Duke's Place - Australian songs in concert & session with Mike Martin & Lindsay Martin, 7.30-11.30pm, Friday 13th November 2015

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Mike Martin has traveled the world as a musician singer/songwriter. He is a respected collector of Australian traditional dance music with which he has spent many years recording, preserving, promoting and performing. He will be accompanied by Lindsay Martin (no relation!)

Instruments -- Anglo Concertina and Resonator Tenor Guitar 

After decades of playing traditional music & singing traditional songs, Mike recently started writing songs & is recording these songs as The Strelley Project.

Mike has recorded with the following bands -

Cocky’s Joy
Collector 
Alan Musgrove and Friends  
Barramundi Brothers
The Blowflies

Mike’s own projects -

Jindi                            CD - Jindi Plays Joe
KBO                            CD - Australian collected dance tunes
The Strelley Project    CD - The Strelley Project
Mike Martin                 CD - Postcard from Candelo

Awards -
The Australian National Busking Champion 2012 
winner of  The Dale & John Dengate Parody Cup, Illawarra Folk Festival, 2015

The Strelley Project. This is not Mike Martin the bush or folk music historian ... This is Mike Strelley Martin ... The musician, songwriter, thinker and philosopher. The Strelley Project is a finely crafted set of songs performed by a bunch of consummate local musicians ... While it is in many ways rooted in Mike's community of Candelo & the Bega Valley, the music will travel well .... There are songs here that will make you laugh ... and think .. and cry ....There are songs of protest ... of the environment .. of love of the bush and community (Review by Tim Holt ABC South East Radio)

Tritton Hall, Hut 44 Addison Road Centre, 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville 

Door opens 7.30 for 8pm start. Concert & supper 8-10,  session 10.00-11.30pm

BYO songs Cost - $10

Bring something to drink & a plate for supper

Enquiries - Sandra 9358 4886 
 

Artist & musician Helen Romeo with sign she created

Duke's place, named after our honoured early member Harold 'Duke' Tritton (1886-1965), is the place to go once a month for a great night of Australian songs in concert and session. Duke was a powerful singer who supplied BMC with many songs he had learnt in his younger days while working as a shearer and at other bush jobs. He was also a songwriter and poet giving us songs that have entered the tradition such as Sandy Hollow Line and Shearing in the Bar.

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Review of Sydney production of Reedy River, Le Courier Australien, Friday 26th February 1954, plus program & costume designs.

Click on pictures for full-screen image

Another of Mark Gregory's TROVE finds, the earliest known review of the New Theatre's Sydney production of Reedy River which premiered in December 1953 published in the Sydney newspaper Le Courier Australien, Friday 26 February 1954 p.5.

Reedy River (published 26th February 1954)

If you want to go "all Australian", see the New Theatre's show, Reedy River. Whether or not you have ever been an admirer of old bush-ballads before, you will be converted into a collector of them and they will come high up in your list of national folk songs. Reedy River contains a selection of the warmest, most rollicking ballads I have ever heard. 

Jack Barrie (BMC archives)

The story which forms the structure of Dick Diamond's musical comedy is not particularly strong in itself. It centres on a group of shearers in the 1890's, struggling to win their cause against the employers, despite the recent defeat of their Union by large companies. Mixed up with the conflict of Unionist versus blackleg is a somewhat vague broken marriage, which is mended when June Cairnes as Mary Collins (the wife), realises that Milton Moore as Tom Collins (the man who looks like blackleg but is not) has actually talked all the other blacklegs with whom he is working into joining the Union, thus forcing their employer to pay Union rates, and employ his mates who have been stout Unionists all the time. 

