Our Next Main Guests:

Dana &

Susan Robinson

15th March

February 2010

February began at Warwick with a night featuring the music of Ron Holmes, one of the original members of local band Meet On The Ledge and Mick Shaler, who was, for a year or so, the fiddle player with the band.

Some of the singers appearing before the main act brought out some new material: Dave Fry performed a song written by Martin Simpson (something of a rarity in itself) called “Comin’ Home”; Wendy and Tony did a song from His Worship & The Pig describing something we’ve all experienced: “It’s Going To Be One Of Those Days”; and Norman sang the traditional song “Wandering”, in the style of the version as recorded by James Taylor.

Ron Holmes said “I love commercial folk” and they were going to do songs “which not many people do these days” - just what goes down well at Warwick! These included Buffy Ste. Marie’s “Universal Soldier” and The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday”, in the Melanie style. Ron admits to being a huge Richard Thompson fan (as hinted at by the name of his former group…) and the repertoire included three of his songs: “Galway To Graceland”, “Dimming Of The Day” and “Wall Of Death”. Mick Shaler’s fiddle adds a completely different dimension to the duo’s performance - sometimes he plucks it like a finger-picked guitar

Ron Holmes and Mick Shaler

and at other times his bowing creates a sound which is warm and mellow but providing countermelodies which soar and leap around the tune. The set list also included a few pop songs such as “Dock Of The Bay” by Otis Redding (“that great 60’s folk artist…”) with the fiddle taking the place of the whistling interlude  and “Drift Away” - recently covered by Tom Rush - which turned out to be a very good chorus song: “Gimme the beat, boys, free my soul - I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll and drift away…”

You can tell that Ron has a background in rock bands since his powerful voice has a throaty edge to it - but that doesn’t mean he can’t also do the quieter stuff. For fans of Meet On The Ledge - and there were a good few in the audience - the duo is now the only way to see what made that group so popular in their time.

The Performers’ Night on February 8th, introduced by Dave Fry was notable for two former guests popping in to play for fun! It was good to see Andy & Kate, otherwise known as Fola (featured on the showcase last July) and Harvey Band who were guests last March. As well as some of their own material, Fola did the traditional song “Verdant Braes Of Skreen” In fact there were more traditional songs than on many occasions lately: “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme” (from John Rowan); “Young Henry”, a song which had local connections and mentioned Southam (from Rob Watts and “The Banks Of The Bann” (from John Davis & Sam Cornwell) among others.

There were songs by well known contemporary writers such as Richard Thompson (“Waltzing’s For Dreamers” from Dave Fry); a little heard Tom Paxton song (“Out Behind The Gypsy’s” from Nigel Ward) and Bill Caddick’s “Unicorns” (from Martin Day, who also did “Big Rock Candy Mountain“, thus doing two “nice” songs in a row - is this a record…?) Harvey Band wanted to try out some new material written by Bill Bates (one of which featured a triangle “solo” from flautist Anne!)  In recognition of Valentine’s Day less than a week away on the horizon, Alan Richardson gave us his modern love story based in a shopping mall “Blue Water Valentine” and a shanty - but not of the sea, since this was about Gatwick - an air shanty!

Alan Richardson

It was a night covering most of the types of acoustic music with - as we have come to expect - in an incredibly high standard of singing and musicianship.

15th February saw a night that must be completely different to anything seen at the club before: the appearance of the mega-group Steamchicken - but in the guise of The Original Steamchicken Jazz Band - all 14 of them!

The music was kicked off by Jonathan Waller and Will Pound (one of the ace harmonica players with the ‘Chickens) doing a selection of Django style jazz, the James Taylor song “Steamroller” and some “Irish blues” tunes.

The band took to the performing carpet (there is no stage, as such…) and roared into “Tiger Rag”. The proceedings were introduced by keyboard player Andrew Sharp who added some nice touches of historical background to the music gleaned, as he admitted, with tongue in cheek, from “literally minutes of research on Wikipedia…” Now ”Creole Belle” must be a tune heard many times in folk clubs, but possibly not with the inclusion of a tuba - played by Simon Burrell.

The full line-up of The Original Steamchicken Jazzband

Being a ceilidh band at other times, the Steamchicken Jazz Band repertoire included some interesting combinations of tunes: do you think “Dashing White Sergeant” has ever been paired before with “Has Anybody Seen My Gal” or “Fairy’s Hornpipe” with “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair”? The vocals on the second of these pairs was provided by Becky Wolff, described by band leader Ted Crum as “16 going on 27” since her singing is amazingly mature. Later, Andrew told us that he’d vetoed her choice of “Fever” as being maybe not right for her to sing so instead she chose the Willie Dixon song, made famous by Etta James “I Just Wanna Make Love To You”…!

Vocalist Becky Wolff with backing singers “Chicken Supreme”, drummer Ben Wolff, Ted Crum on double bass and keyboard player/frontman Andrew Sharp

Very few feet were not tapping throughout the evening and if the audience needed more ways to express their feeling for the rhythms, then two large buckets of shaky eggs were passed round! It was interesting to see that the folkies shook on the “on” beat while the jazzers stuck to the “off”… With just some amplification for the flute, harmonica and vocals, there was an amazingly good blend of sound with the brass line up of trombone and saxes along with clarinet and melodeon.  A theme of the night was that American jazz tunes had roots in European folk music and the result was more proof that the Warwick Folk Club audience appreciates all kinds of good music!

The last session of the month featured Gren Bartley, who was originally from Warwick, now living near Banbury. There was also a coach trip from the Harbury Folk Club to bring The Band Of Folk (all eight of them!) who gave us an extended spot of tunes, featuring accordions, melodeons, concertinas, a fiddle, double bass and guitar!

Gren Bartley

Unusually for someone who writes songs, Gren’s repertoire was not entirely made up of self-penned songs. He began and ended the evening with his own instrumentals, demonstrating the warm, mellow tone of his Taylor guitar and his own finger-picking style - sometimes very fast! As well as his own songs, there were a couple of old blues: a Leadbelly song with the once-heard-never-forgotten title “Cow cow yikki yikki yeah” and another by Blind Willie Johnson. He featured a banjo on the Leadbelly song and also on “Walk Right In”, made famous by The Rooftop Singers but originally by Gus Cannon And His Jug Stompers (Gren’s version owed more to the earlier version!) There were even a few traditional songs, including “Barrack Street” (“a traditional “lose-your-trousers” song”) and “Davey Lowston “(“a song so miserable, the people who are left alive come off worst!”) The encore to round off the night was “one of the top three songs I wished I’d written” - Richard Thompson’s “Vincent Black Lightning 1952” The mixture of styles made for a much more varied evening’s entertainment - often the theme down at Warwick Folk Club.