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Our next guests are The Rye Sisters on Wednesday 17 June. They are Sue Pomeroy, guitar and vocals, and Ishani Siriwardena, fiddle and vocals. They have now been together in close harmony for ten years with a shared love of Americana music from both sides of the Atlantic.
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They say that Carrington is “a club with very talented musicians in the audience as well as those put on at the club for everyone’s entertainment. We are delighted to be playing there this year – a real highlight of our calendar.” We’re delighted they’re playing here, too. Here they are, playing a full set at Crossover Festival 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwSyQ0ASVa0
The Gladstone, 45 Loscoe Road, NG5 2AW Members £10 non-members £12. You can pay using our card machine so cash is only needed for the raffle. Doors open at 7.45 pm for an 8.15 start, and we finish by 11pm.
This is probably the fifth time Kip and Dave have been guests at the Club since I booked them after seeing them at the first Gate to Southwell Folk Festival. They started with the title song from their first duo CD “I hear Voices Sing” from 2003 which was pitched for sales at a fiver, but went on to a more recent lament of a mother for the son she had to give up for adoption Is It True His Eyes Are Like Mine?.The Freo Doctor then showed Dave’s song-writing flows as well in Perth, W. Australia as in Sleaford, before Kip showed that she writes and sings from personal experience in The Angry Mother. The only songs they sang that they’d not written were Judy Small’s anti- war song Mothers, Daughters, Wives and Joni Mitchell’s song A Case of You that she wrote in Saskatoon, a prairie city they visited on their second Canadian tour, which has a statue of Joni. Kip picked up her accordion to add to Anyone’s High Street an attack on the state of the nation in the last weeks of the Tories, and Dave’s other political song Hitch Up the Wrecking Ball was even more hard-hitting. Kip’s powerful blues singing has always featured in a set and we had a fine example in Old Habits although Dave couldn’t say if his riff was derived from Big Bill Broonzy or Robert Johnson. They ended each set on a high note, following Old Habits with the title track Home, which showed us that the place we call home is where our heart is.
Their second set built to a climax with Kip’s powerful rendition of Metagama, the ship taking young emigrants from Stornaway to Canada, then Storm around Tumbledown, which has led Dave to be recognised as a great song-writer, both of which had us joining the chorus with enthusiasm. How do you top that for the encore? They had a great joiner-in with What Would Johnny Cash Do Now? and we all went home happy from a great night.
Singers who contributed earlier included Nick, Hugh, Phil Hind, Blossom (pictured above), Sarah and Paul. Martin Smalley
Our guest on 29th April 2026 was Sarah Farrell, of this parish, launching her debut album “Stoat-Hearted Woman”. From the moment the doors were opened the room filled to capacity and beyond. Mustelid mania, some called it. Only those bearing pitchforks were turned away. With beautiful voice and dexterously-fingerpicked guitar, Sarah treated us to a delicious mixture of traditional songs, tasteful covers, and her own compositions. There was also an earnest speech, the contents of which sadly cannot be reported as your reviewer was sent to fetch fresh towels during its delivery. Highlights among the trad numbers were an unaccompanied Sweet Lemony (pleasant and sorrowful), a slightly-reworded North Country Maid (pleasant and arboreally contentious*), a delicate Banks Of Green Willow (pleasant and disturbing), and a rousing Pleasant And Delightful (pleasant and delightful). The eclectic selection of songs written by others ranged from early 60s material right up to the present year, all performed with captivating clarity, taking us from Tomorrow Is A Long Time (Bob Dylan, 1962) to Weary Arms (Carsie Blanton and The Burning Hell, 2026), via It’s Over (Roy Orbison, 1964), A Pair Of Brown Eyes (The Pogues, 1985), Tougher Than The Rest (Bruce Springsteen, 1987), For What Is Chatteris… (Half Man Half Biscuit, 2005), and Bottom Of The World (Tom Waits, 2006), swerving only to avoid Wonderwall (Oasis, 1995). Special mention goes to the impeccably ferocious rewrite of Love Me, I’m A Liberal (Phil Ochs, 1965). Not one