CONFESSIONS OF A FOLK CLUB VIRGIN

By  Keith Duncombe 

No, I’m afraid this doesn’t relate to that picaresque, risqué and arguably - in the modern context -culturally inappropriate series of films from the 70s. It refers to my first experience of attending a folk club at the fine age of 55 years old. 

Karen, the other half of both myself and the Folk Roundabout editorial team, has been an occasional attender at folk clubs for many years and first started to sing and play folk music as a teenager whilst living in South Yorkshire. My musical journey has been somewhat different. For many years, I just noodled around on acoustic guitar not getting very far at all. 

Then, a group of friends who were in an old-school punk band were looking for a guitarist. They asked me. Well, I wasn’t very good on acoustic and had never played electric guitar, but they were happy to “grow me from an egg” – and you only need 3 chords for punk! 

There’s an old musician’s adage that to improve your skills, there’s nothing to beat playing with other musicians and that definitely proved to be true for me. Ironically, I wrote most of the riffs for Pointy Boss on acoustic guitar, figuring that if it sounded good on an unamplified instrument, it would probably work on a heavily over-driven Telecaster! This improved my acoustic playing and song-writing quite significantly, I think. 

20 years later, it was time to hang up the electric guitar and retire to the porch. Karen and I had always played around with acoustic music in the back-ground and had done a few gigs playing a mix of pop, rock and folk. Now it was time to get serious. For my own part, I had always been aware of the folk tradition and its importance in the landscape of English music. I’d even been to several Richard Thompson gigs and had seen Dick Gaughan live when I lived in Nottingham. 

Moving to the North East, Karen and I resolved to learn and write some acoustic/folk material. Just as we were about to stumble along to the Stumble Inn Folk Club in Sunderland… covid, lock-down! 

So, in time, we plucked up the courage to join a Zoom session of the Stumble Inn folk Club run by Eileen. It was so efficiently run that, even with over 30 participants, everyone was offered a song from the floor. I liked the variety of performance – everything from traditional tunes, to comedy ditties, a capella singing as well as accompaniments and some lovely harmonies. The breadth of knowledge and history of the music from various participants was impressive. 

Equally, the democratic nature of the event was something to admire. Music can be quite elitist in some ways, but this was not my experience at the Stumble Inn: everyone was welcome and everyone welcome to contribute, or not, as they wished. 

Since then, we have returned one more time and are hoping to again when real life calms down a bit and we have more time to attend (and we get this issue “put to bed”!). I keep working on my playing and Karen and I are writing some songs together. She’s even trying to get me to sing! Am I a “Folkie”? Probably no more than I was ever a Punk! What I do know is that music makes me happy and folk clubs are a big part of keeping that alive.