(BMC archives)

The padding is wonderful. With excellent dialogue and production, the shearers and town-folk become a group of delightful individuals. "Irish", the typically tender, bull-headed type, is outstandingly portrayed by Kenyon McCarron. His handling of the argument scene is magnificent. Edmund Allison (as Thomo) and Milton Moore (Tom Collins) play such typical roles that one cannot imagine them any other way. All supporting roles are excellent, and in particular, Lyle O'Hara takes the character-role of the school-mistress with perfection. Her recitation of The Brook is a highlight of the performance. The other highlights are musical spots. Cecil Grivas (the swaggie) sings one especially haunting ballad--My Old Black. Billy, and the chorus numbers Lazy Harry's, Widgeegoweera Joe and Click go the Shears bring the house down. Milton Moore's voice is pleasing and every word of the shearing songs, sung by quite a large group, is distinct. The traditional musical accompaniment is extremely effective in these spots.

(BMC archives)

There is only one weakness. The mine sequence with the "Bush Picnic Ballet" is out of tone and fails in effect. The good-natured quipping (delivered with just the right amount of bushies' drawl), and the merry clowning in some of the ballads, provide the real substance of the presentation, thoroughly enjoyed by cast as well as audience. Sets of the pub, outside the shearing-shed, and in the schoolhouse are very well executed. Reedy River is showing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

--M.N. 

 (Curtain Call - BMC archives)

Australian Live Performance Date base entry on Reedy River, 1953/54  this production closed 30 April 1954.

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Photographs and, costume, poster and stage designs, mainly for New Theatre, Sydney, 1948-1988 / collected by David Milliss, including a volume for Reedy River is held by the State Library of NSW

These designs were for the first Sydney production of Reedy River, a musical play written by Dick Diamond (1906–1984), set in the outback during the aftermath of the great shearers’ strike of 1891. David Milliss used photographs in the Mitchell Library to source authentic images of nineteenth-century working-class dress on which to base his designs.
Reedy River was first performed by the New Theatre, Melbourne, on 11 March 1953. The Sydney production opened on 5 December.

Three images from the collections of the State Library of New South Wales.
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Program courtesy of Silvia & Tom Salisbury who appeared in this production - Silvia (Shepherd) in the chorus & Tom in Stage Management & Set Construction.

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notes -

John Meredith told Frank Maher that Hazel Phillips appeared in this production & Noel Ricketts has spoken to Hazel who confirmed the story (Noel, November 2017)

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Found on TROVE - Part 2

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Continuing the article started in 2014

Found on TROVE - first and early versions of traditional songs and poems we love   (July 2014)

Mark Gregory has been searching TROVE, the National Library's digitized online resources of books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more for several years and has found at least 150 new items, either new songs/poems or variations of familiar items.

The new finds are posted in Mark's rapidly growing Australian Folksongs website, which currently contains 364 entries.

from Mark

In May 2010 I began to use Trove and became captive of its charms ... the first project I set myself was to discover if there were any newspaper articles that mentioned William Cuffay the 62 year black London Tailor and leader of the London Chartists who was transported to Vandiemen's Land arriving in Hobart in 1849. I was amazed to find so much about him including his obituary, which was reported in five newspapers in three states in Australia, and was later republished in a number of British newspapers. The Cuffay research ultimately resulted in a a feature length radio documentary for Hindsight on the ABC, a program that was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Award. This research is available online at http://cuffay.blogspot.com/

 

My next project was to see how many newspapers reported on the mysterious Irish convict known as Frank the Poet, this research gave me a chapter for my PhD and also input into another Hindsite documentary, a radio program that took the poet home to Ireland as it was rebroadcast on the Irish public radio RTE. This research is available online at http://frankthepoet.blogspot.com/

Trove discoveries also added to Brian Dunnett's important collection of Railway Songs and Poems (see http://railwaysongs.blogspot.com/) where there are now more that 250 songs and poems archived and ready for a long proposed book on the subject.

