Australian
Articles
Good Times Canberra Times Supplement 29th January 1987
The Canberra Times, 10th February 1987
Sydney Morning Herald, 7th February 1987
Sydney Morning Herald, 6th February 1987
Western Australian Newspaper February 1987
The Age, 19th July 1992
Sydney Morning Herald, 28th September 1994
The Age, 14th March 2001
Illawarra Mercury, 16th March 2001
The Age, 20th March 2001
|
RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Australian
Articles

Australian
Articles
New
album 'most positive statement yet'
McTell: writing it his way
The Good Times
[Canberra Times Supplement]
Thursday January 29th, 1987
By ROBERT HEFNER
"I WRITE
what I want to write about," Ralph McTell said. "I'll hope for another
song (to be a hit) but I doubt if any will eclipse The Streets of London."
McTell was speaking from Sydney, where he arrived last week to begin his
Australian tour which brings him to Canberra for a February 7 performance at the
School of Music.
The British singer/songwriter, 42, has written about 300 songs, including 100
for children, and has recorded 14 albums. His latest. The Bridge of Sighs, was
released in England early this year, and has been well received.
"It picked up play on big national stations as well as provincial
stations," McTell said.
Musically, it is a mixture of material. "The themes follow the Ralph McTell
thread," he said. "It's a little bit oflbeat, and I don't think there
are so many songs about alienation. There are stronger links throughout the
album than on my earlier albums, which tended to be
diverse."
McTell, who was born Ralph May in Farborough, Kent, was christened McTell by
fellow musicians, an allusion to his style of playing which resembled that of
blind Willie McTell. He began writing songs more than 20 years ago, and gained
international recognition with The Streets of London. It was not, however, an
overnight hit.
"I actually wrote The Streets of London in 1965," he said, "and I
recorded it at least three times for different labels. In 1965 or 1966 I offered
it to a couple of blokes who were doing more work than I was.
One liked it, the other didn't.
"When I recorded my first album in 1966 I left it off. It wasn't until
1968, when I did my second album, that the producer persuaded me to put it on. I
told him I'd sing it once in the studio, and we used the first take on the
album.
"The song travelled as far as Australia with other musicians who started to
include it in their performances more and more.
"Now there are well over a hundred cover versions of the song. Away it
went. But it had the benefit of 10 years of promotion. It was a hit in England
in 1974-75, which coincided with my
first tour of
Australia." .
McTell is not particularly disturbed that none of his other songs has had the
impact of The Streets of London.
"The latest song you've written is always the favourite," he said.
"But I can still get into The Streets of London when I play it."
At his performance on February 7 McTell will sing a mix of old songs and new
ones from The Bridge of Sighs, which was describe d by Britain's New Musical
Express as his "most positive statement yet, portraying the man's natural
genius".
McTell said, "When I come to Australia I like to meet people as well as
play for them. After the show I try to meet as many people as I can, and sign
albums for them if they want.
"It's great to be back, and I'm looking very much forward to seeing my
friends in Canberra."
Ralph
McTell will perform at the School of Music on February 7 at 8pm.
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Australian
Articles
McTelling
it with a magical spirit
The Canberra Times
Thursday February 10th, 1987
By ROBERT HEFNER
THERE was magic in the air at the School of Music on Saturday evening, as the
man who gave the world The Streets of London gave about 400 fortunate Canberra
fans a rare glimpse into the soul of one who is at peace with himself and the
world.
Ralph McTell immediately created a warm and intimate ambience, his voice, his
guitar and, at times, his piano emanating a quiet strength that raised
entertainment to the echelons of enchantment.
Clearly, McTell knows the pathways to the heart, and with a generosity
engendered by a profound calmness of spirit, he took us by the hand and led us
there. As with all magical spells, we emerged different, a bit more confident in
our capacity to love.
McTell's performance had the feeling of an act of love. No ego-tripping here,
nothing to prove; just a man and a guitar, singing, at times sadly, at times
sweetly, at times amusingly, about the pains and pleasures, the people and
places, of a lifetime.
McTell has the poet's ability to isolate moments and infuse them with an
enduring significance. He is comfortable with his own experiences and emotions,
and can empathise with those of others.
The Girl from the Hiring Fair (from his latest album, Bridge of Sighs) is a
powerful love song with unforced lyrics. "... all our senses reeled, as the
moon rose over the the field.-.I thank my stars for the harvest moon and the
girl from the hiring fair."
From Clare to Here is a moving tribute to Irish builders' labourers in England,
thinking of their home across the sea: "Sometimes I hear a fiddle play, or
maybe it's the ocean..."
We hear that fiddle, and the sighing of the sea.
