Warren Fahey takes a nostalgic stroll back into folk club land

Warren Fahey takes a nostalgic stroll back into folk club land

I am often reminded by visitors to my Australian Folklore Unit website (www.warrenfahey.com) about the 'great old days' of the Sydney folk clubs. Of course these clubs go back into the late 1950s but I didn't start getting active until the nineteen sixties, and very involved when I started my own clubs in the early seventies. My first club was like a Phoenix born out of the ashes of one of Sydney's most famous clubs - The Sydney Folk Club at the Elizabeth Hotel, opposite Hyde Park, on Elizabeth Street. I'd helped run this very traditional club with Mike Eves, Mike & Carol Wilkinson and Harvey Green. Maybe I should explain how it operated and why. The 'Elizabeth', as it was usually known, was established after the so-called 'folk boom' burst. Folk music had become over commercialised - it was everywhere on radio, television and venues - and with success came a watering down of its worth. Mr & Ms 'GP' moved on to a new music called rock & roll with its almost monthly new expressions, many of them linked to dance crazes. Anyway, a group of mainly Brits, mainly singers, decided to take the music out of the coffee shops and clubs and into the upstairs bars of hotels, in this case the Elizabeth Hotel. The idea was that holding a weekly or twice weekly night in a licensed premises immediately set an adult age limit. Admission was at the door (that was Harvey's job) and the money was primarily split between the booked and floor singers. It was peanuts but democratic. What wasn't democratic was the type of music 'allowed' in the club. The repertoire was fiercely protected allowing English-speaking traditional music and a small flow of contemporary songs that sounded like traditional songs. I should mention that the atmosphere in the club was fairly serious but hardly dull. The audiences was expected to sit in rows of chairs and heaven help you if you were standing near the small bar and talking! The audience was there to listen and sing and they did both. I've never heard chorus singing like those old days at the 'Liz' and then there was the revered silence when one of masters performed: Mike Ball or Colin Dryden. The club continued for several years and finally closed after many of the main figures returned to England.

Out of this, it was the late 60s, I opened the Edinburgh Folk Club, in the Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Bathurst Street, in the City, a couple of blocks away from the Elizabeth. This was a much larger space with three open rooms and fairly decent acoustics. It's currently the home of the social change organisation Get Up! I decided to run this club along similar lines to the 'Liz' but added regular theme nights. My policy was strictly traditional music and mainly British, Irish, Scots and Australian. I figured that if someone wanted to listen to contemporary music, blues, bluegrass etc they could go to either Pact Folk or one of the other city venues. I scratch my head these days on how I got away with being so pedantic but it obviously worked for the audience as the club was nearly always forced to put a 'house full' sign up on Saturday nights. The theme nights ran from Songs of the Miners to Drinking Songs of Sorrow & Strife. I printed songsheets which offered the choruses to the audience and we sure lifted the rafters on the pub. Anybody who was anybody sang at the Edinburgh Castle, including many interstate singers. Gordon McIntyre, Kate Delaney, Peter Parkhill, John Francis, Charlie & Liz, Derek Chetwyn, Phyl Lobl, Denis Kevans, Declan Affley were all regulars. Many will remember my right hand man was the ever-bubbly 'Huffy', who was also working for me at Folkways at the time. We had an unbelievably strict approach to the audience than would be tolerated today. We even had signs brazenly declaring: 'Talking during performance will not be tolerated'. Huffy was unofficial policeman in charge of shooshing the rowdier elements of the audience.

The hotel management changed and they decided they wanted their pub back - to create dining rooms to service their important weekly lunch trade. We were out on the street but not for long and in 1970 I opened the Boar's Head Folk Club in the Royal George Hotel, Sussex Street, Sydney. This was the same pub where the notorious 'Sydney Push' drank a decade or so earlier. The 'Push' was a group of bohemian intellectuals, including musicians, and the pub was chock full of atmosphere. It was also in close walking distance from the main contemporary music venue, the old Corn Exchange where Pact Folk staged weekly concerts. I appear to have loosen up a little after opening the Boar's Head and booked a more representative flow of performers however the main thrust was still on traditional music. A couple of years back I sent the first part of my Manuscript Collection to the National Library of Australia and in it I sent programs from early folk festivals and all manner of ephemera connected with the early days of the so-called 'folk revival'. It makes for fascinating reading (see Box 3 W Fahey Manuscript Collection.NLA http://warrenfahey.com/1-3.html) - in this collection were two envelopes with the weekly advertisements I ran in the amusement section of the Sydney Morning Herald. They are fascinating in as much as it notes the extraordinary range of performers, the various theme nights and the outrageous $3 admission which was split amongst the singers.

I guess these days are gone for good. I've performed at the Loaded Dog and other folk nights and whilst I applaud anyone who runs a folk club - it usually seems a trifle stuffy. Maybe the odd clinking of glasses and occasional rowdy shout is part and parcel of relaxing with the music. The audience certainly seem quiet - probably too quiet. Maybe its time to get the old style pub folk clubs back in action. Maybe it's too late - there does seem to be a lot of hotel dining rooms with never-ending wallpaper music.

