Mick Ryan and Paul Downes

It often strikes me how lucky we are to have such an intimate venue at the Triangle in the excellent The  Gladstone pub, there to witness world class folk music talent close up and without a P.A. Tonight was no exception – Mick Ryan gave us a master class in singing and song writing for a superb evening’s entertainment. Mick sings in a resonant baritone with a Southwest burr and is rooted in the traditional English style – without embellishment, he gives each song its full force. Paul Downes – on his third visit to the club – accompanies him with muscular, subtle and varied guitar and five-string banjo. Paul is a very fine solo singer in his own right but tonight he contributed tight harmony vocals.
The pair opened the evening with The Road to Dorchester, the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The song, like most of Mick’s compositions (he wrote this with Graham Moore), has a surging narrative thrust and a rousing chorus:

By the masters of oppression
You were taken from your land
The immortal power of freedom
Took you by the hand.

This was typical of many of the songs tonight, with themes of social justice and the celebration of working people’s lives. Mick is famed nationally for the several folk operas he has written and he went on to sing The Union from the opera The Paupers’ Path; set in a workhouse, it paints a picture of human suffering and hope –

They dreamed in the night
of the light of the day.

The Land of Cockayne, ‘conceived when shopping in Tesco’, was in Mick’s more whimsical repertoire – Fine roasted suckling pigs went floating past – and indeed much of the evening was given over to laughter, with wry observations on life. Mick and Paul clearly enjoy each other’s company and their shared good humour and banter makes for a relaxed and easy interaction with the audience.
Some of Mick’s songs are deeply personal and one recurring theme is life’s transience: for instance in The Sleep of Death Mick sings:

Hold, Death, let me live another year
Hold, Death, please don’t leave me here.

The second set began with The Fire Against the Cold, based on Brian Keegan’s book The Evil Cradling about his kidnap and imprisonment by Islamic terrorists. It is a good example of the wide range of themes  Mick’s songs deal with and other songs were about: George Mackay Brown’s Vinland; the passing of time in The Bells Rang Out; working class life in He’s Lifted and He’s Shifted. Mick was skilled at getting us all singing the uplifting choruses of many of the songs tonight – not that the Triangle audience needs much encouragement as we love a good sing. Perhaps the best example of this was The Song Goes On, a tribute to Cyril Tawney, the champion of Southwest traditional song. This song celebrates the power of singing together – despite the fact that we will all die in the end!

We will all disappear
Into the glow
Let us sing for we sing
In the passing hour

For the song goes on
In the songs we sing
When one song ends
The other song begins.
So the singers who have gone
Will be singing once again
When we sing the songs they sang.

Did we all feel the transcendent power of singing together? I like to think we did. At any rate we all had a great time, so many thanks go to Mick Ryan and Paul Downes for giving us a rousing and inspiriting evening.
Mike Wareham  

Our next guest is Pete Morton on November 18th