McTell confessed "a strong affection for Ireland".
"I think that possibly the first male voice I remember clearly belonged to
an Irishman that lived upstairs when I was a little boy," he said. From
that memory came Mr Connaughton, also off the Bridge of Sighs album. McTell
proved not only a magical singer/songwriter, but guitarist as well, particularly
on West Coast Blues, recorded in 1929 by Blind Blake. McTell's hands and arms
and tapping feet seemed mere extensions of the guitar. He played another solo,
There'll Be a Happy Meeting in Glory-land, at the end of a song, The Hands of
Joseph, inspired by Joseph Spence, a guitar player from the Bahamas.
With a few exceptions (Little Actress was not that memorable), each song was a
gem. Accompanying himself on the piano, he played two songs about "dignity
in age". The Old Brown Dog and Growing Old With Naomi. And his rendition of
The Ferryman, based on the Herman Hesse novel Siddhartha, had an Eastern
dreamlike calming effect which seemed to pervade the hall.
McTell introduced The Streets of London with gentle self-deprecating humour.
"It's time for the big finale now," he said. "I'd like to do a
medley of the greatest hits, but that's not possible, so here's the medley of
greatest hit."
McTell is obviously not disturbed that none of his other songs has achieved such
an international-hit status. (More than 100 cover versions of The Streets of
London have been recorded.) The feeling in that song suffuses his other songs.
That, for him and for me, seems a bountiful blessing.
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Australian Articles
STREETS
AHEAD ... WITH JUST ONE HIT
Author:
BRUCE ELDER
Date: 07 Feb 1987
Words: 591
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: Saturday Review
Page: 47
GOD bless the mystique of the hit single!
Thirteen years after his solitary hit, Streets of London, Ralph McTell can still
nearly fill the Sydney Town Hall with an enthusiastic, if somewhat aging,
audience.
To be durable in the folk world, one hit is enough. Think of Arlo Guthrie with
Alice's Restaurant, Eric Bogle with And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda and
Ralph McTell's Streets of London. That solitary hit seems to broaden the bass
and raise the profile (albeit briefly) so that a solid, committed, lifetime
support is established. So, here's Ralph McTell four years since his last album,
Water of Dreams, four years since his last tour, and he can still pack them into
the Town Hall. Get yourself a hit - have a job for life.
It is no small irony that McTell can fill the hall and the true greats of the
English folk scene - Martin Carthy, Dick Gaughan, June Tabor, Leon Rosselton -
don't even get to tour this country.
In the English folk music scene, McTell is basically a second-division
performer. He is an admired guitarist. His infrequent albums are reviewed
favourably; he once had a contract with a major record company, but he is deemed
to be an interesting rather than an inspirational performer.
McTell lacks that hard edge, that level of political commitment, which separates
truly great folk musicians from their peers. His voice, with its deliciously
warm timbre, soothes rather than confronts. His clean-cut good looks make him
look more like a kiddies show performer (which he is in Britain) than a man
driven by deep-seated artistic passions. And his material, with its
"pretty" guitar playing and its inoffensive lyrics, is just a little
too bland.
In concert, these qualities are both McTell's strength and his weakness. He is a
genuinely nice guy. His gentle, easy-going personality washes over the audience,
making them comfortable and relaxed. His between-song patter is a series of
gently humorous anecdotes about such reassuring topics as childhood, and life in
England.
This "niceness" tends to be so overwhelming that after 20 minutes, the
occasional yawn and drooping eyelid can be observed. The concert lacks any true
dynamic, any real light and shade. The atmosphere is reverential and polite
rather than impassioned. Only the up-tempo Run Johnny Run and a wonderful bluesy
guitar solo rose above the solid plateau of niceness.
It is a measure of McTell's professionalism that after 13 years and probably
tens of thousands of performances, he can still make an audience believe that he
genuinely cares about his solitary hit. The audience sings along to Streets of
London, McTell's mellifluous voice warms and soothes and calms, the elegantly
memorable chords are picked out and, in spite of the themes of loneliness and
despair which lie at the heart of the song, everyone leaves feeling good inside.
In one of the portals of the Queen Victoria Building, a drunk raises a bottle of
cheap plonk and an awkward grin flickers across his ruddy, unshaven face. I
sidestep him without a second thought. It worries me that Streets of London is
too cosy and too polite to help me shape a deeper, more emotional, response to
the man's suffering. But then, it's only a pop song, isn't it?
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Australian
Articles
Folkies
Far From Forgotten
Sydney Morning Herald
6 February 1987
This week two singer songwriters that some would have relegated to the coffee
bars of memory perform in Sydney.
