Thanks have been said in print and in person. Thank you to you, now reading the very last edition of TykesStirrings.
In its time, this “little local magazine” has seen a shift in the folk scene from dance (its prime focus originally) to song, from purely traditional folk to the work of singer-songwriters. It has seen the rise and decline (since COVID) of the folk festival. It was around for the invention of folk rock and its subsequent manifestations. It has documented endless attempts by the music press to tell us folk would be “the next big thing” (nu-Folk, psych-folk, retro-folk, folk-jazz, mock-mediæval, prog-folk, folk-psychedelia, new age, acoustic angst, unplugged, Christmas shows and so on); it never was – it has always been the old big thing, the root and origin of our culture which has informed our music and literature from Cædmon to Ed Sheeran. It goes back beyond our history… to the wooden flute preserved for over three millennia in a Lincolnshire peat bog, an artefact contemporary with Stonehenge. It is and shall remain, despite all the changes, the essence of Us.
What's in the Winter Issue
LETTERS
Kind words from good friends.
ANAHATA'S CHOICE
Christmas Cheer from The Compleat Country Dancing Master 1731: with two added harmony parts and a bass line from Anahata. ‘They almost wrote themselves’ he says!
Longways for as many as will
SONG SPOT
Cold Winter’s Night (Day) – Included as a balance for the sprightly tune preceding. “The song was collected in August 1907 in Cambridgeshire by Ralph Vaughan Williams, from Harry Mallion. Harry worked on the land at Fen Ditton, a small village Northeast of Cambridge.”
Mary & Anahata freeing the reeds
FORGOTTEN FAVOURITES
Crown of Horn by Martin Carthy: A stunning LP and not at all forgotten, as Chis explains - “Let’s bend the rules a bit. We’re never coming back here, after all. Of course Crown of Horn is a favourite, but it’s a long way from being forgotten. It’s the record that kick-started my lifelong devotion to folk music and British finger-style guitar..”
A 1970s crowning glory
ROSECASTLES: Ramble No More – Or Do They?
“[…] in September 1974 we were more than ready to hurl ourselves into whatever folkiness the West Riding had to offer. And lo and behold, there was Tykes’ News, under the steady hands of Trevor Stone and Mal Jardine, bearing witness to a cornucopia of folk for all who would read.”
The Sitting, Standing, Rambling singers.
WINTER Almanac : DECEMBER
Yule remember these “The tenth-named twelfth-month, the month most people think of when they hear the word Winter, the turning of the year, of symbolic and religious significance (particularly in Northern climes) since before history was recorded, time immemorial. Rituals, routines and superstitions are among the most familiar, even when their significance has been forgotten. The Christian calendar from Advent to Epiphany is packed with adapted ceremonies of the faiths it superseded.”
ARTICLE: Persephone Dance Off
Rose & Paddy explain “Sadly, after 45 years of dancing the streets of Yorkshire and far beyond, the time has come for Persephone to bow out gracefully and hang up the clogs. Like many groups we have found we can no longer continue for various reasons, but we have a multitude of memories and fantastic friends the length and breadth of the country.
Rather than just a hobby, dancing with a morris team becomes a way of life…”
The Laura Ashley years
NIC HALL: Farewell & Adieu
“Thank you TykesStirrings for being a huge help and support in my ‘career’ and the careers of so many of us. I still hope that the spirit of TS will somehow live on, perhaps in the form of a podcast? For now, we have all those back issues to read through and enjoy.”
INTERVIEW: Nigel Schofield
The gallant leader gets a long overdue grilling from Simon Jones: “SJ: When and where does folk music fit into your story? NS: Aside from singing folk without realising it along with BBC Schools programmes, it was the result of spotting the name Martin Carthy on the back of Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I then saw that Martin was appearing at the Topic Folk Club in Bradford. Martin was due to appear on November 20th and there was advice to attend the club earlier in order to book a ticket. I went along, I was sneaked in despite being well under age.”
Nigel views the Folkosphere from the lofty Tykes’ Towers
INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN – Where Were You In ’62?
“JUST STARTING OUT. I’d moved to New York, was playing the clubs around Greenwich Village. At the start of the year, I’d made my first album and was waiting for it to come out. I went home to Minnesota a coupla times. I made my second LP, Freewheelin’. Got me a steady girlfriend; then she took off for Europe. Then – and I expect this is what your readers want to know about, I came to England for the first time.”
Sing Out Magazine – When Martin met Bobby
TAKE 5… LIVE: Linda Thompson
A Folk-Rock icon, she finds it “Almost impossible to choose my five favourite gigs” then proceeds to find five fab features including a close encounter with Phil Everly.
5 Live far and wide
INTERVIEW: Dave Pegg
Nigel, in Bradford, chats to Peggy, in Brittany …
“Back in 1970, the first published interview I ever conducted was with Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention (only just, in those dim and distant days). It was November 9, 1970 – 21 months since I first saw them play live. The line-up had changed: Dave Mattacks now occupied the drum seat instead of the late Martin Lamble; Dave Swarbrick had joined on fiddle; Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings had both left (I saw them in different bands the same year); Dave Pegg was still the “new boy”
Peggy plays bass with A.J. Clarke
INTERVIEW: Pete Coe
…reflects on sixty years in the business.
“[In ’62] I was waiting for my O Level results. I was on holiday in Morecambe. I spotted this poster, outside a big dance hall. It was a concert with Lee Walker & The Travellers (whom I’d heard on the radio), Gerry & The Pacemakers and, at the bottom of the bill, a group called The Beatles. I bought a ticket and that was my introduction to the Mersey Sound, the English music of my generation.”
Pete, freeing the reeds at Skipton FC
2FER~VIEW: Roger Ruskin Spear
Still Barking. “IT’S THE BONZOS. It’s a compendious retrospective. The title had to be a pun!
They were, of course, never a folk act. But then, they never fitted into any pigeon-hole. But they were connected. Links to the Pythons, starting with weekly appearances on the proto-Python kids’ show Do Not Adjust Your Set and extending, via Neil Innes, through the entire Circus career. Links to the Beatles, including an appearance on The Magical Mystery Tour, a hit single produced by a pseudonymous Mr McCartney and serious songs on a par with Lennon/McCartney that set Innes in good stead for the premium parodies of The Rutles.”
RRS making a spectacle
REVIEWS: CDs, Live, HomeSpun & a Book!
Talkin’ Topic Blues: “Well it might be false or it might be true / It might jus’a’happened in ’62” - A newly wrote fancy of a mayhap from 1962 by Robert Milkwood Thomas
AND ANOTHER THING
Lydia’s Lament for the Passing of our Peripatetic Apostrophe – “Jim Shipley recently caught up with former TykesStirrings columnist, Lydia D’Ustebyn, whose love of the absurd remains undiminished by the passage of time. We repaired to a nearby hostelry where a surfeit of Merlot saw her agree to reviewing 62 years of Tykes’ travails, secure in the knowledge that she can no longer be banned from future issues.”
THE COVER STORY & So Long & Thanks For All The Folk
[to paraphrase Douglas Adams]
Nigel’s Sign-off: “Time to bid farewell and adieu, for my boot-heels to be wandering, for the parting glass to be raised and for us all to wonder who knows where the Tykes’ goes… See you down the road… Take it easy, but take it.”
FILOFOLK
There is no Filofolk in the printed magazine, but go to
FILOFOLK for a date.
READ ALL ABOUT IT … in the magazine… get yours from the
Buy a Copy page.
