comfortably past my eighteenth birthday, I was residentially educated at the RBS. Roughly two years before going there permanently, though, I spent a few months at the school, in its nursery department. This was in order to relieve some of the pressure on my mother, who had a new arrival to cope with in the shape of one of my younger sisters. It is to this time of minor upheaval, partly traumatic and partly stimulating, that I owe my first rather sketchy memories.
My blindness had been caused by retinoblastoma, a malignant growth, which initially appeared in my right eye, when I was a very young baby. I did receive radiotherapy treatment to counter this threat, but, when only a few months of age, I needed surgery to completely remove the offending member. However, this was not successful in eliminating the malignancy, which showed up again in my left eye, and so, the powers of radium notwithstanding, the services of a scalpel were called upon once more. The upshot was that I had not a visual organ to my name by the time I was just over one year old. Whatever the price, though, I might not have been here at all, without the vigilance of my mother, Winifred Easton, and the medical acuity of our family doctor, Sandy Lang, plus the skill and care bestowed upon me at EDINBURGH´s Royal Infirmary.
Since about the age of six, I have worn artificial, plastic eyes as a standard item of dress. Their function is slightly hygienic, but predominantly cosmetic, of course.
As for the school´s music department, all of its personnel made their contribution towards feeding my interest in the folk genre. Standing out from among them, however, it was undoubtedly Alec Rennie who did most to nurture this particular keenness of mine. Besides that, he positively helped to foster in me a wider and deeper appreciation of the whole spectrum of singing and playing. (By the way, the same Alec provided us with a truly beautiful setting of the Welsh folksong, Lisa Lán, in a rather free English translation, which our senior choir performed at one of our school prize-givings.)
The English department played a key role here, too, as you might expect. Indeed, I shall never forget the sheer electric thrill of hearing the unaccompanied Ewan MacColl as he sang a version of the classic Scottish ballad, Sir Patrick Spens, one Friday afternoon during a lesson with Mr Brander. This momentous experience came our way, not live and direct, but off a compilation record called “Poetry And Song 3’. Both Mr Brander and his predecessor, Mr Sinclair, were apt to draw our attention to the old ballads and their story-telling qualities.
During the ‘sixties especially, and some way into the ‘seventies, there was quite a strong following for folk music at our school. This manifested itself through attentive radio listening by some of us, and through a lively appreciation of mainly Scottish and Irish vinyl recordings. It was also expressed from time to time by way of organised, concert situations, plus a variety of more spontaneous (usually evening) singing sessions. I was just one of a number of keen folk-singers among the pupils, together with such stalwarts as Michael Mair, Kit Crockett, Eileen Brand, and the late and sadly missed George Johnstone.
As for anything more general in the way of formal qualifications in music, though, I must admit that Yours Truly got no further than grade 2 piano!
Also during that period, my folk enthusiasms went on being nourished by radio. This was certainly done via programmes like Jim Lloyd´s “Folk On Friday’ and its successors, but not least through the good offices of the late lamented John Peel. Two of the songs on my CD, Thorneymoor Woods and Three Jolly Sneaksmen, I first heard in any form at all from a peel session of Martin Carthy. Indeed, John definitely did his bit to raise the wireless profile of a varied range of folk talent, including Dick Gaughan, June Tabor, and the Fury brothers. Whilst “Peely’ will hardly go down in history as a roots icon or folk luminary, he made a real and important contribution to the propagation of folk music, without that music having to be his first and dearest love. Moreover, supplemented by the input of DJ colleagues, such as Bob Harris, Pete Drummond and Alan Black, he discharged this welcome service within an inclusive context of musical diversity. It would be more than a pity, then, if this valuable role were to stay virtually unacknowledged in the appropriate quarters.
In addition to consuming such broadcast output, I frequented several folk clubs, performing from time to time, normally solo and without accompaniment. Chief among these was EDINBURGH´s now long gone Triangle folk club, which might be regarded as my folk-singing elementary school. My own occasional performing apart, it was there that I first heard live extended sets from the likes of Cyril Tawney, The Boys Of The Lough, Barbara Dixon, Bill Vanover and Livia Drapkin, The McCalmans, and Hamish Imlach. Nor can I forget regular floor-acts of the stamp of Davie Dunlop, Ronnie Robson, Maddy Taylor, Bob Thomas, John (“Spug’) Barrow, and Mike and Angela Valentine. It was around the Triangle, what´s more, that I was able to witness the burgeoning and early growth of that wondrous folk band of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, - Silly Wizard.
Ah, those faraway, youthful, halcyon days!