Until recently few could have identified any of the records of Britain’s Ralph
McTell apart from the enormous hit, Streets
of London, that launched his international career 13 years ago.
But last year’s Bridge of Sighs
appears to have rekindled interest, drawing accolades even in hip rock magazines
like New Musical Express.
He plays tonight at the Rose, Shamrock & Thistle Hotel in Evans
Street, Balmain.
American Tom Rush, who first came to prominence in the 1980s with recordings of
then unknown artists like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, has kept an equally
low profile. But he maintains
sufficient reputation to sell his product direct.
As he said recently, “Recording for a major label, I would make a
royalty of 20 to 30 cents. Selling by direct mail, there is a $6 profit margin.
The good news is that you can earn enough money that way to make another
record, and that’s the object of the game.”
Tom Rush performs Mike McClellan at the Opera House’s Broadwalk Studio on
Thursday, and with Summerhaze at the Rose, Shamrock & Thistle, next Friday.
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Australian
Articles
“Mellifluous
McTell leads us through his streets of London”
A Western Australian Newspaper
February 1987
Review of Ralph McTell – Festival of Perth – Perth Concert Hall
By Steven Amos
Ralph McTell began his singing career as a busker and he seems to have lost none
of his contact with the streets. His
songs cover the human condition from extremes of happiness to the Slough
of Despond.
McTell, whom most people will remember from his huge
hit, Streets of London, comes across
as the nicest guy in town. His
voice can be both immensely powerful and correspondingly gently mellifluous.
McTell rarely uses his power so the concert was made for very easy
listening and little effort on the part of the audience.
He has a delightful sense of humour but it seemed to be confined to his
repartee with the audience rather than in his songs, all of which, by the way,
are self-penned.
The only exception to his rather serious repertoire
was a whimsical number called Keeping the
Night at Bay, which dealt with the machinations of his two sons in their
efforts to stave off bedtime. The
song contains the marvellous line, “if we go to bed now, something is sure to
happen”, a feeling that continues through to adulthood, well, for me anyway.
Many performers have covered McTell’s songs,
including The Fureys and Fairport Convention, but I have always preferred
McTell’s original versions. In a
poignant song about Irish navvies alone and far from home, From Clare To Here, McTell chronicles superbly the ache of distance.
Run, Johnny Run
seemed rather incongruous a song for McTell, with its theme of jailbreak and
nightmare, but I imagine it was more allegorical than anything else.
Still, it proved that the man is an excellent guitar player.
Wizardry
His wizardry on the instrument became more apparent
in an instrumental, West Coast Blues,
the only cover version he did during the whole concert.
It was written by Blind Arthur Blake, who apparently changed his name
from Blind Arthur Phelps. One wonders why on earth he bothered.
McTell is perhaps best when singing about children
and childhood. In a wonderful song
about his own early life, which I failed to catch the title of, he evoked a lost
era of English life with its narrow painted barges, canals and kettles full of
roses, when one’s idea of fun was to jump on the black strip in the road and
watch the traffic lights change. An
era that existed before the canals became blocked by prams and the Government
declared England a nuclear dumping ground.
To me, the best song of the evening occurred early in
the concert, Maginot Waltz.
It dealt with the naivety of the ordinary man on the eve of the First
World War and summed up a generation of young Europeans who were ground into the
Belgian mud over the ensuing four years. It
is a disturbing song to say the least.
Unfortunately, at one stage, McTell slipped over into
saccharine city and delivered a series of schmaltzy songs about smelly old dogs
and a dreary girl called Naomi.
The Girl From The Hiring Fair
was a sort of musical Cold Comfort Farm with much seething lust in the
cornfield, while The Ferryman, based
on a Herman Hesse novel, was as dull and interminable as anything Hesse himself
wrote.
The best for last, and the rendition of Streets
of London was beautiful, the audience joined in and the superb acoustics of
the concert hall made it a rather moving experience.
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Australian
Articles
Dylan
Thomas strikes a chord in rock music
Author: Mike Daly
Date: 19 Jul 1992
Words: 1130
Publication: The Age
Page: 14
WHEN British singer Ralph McTell began researching the life of Dylan
Thomas for a BBC radio project, after ``a fallow period" in his own
songwriting, he encountered surprising parallels between the Welsh poet's brief
career and the lives of many musical soloists today.
At 20, Thomas had his first ``hit", the debut publication of his book of
poems. Two years later, in 1936, he married Irishwoman Caitlin MacNamara; he
quickly became a celebrated literary figure, lionised especially in the US. Yet
by 1953, after a roller-coaster career punctuated by episodes of chronic
alcoholism, he died in New York at 39.