of the songs mentioned so far appears on “Stoat-Hearted Woman”, which is an album of entirely original material. From among its thirteen tracks we were treated to the righteous defiance of Wrong Of Way, the profundity of Scattering My Tarantula’s Ashes At The Recreation Ground, the life-unaffirming wisdom of (You Can’t Eat) Monkey Nuts In Bed, the pongine injustice of Joe Martin, the forlorn howl of Environment Song, and, with Steve Benford accompanying on a second guitar, the gorgeous chip-cob blues of Chip Cob Blues. Add to this the appearance of Lunch Break Blues, a gem of a song too new for the album which it was launching. All share the wit and charm of a gifted songwriter. A swift exit-poll amid cries of “Huzzah!”, “Cracking!”, “Perfectly normal!”, and “Marvellous!” strongly suggests that we should book Sarah again. Meanwhile, fill your ears with this: https://sarahfarrell.bandcamp.com/album/stoat-hearted-woman Paul Carbuncle
* Ellum and rowan are available to those who choose to disbelieve in ivy trees.
Brilliant solo from Steve Benford (as usual) as well as accompanying Sarah
In their third very welcome visit to the Carrington Triangle, Christina and Alex again brought their unique blend of contemporary and traditional music to a very appreciative audience. In a small club like ours without a PA their intimate and engaging delivery comes across beautifully. Christina sings in a lovely pellucid, plangent voice and Alex closely harmonises in intertwining countertenor – although they sing English music they told me that they have been influenced by Americana style harmony singing. Christina, usually plays fingerpicking guitar in her inimitable eight to the bar strumming technique while Alex adds gentle melodic texture on the fiddle. This was how they began the first set, soon settling in to one of their most famous songs The Mountain Hare. Many of their songs are inspired by animals or nature and this was a feature of their performance tonight. I really enjoyed their interpretation of traditional songs — for instance, Christina played clawhammer banjo and Alex his 1950s Martin tenor guitar for My Flower, My Companion and Me and Sing John Ball, both given a distinctive Appalachian flavour. They followed this with Hunter, about a magical bond between a brown bear and a grey wolf, and then the beautiful A Hundred Years Ago which celebrates the birth of their daughter Etta. When they sing together, Christina and Alex often look at each other and it seems to the audience as if we are being included in intimate, emotional moments. This is one of the unique aspects of their performance. High spots in the second set included The Greenland Shark about ‘the oldest living vertebrate on earth’ that lives up to 500 years! ‘ 500 years I swam these seas, calling, calling for you.’ Safe Travels, the title track of their new album, and Our House both celebrate the importance of human community in our lives and were a fitting finale to the evening. For encore they did a rousing version of the shanty Blow Boys Blow with Alex playing spirited bluegrass style fiddle – great stuff! Mike Wareham
Jon Marsden, another of our great collection of floor singers
On Wednesday, 18th March, our guest at the Carrington Triangle was Bob Fox from Seaham, a former coal mining town, about six miles south of Sunderland, hence he specialises in songs from the North East. After the usual half hour of floor singers, Bob moved onto the ‘stage’ with an ease of manner, immediately engaging with the audience through interesting and amusing stories and song introductions, He began with My Love is in America by Chris Leslie, a wistful, haunting song about a young man whose girlfriend is forced to leave him in order to emigrate to the States with her father. This was followed by a song about the Sunderland naval hero, Jack Crawford, sometimes called The Hero of Camperdown. It tells the story of how he ‘nailed his colours to the mast’ during that battle in 1797. The third song, The Year Turns Round Again, was from the theatre production of War Horse, in which Bob appeared as Song Man, followed by another song from that production, Learning to Plough, where Joey the horse had to be taught how to ‘ plough a good furrow’ for a Devon village competition. Bob told us that he had to learn to play the melodeon for War Horse, and had one made in Gateshead to look like an early twentieth century instrument (Just a bit of info for melodeon enthusiasts!).
