The Friends of Fiddler’s Green – Old Inventions

THE FRIENDS OF FIDDLER’S GREEN

Old Inventions

Friends of Fiddler’s Green

ianrobb.com

Back in the 1970s, my occasional trips to Toronto would often include a night spent at Fiddler’s Green, a British-style folk club in a building behind the YMCA on – if I recall correctly – Eglinton Avenue. There would usually be a featured performer for the evening and a bunch of other folks doing short sets – among them, usually, at least some of the members of the Friends of Fiddler’s Green, a group of singers and musicians made up of the club’s directors and some of their friends.

I’d also often see the Friends playing at Mariposa and other folk festivals and on their occasional trips to Montreal. I remember them playing once or twice at the Yellow Door, a folk club that I helped Chuck Baker run in the early-1970s, and once or twice at the Golem, the folk club that I ran in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

While the Fiddler’s Green folk club folded decades ago – sometime in the ‘80s, I think – the Friends of Fiddler’s Green have endured and are still going strong 44 years after first coming together back in 1971.

Why their longevity? My guess is that it’s because the Friends of Fiddler’s Greem has never been a professional band in the sense that it provided the livelihood of the members. They were and remain amateurs in the best (and most professional) sense of the word. They’ve continued to come together over the years for the sheer joy of singing and playing music together.

They’ve also survived personnel changes as a few have left the group over the years and others have joined. Sadly, a couple of the Friends – David Parry and Tam Kearney – have passed away.

The Friends have not been prolific recording artists. Their first album, This Side of the Ocean, was released as an LP in 1981 (and reissued on CD in 1997 augmented with an extra half-hour of concert recordings from back in the day). Their second, The Road to Mandalay, came out in 1994.

More than 20 years later, Old Inventions is their third album as a group and it finds them in fine form running through a repertoire of folk, music hall and contemporary songs and tunes.

The current Friends – most of whom have played on all three albums – include Ian Bell, the newest member, on banjo, guitar, concertina, pipes, trombone and bass; Alistair Brown on concertina, button accordion and harmonica; Grit Laskin on guitar, mandolin and bones; Jeff McClintock on piano; Ian Robb on several kinds of concertinas; and Laurence Stevenson on fiddle. Most also sing lead vocals occasionally and all sing harmonies and choruses.

The album begins with a couple of songs that are quite typical of a Friends of Fiddler’s Green performance. Alistair takes the lead vocal on “Twelve and Tanner a Bottle,” Will Fyfe’s humorous 1920 complaint about the rising price of whiskey before Ian Robb leads the group on a slightly less familiar version of the familiar traditional folksong “All Around My Hat.”

With nary a weak track among the 14 songs and instrumental medleys, a couple of my other favorites include a banjo-driven version of the chantey “Roll the Woodpile Down,” featuring a lead vocal by Ian Bell; the ensemble version of the celebratory pub song “Doon In the Wee Room,” sung as a tribute to Tam Kearney who passed away in 2013.

Two exceptional original songs speak to types of inspiration. Grit’s “If You Want to Change the World,” is about the dedication and perseverance required to make social progress and effect change while Ian Robb’s “The Reason Why,” is about the right and wrong reasons for singing and making music.

My very favorite song, though, is the poignantly beautiful version of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “In My Life,” sung by Grit as a memorial for friends who have passed on. In the liner notes, Grit talks about our mutual friend, the late Rick Fielding, and I’ve no doubt he was also thinking of David and Tam as he sang the song.

The Friends of Fiddler’s Green will be performing several concerts in Ontario to celebrate the release of Old Inventions.

Owen Sound – Sunday, August 23, 1 pm, during the Summerfolk Festival.

Ottawa – Friday, September 11, 8 pm, at the Westboro Masonic Hall.

Toronto – Saturday, September 12, 8:30 pm, at Hugh’s Room.