Trove also led me to research Australian colonial and bush songs published in the newspapers, the digitisation of which was growing fast with more titles becoming searchable every week. In 1994 I was in a position to trial a website called Australian Folk Songs and had added little to the original 110 songs. The site was originally piggy backed on the Macquarie University Graduate School of Management website, till it embarrassed the university management to demand its removal. I had been hunting for a website name and finally came up with http://folkstream.com/ where the original content still resides. 

Largely because of Trove discoveries the number of songs and poems has more than tripled to more than 350. By far my most important discovery has been the 1891 version of the original version of the iconic Click Go the Shears. Late one night I decided to search on Trove using a phrase common to all the known versions of the song "Tar here Jack". Up popped an 11 verse song titled The Bare Belled Ewe published in a Victorian newspaper I'd never heard of the Bacchus Marsh Express. This discovery helped explain a lot of confusion about the song. Firstly the tune given was that of the  very popular American Civil War song Ring the Bell Watchman, a tune well known to many bush dance musicians. The sheet music was published in Australia shortly after its composition by the famous Paling company. The tune was used for many different home grown parodies over many years. Strangely enough the title Click Go the Shears was not used until Percy Jones gave his version of the song to the America troubadour Burl Ives on his visit to Australia in 1952. In 1939 two newspapers, the Sydney newspaper the World's News, and another NSW newspaper the Wellington Times published the song under the title The Shearer's Song. Both these versions had more similarity to the 1891 version that they had to the version that Jones published in an article titled "Australia's Folk-Songs" in 1946.

The 1891 version also raise the question of the song's links to 1891 shearers' strike, when the shearers were much in the public mind. It also blew out of the water any notion that song was a 20th century composition, or that it could legally be a vehicle to any sort of copyright except for arrangement and performance. Finally the credit is restored to the memories of all the old bush singers who knew some of the verses of the song and almost unanimously suggested a 19th rather than 20th century origin to the song collectors. For me the old song led to an ABC television role in a national Landline broadcast of the Bare Belled Ewe! It also underlines what Dr Hugh Anderson argued back in the early days of the folk song revival, the important part that publication has played in what we still call Australian Folk Song. 

The discovery of the Bare Belled Ewe in June 2013 led to more searches for bush ballad titles and some 50 or so more shearing songs and early variants. In August I found the precursor of One of the has Beens under the title One of the Have Beens published in the Manaro* Mercury in 1875. Such finds reinforce the probability that our bush songs move in and out of publication and oral transmission, with all the variation and changes that popular vernacular song and poetry often shows.

 

#*- Manaro was an alternative spelling for Monaro in the 19th Century
 A few interesting finds follow.

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The Bold Jack Donohoe (1903)    

To the Editor of the "Evening News."
Sir.—I see by this evening's "News" your account of Bold Jack Donohoe, the Bushranger.
A curious coincidence, yesterday being the anniversary of his death.
I here append an old ballad I heard sung nearly 50 years ago.
MICK FOX (an old native).
1 Botany-street, Waterloo, August 22.
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The Arctic Voyagers, Or Lady Franklin's Lament For Her Husband (1853)   

 

Dave de Hugard writes:-
'The Hobarton Guardian' version of 'Lady Franklin's Lament of 1853 is certainly an early version of the song. For your interest I attach the following extract:
'...After serving (1836-43) as governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Franklin was sent in search of the Northwest Passage in 1845. His ships, Erebus and Terror, were last seen in Baffin Bay on July 25 or 26, 1845.
When nothing was heard from the party, no fewer than 40 expeditions were sent to find him. In 1854, Dr John Rae of the Hudson's Bay Company found the first proof that Franklin's vessels had sunk. In 1859, Leopold McClintock, commanding Fox, a search vessel outfitted by Lady Franklin, discovered a cairn that revealed Sir John had died on June 11, 1847, in King William's Land and had, in fact, found the Northwest Passage. Further expeditions were sent to the Arctic, but they simply confirmed the earlier discoveries...'
This Hobart version (1853) precedes 'the first proof that Franklin's vessels had sunk (1854).'