Towards the end of the first set came a song by Jez Lowe called Greek Lightening about a couple trying to get by on benefits, dreaming of a holiday in the Greek islands, but having to settle for day trips to Roker and Whitley Bay. As a northerner myself, I don’t happen to think those choices were a bad alternative, but a life on benefits is not much fun. Bob began his second set with Champion at Keeping Them Rolling about old-style long distance lorry drivers. It was written by Ewan MacColl, and Bob did mention, in his humorous way, that Ewan, who was really English pretending to be Scottish, sang as a Geordie (well, why not ?!). Peppers and Tomatoes was next, a political song by Ralph McTell referring to how the Orthodox Serbians and Catholic Croats got along with each other until Serbia, supported by Russia, went to war, intent on divide and conquer tactics. The Whitby Tailor was a rather quirky music hall song in which a shy young man, trying to date a young woman, suggests, after too many drinks, that they swap clothes. He ends up half naked while she runs off in his trousers, the pocket containing all his money! Bob followed with such well-known Geordie songs as The Bonny Gateshead Lass,When the Boat Comes In, The Lampton Worm and The Water of Tyne, ending this very entertaining evening with ‘ Big River’ by Jimmy Nail, another well-known Geordie. Inspired by Bob’s mention that Sunderland people were not Geordies but Mackems, I did a bit of research into these names. Apparently Mackem originates from Sunderland’s shipbuilding heritage, ‘we mack’em and they tack’em’, meaning, of course, ‘we make the ships and they take them out’. The name Geordie, on the other hand, possibly originates from the support Tynesiders gave to King George 2nd, during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, or perhaps the nickname for local coal miners who used safety lamps or ‘geordie lamps’ as designed by George Stephenson. There is much rivalry between Geordies and Mackems, stemming from sides taken during the Civil War, industrial competition and football teams. Just thought you might like to know all that. Yes, it was, in Geordie-speak, a champion night, having that canny lad back after a ten year gap. We all enjoyed his many chorus-songs, his powerful – and at times very passionate – singing, skillful guitar work, his melodeon playing, and well, his northernness!
Great floor singers again: Matt Blick and Phil Harrison, even cooler than usual
Maureen McGuinness, on behalf of Carrington Triangle folk club.
This month’s guest was Paul Carbuncle, launching his new CD Reverse Canterbury Pleasure. The title is the name of a peal of bells: you can interpret it as you wish.
Paul has connections across a much wider social activist and music scene than folk clubs like ours, so he attracted a wide range of admirers. Often it’s the job of a guest performer to win over the audience and to provide some background and justification for their songs, but we were all on Paul’s side (and knew a fair few of the songs) right from the start, so he just got on with the music, and gave us two well-filled sets – 29 songs in all. Many were from the new record (Drinking Money, My Name is Dessie Warren, A Tree Song), but there were welcome favourites like Cookie’s Old Cries of Nottingham (with a tribute to Cookie’s help in recording and performing on the CD), Pig Farmer, Isambard, Deport First, The Mermaid (with Blossom demonstrating the ‘three times round’ bit), Ben Kenobi….
Paul’s performances are always powerful and impressive. His singing is beautifully clear, so it’s possible to make out every word (a skill that’s not that common, unfortunately), and, more importantly, he conveys the meaning of every word, too – and all the songs have a message or a story. His guitar style is quite idiosyncratic, and often fast and furious, but the power and vigour of this playing can be deceptive: it’s not all sound and fury. His left hand is wonderfully dexterous up and down the fingerboard, and the right hand is really precise, as well as rapid.