London – Sunday, September 13, 7:30 pm, at Chaucer’s Pub (presented by Cuckoo’s Nest Folk Club).

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--Mike Regenstreif

Jeff Healey – The Best of the Stony Plain Years: Vintage Jazz, Swing and Blues

JEFF HEALEY

The Best of the Stony Plain Years: Vintage Jazz Swing and Blues

Stony Plain

stonyplainrecords.com

As I noted five years ago in my review of Jeff Healey’s Last Call, “The late Jeff Healey (1966-2008) was – with great reason – one of Canada’s most popular blues-rock guitarists and an exciting bandleader. He was also an expert on the hot jazz and swing of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s – I remember some great radio shows he hosted on the CBC playing old 78s – and, in the last decade or so before cancer took his life, went public as a traditional jazz singer, trumpet player and guitarist, touring and recording a series of fine albums with the Jazz Wizards, a group distinct from his blues-rock band. As much as I enjoyed hearing Jeff play blues-rock, I much preferred hearing him in the jazz context.”

The Best of the Stony Plain Years: Vintage Jazz Swing and Blues compiles 11 terrific tracks from Healey’s traditional jazz albums – including Last Call – and adds “Sweet Georgia Brown,” a previously unreleased track included on a Stony Plain sampler in 2006.

I’ve got Healey’s jazz albums (and the Stony Plain sampler) on my shelves so there was nothing new for me on this CD. Still, it’s a terrific reminder of the real joy Healey had playing the music he loved.

Among my favorites – I do really like the whole CD – are “The Wild Cat,” an instrumental featuring Healey on guitar and Drew Jurecka on violin sounding like Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli in their prime (with modern day sound quality); “Sing You Sinners,” a swinging gospel spoof recorded live at Hugh’s Room in Toronto with British trombone legend Chris Barber sitting in with the Jazz Wizards; a version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Hong Kong Blues,” that’s all Jeff on vocals and two guitars; and the rousing finale of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” another tune with Barber from the same Hugh’s Room show as “Sing You Sinners.”

This collection clocks in at 53 minutes but leaves me wanting more. I think I’ll go pull out the original albums.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Peter Keane – Rural Electrification

PETER KEANE

Rural Electrification

Littlehat.com

I was a big fan of Peter Keane’s four earlier albums and their subtle mixtures of in-the-tradition originals and interpretations of country blues and folk classics. After about 13 years since his last album, Peter has resurfaced with Rural Electrification, an album that is both a continuation of what he’s done on earlier albums, and a departure.

The album continues where Peter left off as he remains a wonderfully subtle song interpreter. Most of these songs date from the 1920s and ‘30s and he gets to the essence of each song with his superb fingerpicking and easy going singing. Everything you could want in the guitar arrangement – and it’s a solo album, just Peter’s guitar and vocals – is there, and there are no unnecessary vocal gymnastics to distract from the lyrics.

The departure is that Peter played acoustic guitars on his earlier albums and – as hinted at in the album title, Rural Electrification – he’s playing an electric guitar, a rich-sounding Gretsch hollow-body, on this one. Happily, the switch to electric guitar doesn’t mean he’s cranking the volume to 11, adding feedback or weird effects, or rocking out. Mostly, the difference is in a bigger range of tone and some added sustain and reverb. The sound remains as purely musical as on the acoustic guitar. I wouldn’t say I like it more or less than Peter’s acoustic work, it’s just a little different.

Among my favorite tracks are Mississippi John Hurt’s “Nobody’s Dirty Business,” Elizabeth Cotten’s “When I Get Home,” the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Sitting on Top of the World,” Goebel Reeves’ “Hobo’s Lullaby” (which is often cited as Woody Guthrie’s favorite song), and his own “Almost Gone,” the only new song in the 12-song set.

Whether Peter sticks with the electric guitar or goes back to acoustic, or uses both, I do hope it will be much sooner than 13 years when we hear from him again.

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--Mike Regenstreif