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.