The CDs Paul brought sold fast, and he was kept busy in the interval with a queue of people wanting them signed (if you missed your chance, CDs and downloads are on Bandcamp). There were mugs and T-shirts available, too. There was already someone wearing a T-shirt by the beginning of the second half.
At the end of the night, Paul had difficulty getting away, because of the queue of people waiting to tell him what a great evening it had been. They were right.
Phil Harrison and Rob Duley, two of our excellent collection of floor singers
This is the fourth time Reg Meuross has been to the Carrington Triangle and more than ever I am struck by how lucky we are to have such a major artist at our little folk club. Reg seems to be able to write great songs about a huge variety of subjects and he makes each song hit home with real emotion.
He started off the first set with three songs from his latest song cycle Fire and Dust, which is about the life and songs of Woody Guthrie. Pete Townsend from The Who had the idea of drawing a direct line between Guthrie and Dylan up to Meuross (he produced the LP) and in these songs you can see that Reg is a worthy bearer of their torch. The first song, Fire and Dust, starts off with the verse,
You are the voice you are the call You are the word of one and all You who know a lesson learned in fire upon your heart is burned.
Fire played a tragic part in Woody’s life and dust refers to the dust bowl where he was brought up and wrote many songs about. In the next song A Folk Song’s a Song, Reg sings
Hey hey Woody Guthrie I made you this song from the words you’ve been saying and the tunes you have sung I wrote it to say we’ve been listening to you from those who have been having some hard travelling too.
The last song from Fire and Dust was the Gypsy Singer, sung in the voice of Bob Dylan when he went to see Woody Guthrie in hospital dying of Huntington’s Chorea in 1961. It’s a haunting, lyrical account -masterly songwriting. Reg sings in a distinctive tenor voice — and fingerpicks and strums his 1940s Martin guitar in a non-flashy way that never gets in the way of the lyrics. He talks to the audience fluently and warmly between songs, telling us lots of stories about his life and about the songs he’s singing. After telling us a lovely story about his Appalachian dulcimer called Dave he sang the song I am a Fish-house Woman from his Hull trawler disaster cycle. He then told us about how he wrote the song cycle Stolen from God (2022) which is about the pernicious slave trade between the 17th and the 19th centuries. He sang Good Morning Mr. Colston (which has become a classic) and ended the first set with I Bought Myself an African. Both songs employ a biting sardonic humour in the English satirical tradition:
Their purpose is to labour for your need Sanctioned by his holiness, by royalty decreed and it’s the right of every English man … so I bought myself an African.
Reg started off the second set with two much more personal songs – the Shoreline and the Sea and Jealous– both show that he is just as adept with emotions as with social and political subjects. He continued with another classic, Angel in a Blue Dress, a paean to an NHS nurse. He also sang Leaving Alabama, Cry a New Song and I Believe in You. He finished with another all-time classic, England Green and England Grey — one of the only songs I know that captures our ambivalence towards a country so beautiful and so marred by corporate and capitalist greed. This was an inspiring and inspiriting performance, delivered with warmth, humanity and passion and we all sang the encore Shine On with, I like to think, similar passion!
‘Shine on like a diamond in the mine Shine on like the spirit of mankind’.
Usual time. Free admission. Bring some snacks to share. No raffle, but if you bring a small wrapped present you can join in the tombola. Christmas jumpers will not be barred. Don’t forget Notts Alliance on 10th December, as well.
(No meetings 24th and 31st December: see you January)
Culverake are the trio of Lizzie Hardingham, Seb Stone and Matt Quinn. They sing unaccompanied, with a high proportion of traditional songs. We had been impressed by their set at the Gate to Southwell Festival earlier in the year, and were pleased to invite them to the club. They gave us a splendid set, starting at high intensity with a May Song in which power from Matt and Seb was lifted by Lizzie’s bell-like top line. Most of the songs they did for us are on their just-released album Unto the Sky. There were several unusual variations on well-known songs, like a Scots version of John Barleycorn, and Three Old Jolly Sportsmen, which started off as the well-known highwayman ballad Two Butchers, but then swerved off in an unexpected direction.