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The Rabbit Trapper (1917)   A letter written by Salt-Bush Bill, late of the Outer Barcoo, to his brother in Burra

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 The Exile's Song (1841)  Robert Nicholl.    

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Ring The Bell Chumies (1874) by ROSE OF COGMILLS.  Parody of  Ring the bell watchman   

  

A surprising number of 19th Century Australian songs and poems parodied the popular American Civil War song "Ring the Bell Watchman", the sheet music of which was sold in Australia as early as 1869. This song predates the most famous example "Click Go The Shears" by 17 years, and also appears to be concerned with shearers, using the expression 'lambed down' a common complaint of shearers against unscrupulous publicans.

Sims Reeves (21 October 1821 - 25 October 1900), was the foremost English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist of the mid-Victorian era. 

Dave de Hugard writes:
'What I find interesting is this business of 'ringing the bell'. I've only seen it once in a pub. That was at Franklin where the musical Dawson family come from.
Mick Flanagan took me up to the 'local'. On the corner of the bar was hung a bell, all nice and shiny looking like it was just waiting to be rung.
The publican informed us that the person who rings that bell is letting everyone know that he is shouting for the bar - name your poison'.

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A Shearer's Dream (1895)   by E. E. GEORGE. 

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Billy Barlow in Cobar (1902)      

Joy Hilderbrand's research on Billy Barlow

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 Dandy Dick the Drover (1898)      

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 Dunn, Gilbert, and Ben Hall        

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 On The Shores Of The Dardanelles (1915)  Composed by L. Chaplin.       

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Where The Brumbies Come To Water (1895)      

Many thanks to Graeme Smith for alerting me to his discovery of the first publication of this song. He writes:
Ron Edwards collected it as a song from Jack Parveez, Qld and NT drover, in 1966. Edwards recognised it as a version of Will Ogilvie's poem. Parveez learnt it, apparently around 1908.
Here presumably is where Ogilvie first published the poem in 1895, under the name "Glenrowan". Later it appears in his collection Fair Girls and Grey Horses, with other verses; (1898) in a version slightly edited from this one. The oral folk version cuts down the poem in interesting ways. Some of the more literary style is removed, and the subtext of an urban corrupting woman is removed. A more wholesome grieving wife is substituted from the adulterous temptress of Ogilvie's original. And the dead drover has become a singer of songs, fittingly for a sung version. The poem was apparently very popular. It appears in a number of quotes and extracts in newspapers, including one where the second verse is used as an obituary of a drover, c 1930s.  

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Poverty (1933)  By C. R. E. Grainger         

The prolific poet Clement R. E. Grainger (1886 - 1955) had a collection of his work "Goblins of the Past and Other Verse" published by The Worker Trustees in Sydney in 1931.

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BMC @ Turning Wave Festival - 18-20th September, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Turning Wave Festival 3rd Weekend of September 

http://www.turningwave.org.au/

The Turning Wave Festival is an outstanding celebration of Irish & Australian music and the related arts held on the 3rd weekend in September (18th -20th Sept 2015) featuring events and performances, catering for music & arts enthusiasts, families who wish to enjoy a safe festival, and those who just come to soak up the atmosphere and the friendliness. While the festival focuses on Irish and Australian music it presents styles as diverse as acoustic, bluegrass, roots, Celtic and country and showcases some of our most celebrated musicians, bands, poets and dance groups, in an exciting programme of concerts, workshops, exhibitions and events.

One of the features of the weekend will be the arrival of the Kangaroo March re-enactment.

BMC has 4 gigs

Saturday - 2 gigs

Yazzbar, 81 Comur St - midday to 2pm SONGS & TUNES

 

 

Royal Hotel beer garden, cr. Comur & Meehan Sts,  - 8 to 10pm SINGALONG

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 Sunday - 2 gigs

Liberty Theatre, cr Comur & Lead Sts,  - 10 to 10.30am SONGS OF REEDY RIVER  

(not in the program)

 

Yazzbar - 1.30 to 2.30pm TUNES WORKSHOP

 

see you there!