Post Easter

Easter 08 included a few days in Canberra City to undertake research at the National Library and then present a paper on Bawdy Folklore for the National Folklore Conference. Good Friday was spent at the National Folk Festival where I compered a concert celebrating the State of NSW - it was a conveyor belt concert - each of the artists, including me, had one song. Miraculously it worked although at times it felt rushed.

These festivals are now massive - a combination of mini concerts, food alleys, workshops, displays and plenty of street culture. My favourite was a ten foot, I kid you not, rowdy Scotsman and his randy five foot high dog - complete with the largest and nastiest set of dog's balls you have ever seen.  It was extremely funny. 

Back at work I commenced action on the DVD series - visiting Canberra allowed me to focus on the direction for this series - it will be a history of traditional music in Australia - and use image, sound bites and film to tell the various stories. 

People have already visited!

To my utter surprise ten people have visited my blog already - it's only been a day! Where the hell did they come from? Why me? We they simply surfing blogland? What the hell...... fascinating.

Good day yesterday as the national broadcaster - the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - gave me the green light for a new 16 program DVD series which will tell the stories of Australia through traditional music. It will most likely be called The Bountiful Swag: legends, stories and songs of Australia. It's going to take some time but it will be worth it! I promise.

Hey, if someone reads this will they respond with "it works". I suspect that running a blog can be a bit like being trapped in space - cyberspace. da da da da

apologies regard the 'Ahoy!' - truncated report. For some reason I couldn't work out how to cut and paste into the post so there's no 'truncated report' - that's very truncated indeed.

Ahoy!

The Australian National Maritime Museum, in Darling Harbour, Sydney, is a maritime museum situated in a working harbour. Yesterday I participated in the annual Wooden Boat Festival by presenting two one -hour concerts where I talked about various aspects of the Clipper ships that were so much an important part of Australia's 19th century life. Being an island, a bloody big island, Australia was dependent on these beautiful old ships for the flow of emigrants and the supply of wool, beef and minerals back to Britain. It was the discovery of gold in 1851 that saw the clipper trade explode. I concentrated on two ships  - the Marco Polo and the Cutty Sark. 

I was fortunate to have the Roaring Forties shanty group join me and together we sang of salty sailors, life at sea and port and some of the songs created to celebrate the famous Black Ball line.

Here is a truncated version:

What is folklore?

I am often asked to explain my interest in folklore and although I could write a book explaining how I became interested and what it actually means I will try and do the nigh impossible - explain in a few sentences. 

We all create folklore and carry it inside our heads. It is anonymous 'stuff' that we take on board and runs from childhood nursery rhymes to things we say as adults. It is also a mechanism that allows us to recall customs, habits and what we recognise as traditions. This may be a family recipe, an old saying learnt from mom or dad (who probably had it from theirs). Academics will point to the so called 'oral tradition', passing things on by word of mouth, as one of the key elements of folklore. Storytelling and the singing of old, usually anonymous, songs and ditties are other expressions of folklore. What we say and how - is affected by folklore. A good example of this is if I were to ask you how many days are in the month of May you would probably, automatically, start reciting the old rhyme "Thirty days has September..". The words we use are also defined by folklore - Sydneysiders say 'suitcase' and Melbournians say 'port' for the same object. We also create and pass on colloquial expressions - these are not taught in schools etc but enter our popular speech by choice: "He was so thick he had 'wide load' stamped on his forehead" or "He was flat out like a lizard drinking". 

In the 21st century (you're standing in it!) we tend to be so busy we usually overlook folklore - find it hard to recognise - although it is all around us and in a constant change mode. In many ways we have been conditioned to an artificial environment that would like to ignore 'rites of passage' and other valuable traditions. This was big corporations can implement their advertising and marketing programs. If we all think the same we will probably all buy the same - that's the theory. Folklore promotes individuality within a community and this is how we identify ourselves as unique.  Am I getting too heavy? I'm just ranting but it is a subject I intend to return to frequently. Maybe enough for today.

What I will be adding to my blog site is a continuing update on what has been added to my main website www.warrenfahey.com and that's definitely a never-ending story - just like the Magic Pudding yarn where the plum pudding generously offers slices of its delicious self and then replenishes as it moves along. A grand desert!

Hold onto your seats - we're off and running.

Okay, I am now an official blogger. My website for Australian folklore and bush music, established in 2002, is now a roving giant that attracts approximately 45,000 hits a month, so this blog is an extension of my work as a folklorist, social historian, author and performer. It will allow more general rants because, as I see it, my driving force has always been and continues to be, a determination to tap Australians on the shoulder and remind them of our glorious and unique history and how, by exploring our social history, we can better understand ourselves as a unique people. I also welcome readers from other lands and, in truth, my main site visitors have always been from the United States, curious people that they are.

I'd like to use the blog to identify and explore various aspects of history and culture