Note ‘In The Roud’ flyers in the foreground
Three-part harmony is Culverake’s feature style, dense, complex, and beautifully sung. All three are worth listening to as solo singers, though. This was apparent in one- or two-line solo parts in the arrangements and in the melody leads, which were shared among all three. Examples were Seb’s beautifully clear and gentle lead in You Lads and Lasses, a version of Seeds of Love, Matt in Down by the Seaside, an incomplete broken token song (doubly broken, I guess), and, in particular, Lizzie on Rolling Down to Old Maui. She sang it with a lovely varied and dancing rhythm and bluesy touches, which really lifted what is sometimes a rather stolid belt-it-out song. Great. I loved the harmonies (I have always loved vocal harmony, right back to Peter, Paul and Mary and Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares), but I would also have enjoyed hearing a bit more solo singing from each of them. Another of Culverake’s strengths is clear diction. It’s important to hear the words. Matt gave us plenty of detail about source singers and variants of the songs. Not surprising, given the great depth of information in his podcast In the Roud, which is a series of really valuable in-depth analyses by experts of songs in the Roud Index – well worth following up on YouTube or other podcast sites. He’d put out flyers on our tables: I hope some of them were taken away and followed up. Our ballad group has found the series very useful.
Lizzie and Seb relax while Matt gives the lowdown on the next song
The intensity they started with was maintained to the last, even in gentle songs like Sweet Thames Flow Softly. They ending with bouncing through Mike and Lal Waterson’s Rubber Band as an encore.
As usual on guest nights, we had a few floor singers to start off each half. It’s good that we have a collection of excellent and reliable singers, like ‘The Old Flames’ (Mike and Jane), Sarah Farrell, and Phil Hind, who can give those who come for the guest nights a positive impression of the club in general.
Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne’s powerful and intense singing, brilliant musicianship, wide choice of material, and rapport with the audience left us captivated, a bit amazed, and maybe a little stunned (he is satisfyingly loud) last Wednesday evening. He was playing anglo concertina and a hybrid converted melodeon-accordion based on a pre-war Hohner Lucia, which gave melodeon-style punch and drive on the right hand but a full range of bass chords, which he used very effectively, on the left. Effectively an instrumental hot rod. Almost all his material was traditional, ranging from classic early twentieth-century songs collected by people like Lucy Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams, through to striking material from his latest CD, Play Up The Music, a collection of English-origin songs as sung in the Caribbean and by African-American artists in the USA. This included Pretty Little Sailor, a version of Soldier, Soldier, Won’t You Marry Me? which many of us learned at school, and a mesmerisingly powerful version of Little Musgrove.
The depth and range of his instrumental playing was wonderful. On the melodeon, he started the evening with a lively and powerful version of two country dance tunes and then moved on to a representation of some Welsh fiddle tunes from a player who ‘knew a lot of notes, and was determined to play every single one of them’ (and Cohen showed us just what that meant). On the concertina he gave us ‘a sailor’s hornpipe, as it would have been arranged by J.S.Bach’ – completely convincing, very funny, and a virtuoso performance – followed by his own very moving Fantasia on a West Indian Burial based on the songs traditionally sung at funerals to help to guide the souls of the dead back to their home in Africa. It wasn’t just an evening of varied songs, powerful singing and wonderful playing. He was very much with us as an audience. Many of his songs had choruses or refrains, which suited the club’s good reputation for chorus singing, and for almost every piece he gave us informative, interesting, amusing and sometimes touching introductions and explanations. Both sets were closed off with just the right kind of rousing finales: a less-than-serious music hall song from Vesta Tilley in the first half, and a remarkable concertina piece, ending with whirling the instrument round his head to use the Doppler Effect to imitate the sound of bells, at the end of the evening. Good stuff.
