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| UK Tour 2002 and "Safe
Home" Wednesday, July 3, 2002 Karen, the proprietor of the Star and Garter doesn't quite know what to make of it when I reply that I need neither a pint to drink nor a meal as I arrive for my concert for the Brew Town Folk Club in Burton-on-Trent. Though I assure her as I check into my room that, "After the concert I'll come looking for my pint!" This place is set up like my favorite venues in the States with a pub downstairs, a function room above it for concerts and hotel style lodgings with a kitchen down the hall. A poster on the Folk Club message board describes to patrons the policies of hiring singers, adding: "Stabling and nosebag in the morning is available to guests traveling a distance." I'm hoping I can take my nosebag with me as a souvenir! I've spent the last month rattling up and down Motorways and A roads in a borrowed Rover: twenty gigs in twenty-nine days. I am now thoroughly accustomed to the roundabouts, the yellow-lights-before-green, the speed cameras, and of course driving on the left side of the road. I've set no examples as a tourist as I've been too beat on my days off to go to any castles or gardens. Instead, I've either been domestic at Steafan and Saskia's house in Northampton, gone to some pub to sit and write, or have simply gone walking. Walking to the pubs has been the best combination! This month long tour has been very different from last years' wide-eyed glean. Instead of "Paddy working on the railroad" it's "Yankee working in the folk club." From Stony Strafford, to Newcastle, to Coventry, to Cambridge, to Wolverhampton, London, Canterbury, and on and on, it's a case of "if this is Wednesday, it must be Belgium." One thing about the folk clubs here is that they are consistent: consistent in quality of audience and environment, especially in contrast to venues in the States, which range in all shapes, sizes and temperaments. Again, I have appreciated the floor singers, audience who stand up and sing their own songs prior to the first and second half of the shows. The repertoire is largely local ballads and tunes and I get a real taste of both the individual characters (and there are some characters!) and a sense of regional identity. One nice connection I made was up in Yorkshire in the old mill town of Rishworth. I played a concert at the Ryburn Folk Club, the venue that Pete Coe presents. Pete is a veteran singer/musician himself that tours around the world. He and his wife Sue were in fact in Asheville this past February staying with the people I mentioned in last months' "Notes". It was wonderful sitting at his kitchen table after the concert over glasses of single malt scotch hearing stories about characters in my own community of Asheville. That next morning I took a walk on a footpath alongside the mill river. The path then led up over sunny fields and by hedges with blooming trees and flowers wet and fresh from the mornings rain. Returning to town I walked past stone houses with slate roofs on cobbled alleyways. It was not difficult to fantasize about being some harper or fiddler centuries ago, walking the footpaths with rucksack and instrument, searching out public houses for food, drink and lodgings in exchange for an evening of music. Upon returning to North Carolina I brought back three things: Some black tea, some single malt scotch, and a new song. "Safe Home" was written in the sanctuary of Steafan Hannigan, and Saskia Tompkins kitchen in Northampton on one of my mornings off. Enjoy! Meanwhile, keep in touch by signing the guest book. Also, recently due to a computer disaster I lost all the e-mail list info acquired over the past eight months. If you may be one of these I suggest signing back onto to the list. Or, if I should have taken you off the list, please send a gentle reminder to do so again. Thanks! Safe Home
Postcard on the table and a cat upon my lap
A paper in the morning, there's sun upon the stairs
I've been away for so long I don't know how it feels to be
All I want to do is lay my head down in your hands Abington, Northampton, UK May 23 '02 |
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