A Shirt on Sunday: TwickFolk Autumn 2014

TwickFolk has been presenting live music in south west London since January 1983, when it was ‘The Twickenham Folk & Singers Club’. Volunteers and committee members have come and gone, the venue has moved through nearly every room in The Cabbage Patch pub, but the sound of acoustic guitars and voices raised in song has been a constant for more than 35 years.

I first visited TwickFolk in 2008, three years after I moved away from Twickenham. Steve Ashley had just contributed a song to the Fairport Convention album I was playing to death at the time, so when he did a gig at the Patch, Janet and I went along. Afterwards, Ashley told us it was a pleasure to not only have people sitting in the front row, but having them smile as well! I went every few weeks for a couple of years and then we moved to New York.

Two years later, having cut my teeth on sound mixing at the equally venerable Peoples' Voice Café (founded 1979), decided to volunteer my services. I started volunteering at TwickFolk in 2013. It didn’t take long before the questions started: What’s that t-shirt all about? Why is a bloke wearing a Slayer t-shirt volunteering at a FOLK club? And that is why in 2016 I started writing ‘A Shirt on Sunday’.

Back in 2014, I was working on the web site, helping out on the sound and talking to Robert about publicity, flyers and related matters. That summer I thought it would be a good idea to print up some t-shirts which could be worn by the volunteers at festivals during the summer. I’d just taken over the task of booking artists and was more than a little daunted. I figured it was a good time to boost audience numbers. I wore the shirt to the folk festivals I volunteered at to gigs and other folk-ish events.

As for the mentioned acts, this was a fairly typical season at TwickFolk: Americana (TwickFolk was booking Americana acts before it was called Americana), traditional folk, big names, newcomers, and a bit of poetry. In Chronological order, a few words about the performers. I don’t remember much about the gigs – working on sound tends to mean the main recollection is whether it was an easy sound-check...

Sally Barker was touring on the back of her second placing on The Voice. Her appearance on the show had been controversial in the folk world as it was seen by some as “selling out” – a crime almost as great as having a hit record. That may be so, but Cathy, receptionist where I worked at the time brought her Mum to the gig, so Sally’s appearance definitely brought new faces to the club. It was so well attended we moved upstairs to the nightclub – a sticky-floored space not designed for a seated audience, but an option in those days of we were in danger of selling more than 50 tickets.

The Askew Sisters had previously appeared at the club playing the music for their father’s lecture about folk music in Hampshire. As a Hampshire lad, I had been agog to learn there had been a lunatic asylum in Hartley Witney, the closest source of a song to where I grew up. The sisters were now recording and playing as they made their way through school and college. Still going strong – I contributed to the crowd-funder for this year’s album.

Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer. Vicki plays the nyckelharpa – a Scandinavian relative of the hurdy-gurdy. On this day she gave a workshop, resulting in a herd of the nyckelharpas (harpi?) in the back of the pub. Jonny gave some workshop as well. They’re well-known and still touring.

Reg Meuross is a fantastic songwriter who can give Richard Thompson a run for his money.
I’d first seen guitarist Kevin Dempsey as part of Uiscedwr, where he’d acted in part as mentor to the other two players. Here he had started a long-running association with American fiddler Rosie Carson.

Dick Gaughan comes from the cantankerous side of folk music. He’s been there, done that and written or re-interpreted an incredible number of classic songs. Since a stroke a couple of years ago Dick has stopped touring and slipped quickly from the musical radar, which is a great shame.

Jim Page is a Seattle songwriter and finger-picking guitarist. It was because of Jim that Janet and I first went to People’s Voice Café (where we’d not sat in the front). The late, great Roy Bailey had performed a few of his songs and he’d played in the UK in 2007. All of which we were more familiar with his work than the New York crowd and surprised him and everybody else by singing along. All of my volunteer involvement in folk music can be laid at Jim’s door.

The Young'uns spent the summer playing the festivals and moving from obscurity to the small art centre circuit, so we were lucky to get them at the Patch. I missed that gig, and I still kick myself for it as this harmony singing trio are one of the top acts in the folk scene.

Reid Jamieson is a smooth-singing songwriter from Canada and a thoroughly nice chap.
Steve Dan Mills is a rough-singing songwriter from America and a thoroughly nice chap.
The two of them sharing a bill was great night, albeit with almost no-one there to hear them.

Dave Kelly is one of the Blues Band and I believe asked us for the gig! A fantastic blues player and writer, it was another storming evening, despite not being folk…

Which leads us to Les Barker. He is without a doubt the funniest poet I’ve encountered, just beating Spike Milligan. Check out ‘Have You Got Any News of the Iceberg?’ – which explores the real victims of the Titanic disaster, the self-explanatory ‘Dachshunds with Erections (cannot climb stairs)’ and my personal favourite for the mosh-pit: ‘Déjà vu’.

Did the t-shirt work?
Did floods of eager audience members converge on the Cabbage Patch?

No.

Most of the videos were taken at TwickFolk by our regulars in the audience, who keep us going from year to year and are thus patrons of the arts and to be applauded. Others are from the artists' web sites and a few are just grabbed at random. Credits can be found by following the links to You Tube