Meanwhile, I sustained my folk interests in the same sorts of ways as before, with varying degrees of determination, - right up to the present time, in fact. Particularly worth mentioning here are CROYDON folk club, Islington folk club, and, last but not least, the rather marvellous Sharp´s folk club. You will hardly be surprised to learn that Sharp´s has its home in Sharp´s Bar, or that the said bar is in the basement of Cecil sharp House in Camden, the building that is used as headquarters by the English Folk Dance And Song Society. I am delighted to be able to state that I was one of the original members of Sharp´s at its launch in 1988.
I should say that the acquisition of a couple of electronic keyboards in 1981, one of them portable and very small, materially assisted my artistic efforts, as well as enabling me to give myself much-needed doses of musical therapy. I still possess my not so portable Yamaha Pf10 electric piano, and it may well have to be brought out from its corner, thoroughly dusted off and put to some serious work again fairly soon. I went on to purchase bigger and better models among the more portable keyboards, and have continued to upgrade my instruments periodically since then. In the course of doing so, I have taken advantage of special offers and sale reductions where possible, not to mention the credit boom that got going in the 1980´s.
During that decade, I gained some part of my performing experience at semi-private social functions with a political background. There, I unaccountably acquired a reputation for singing songs of misery and gloom, dealing (for example) with mining disasters, or containing such repeated phrases as, “Oh dear me!’ However, I had my first recognisably public engagement at LONDON´s premier off-West-End venue, the Donmar Warehouse, in 1987. This was unpaid, and took the form of a wee spot within what was called “a Concert For Free Speech", - a wee spot which luckily avoided becoming a serious blemish!
I think it was about the middle of the ‘eighties that I began to be hired by an academic friend of mine to give illustrated talks on Scottish culture to his American students. These highly uplifting occasions became a fairly regular series of half-yearly gigs that went on well into the next decade. After one of the sessions, another academic, herself an American, was apparently so impressed by what she had heard that she told me: “You´re a national resource!’ Well, that was certainly very nice of her, and I can´t help cherishing the compliment, but then, when it comes to folk-singers, aren´t we all?
And after the epoch of “Beggardom’? Well, in 1999, while studying at RNIB Vocational College, LOUGHBOROUGH, I sang and played at two in-house cabarets. Later that year, too, I appeared as one of the acts at a disabled arts evening elsewhere in the town, another summer event.
But crucially, since June, 1997, I have been performing - mainly solo - at the admission-free entertainment evenings run by the Venturers´ drama Group Of The Visually Impaired, maintaining and developing my repertoire of folk music from these islands. For the most part, I have found the Venturers´ audiences to be receptive to new material, and capable of responding generously to what is frankly presented to them. They cannot, however, be regarded as any kind of “push-over’, being rightly eager for entertainment, rather than mere cultural edification on its own! The challenge has therefore been to try and introduce this largely “non-folk’ public to the songs and tunes I like, whilst attempting to choose material that I think may go down well in the first place with such a general audience. Addressing and meeting this challenge, not to mention striking the right balance for a range of different contexts, has surely been an important factor in driving me gently but firmly onwards, and keeping me sufficiently on my toes.
In addition to this worthwhile achievement, 2004 was also the year I successfully acquired a busking licence as part of LONDON Underground´s “live music’ scheme. For a totally blind keyboard player in particular, coping with all the logistical intricacies involved in making use of such a sponsored permit to play and sing to the passing public, - demanding enough in any event, - has been a testing but productive process of practical education. Busking is by no means identical to conventional gigging, but it can and does provide recurrent and useful experience in live performance. In line with this, I haven´t neglected the non-licensed but still legitimate opportunities in this field.
Currently, I am exploring the possibilities and opportunities for expanding my audience through doing floor-spots, and seeking bookings, both in folk clubs and in suitable mainstream venues. The practical object of this is that I should come to be earning some kind of serious living from the music I enjoy. At the same time, it is also about re-connecting myself actively and culturally with the real live folk scene, - in the role of a consumer as well as a producer, so to speak. Besides this, it would be good to establish meaningful links to the broader world of music and entertainment.
I am also investigating the whole sphere of sound recording and editing via the use of computer equipment, essential hardware and appropriate software. Moreover, What a Northern English friend of mine refers to as,’t´interweb’, has been proving most helpful over recent years in the process of researching into folk music, and should continue to yield crops of rich and ample fruit. That same much-vaunted information superhighway now offers us folk radio online, based either here in the British Isles or’over there’ in the USA. There is clearly manifold benefit to be reaped from engaging with such a welcome addition to the prolific variety of cyberspace. Accordingly, I have formally joined both the continuously streaming Folk Alley (from America), and our own, more multi-purpose Radio Britfolk.
Thank you indeed for visiting my little site-within-a-site, and very best wishes to you.
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