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Duke's Place - Australian songs in concert & session with Jason & Chloe Roweth - Gallipoli, Friday 9th October, 2015

Jason & Chloe Roweth present

Gallipoli – 5 acres of pretty poor grazing country 

 2015 Marks the 100th anniversary of what is known in Australia simply as "Gallipoli". Though the campaign has been discussed endlessly, no one knows more than those who were there. Strip away the legends, these are the songs, poems, stories and closest thoughts of those who took part. This presentation is in the style of a radio play - a continuous collage of contrasting points of view.

Jason & Chloe on Youtube

 











Bush Music Club
Tritton Hall, Hut 44
Addison Road Centre
142 Addison Rd
Marrickville

Duke's Place on Meetup

Door opens 7.30 for 8pm start.
BYO songs
Cost - $10
Bring something to drink & a plate for supper
Enquiries - Sandra 9358 4886

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Duke's place, named after our honoured early member Harold 'Duke' Tritton (1886-1965), is the place to go once a month for a great night of Australian songs in concert and session. Duke was a powerful singer who supplied BMC with many songs he had learnt in his younger days while working as a shearer and at other bush jobs. He was also a songwriter and poet giving us songs that have entered the tradition such as Sandy Hollow Line and Shearing in the Bar. 

Venue & map

Duke's Place - Australian Songs in Concert & Session with John Warner, Friday 11th September, 2015, 7.30 to 11.30pm

John Warner  (photo - Judy Pinder) 

John is renowned all over the world for his well-crafted songs - as accolades from Gordon Bok and Danny Spooner affirm. Many people have recorded Anderson's Coast, and Bring out the Banners is sung by Trade Union choirs all over Australia, and also in the UK and Canada.


He is an accomplished musician on the 6 and 12 string guitars and also on bouzouki. John has a strong voice, often sings unaccompanied, and is an inventive and sensitive harmony singer. When he has a free hand he plays harmonica, whistle, and bodhran. John also performs solo as a children's entertainer and can hold his own in any collection of poets and yarnspinners.

We haven’t had a chance to hear John in Sydney since he moved to Murrumbateman 4 or 5 years ago. John has been writing songs for over 40 years and has recently been writing in celebration of renewable energy in response to the cynical negativity of the government. John looks at wind turbines, solar, railways (OK! there's a song called Wind Driven Trains). John aims to look at all these inventions from an artistic, poetic angle as elements of beauty and functionality in the landscape and also puts them into their historical context.
There’s also a couple of new horse songs. And of course, he will be singing lots of his classic songs.

John is a fine folk historian and songwriter with a solid track record of poignant, accurate, moving songs about Australian life and the history of 'the folk' (eg his CD Pithead in the Fern). He also has a heart for justice and a sensitivity to all sides of a story. These, plus his attention to details and his canny awareness of drama and irony make a brilliant marriage with his word-smithing skills and truly singable melodies. – Fay White  

John & Margaret will be presenting Pithead in the Fern at Hornsby Folk Club in November


Door opens 7.30 for 8pm start.
Concert & supper 8-10, Singing Session 10.00-11.30pm
BYO songs
Cost - $10
Bring something to drink & a plate for supper
Enquiries - Sandra 9358 4886


Tritton Hall, Hut 44 
Addison Road Centre, 
142 Addison Rd, Marrickville

Duke's place, named after our honoured early member Harold 'Duke' Tritton (1886-1965), is the place to go once a month for a great night of Australian songs in concert and session. Duke was a powerful singer who supplied BMC with many songs he had learnt in his younger days while working as a shearer and at other bush jobs. He was also a songwriter and poet giving us songs that have entered the tradition such as Sandy Hollow Line and Shearing in the Bar.