``I don't put myself in the same creative company as Thomas, of course,"
Ralph McTell said by telephone from his London house, ``but some of his
professional experiences are so like those of myself and other performers I
know, as a soloist being feted abroad.
``It eventually screwed him up and I would have hated him in real life. He was a
terrible character _ this whingeing, moaning, conning, begging letter-writing,
little cowardly man who was also such a literary giant." Mr McTell has had
a love-hate relationship of a sort with his 1973 hit song, `Streets of London',
the nice little earner hanging like a golden albatross around his neck. It will
be included once more this week on his latest Australian tour, sharing the
billing (and a song or two) with Eric Bogle.
Discerning audiences will instead anticipate hearing from his impressive body of
work as a singer, songwriter and accomplished guitarist over more than 25 years.
This includes a recent return to his first love, the blues, and `The Boy with
the Note', the Dylan Thomas project that began as a BBC radio program of
narrative and songs, and has now been released on record.
Mr McTell admits here to a certain poetic licence, having woven his narrative
around Thomas's love of detective fiction, and introduced a fictitious element
about the poet's childhood. But the poet's letters home to his wife Caitlin are
real enough, ``where the deep, dark loneliness overtakes him in those two or
three hours a day between drink and sleep".
A fear of running out of ideas haunted Thomas constantly. ``Towards the end of
his life he read less and less of his own work. I could see all this coming in
his letters, yet I felt if he had just made it past 40 he might still be with us
today," said Mr McTell, who is 47.
When Dylan Thomas died Ralph McTell was eight. It was not until he was about 17,
``a period of my life when I was looking for alternatives", that he first
encountered the Welshman's prose and poetry. ``I read Dylan's short stories
first," he said. ``Up to then I had been very interested in Jack Kerouac
and the Beat poets." He didn't understand Thomas's poems then, ``although I
could hear the Welsh musicality in them. I guess his work has never been far
away from me since." Mr McTell credits his mother with weaning him onto
poetry at an early age. ``She was `in service', which meant she looked after a
little lad who became the Marquis of Hertfordshire. She would recite verses to
me when I was a child, and at school, where it was very `unhip' to like poetry,
I used to look forward to it in class.
``What has always intrigued me about it is the compression of a much larger idea
within a disciplined line strucure, conveying perhaps more than one meaning at
the same time." When he started songwriting, his discipline was to make the
tunes interesting by beginning with the music. ``I had no idea what I wanted to
write about. I'd get the tune and then fit a lyric to it, which explains some of
the more peculiar rhythms in my early songs. More recently, when I've written
the lyrics first, those songs have tended to be the most accessible ones."
His guitar playing was brought to the fore on another recent project, the two
blues albums `Blue Skies, Black Heroes' and `Stealin' Back'.
``It was a labor of love for me," he said, ``because whenever I pick up the
guitar I don't try to play my latest composition, I doodle around on those raggy,
bluesy techniques. I always have.
``A lot of people who hear those old bluesmen on record can't get past the
scratches on the surface," he says. ``You have to want to play the guitar
like them to really appreciate their music and when I was a kid just hearing
them was the most joyful experience.
``I spent hours and hours trying to approximate what they were doing and singing
along. The techniques I learned then actually opened the guitar up to me for
composition." I asked him whether the songwriting muse was more elusive
now, compared with that period when a younger, more passionate Ralph McTell
brought his `Streets of London' to life. He said this very topic had come up the
other day in conversation with his friend Dave Cousins (founder of the Strawbs
folk-rock group).
``Dave asked me, `Has one got to have an affair before writing songs again?' ``I
said: `Look Dave, it's a question of age. You know more now and you're more
aware of grey areas, so you don't see things specifically as issues the way you
did when you were young. And you can't constantly write about your love life
when you're 45 _ it's pretty bloody boring'.
``That's why reading about Dylan Thomas was marvellous for me. I was suddenly
alight with it and I couldn't stop working _ I used to come in and sit here
until 2am just going over the lyrics and letting them take me where they wanted.
``I've never done anything like this before but I was passionate about it and
very excited. I can remember that indescribably good feeling from years ago,
when you'd put the pencil down, sit there with the guitar and play through a
song for the very first time. Every now and then you know you've written a good
one and nobody has to tell you.
``That's how it was with `The Boy with a Note'. Just with the text at first,
then the song started to come and it was wonderful. I might have to wait another
couple of years before I experience anything like that again." He laughed.
``So, yes ... it is a damn sight harder to write as you get older." Ralph
McTell and Eric Bogle perform on Wednesday at Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat,
and on Friday in Melbourne at Dallas Brooks Hall.
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Australian Articles
SINGER
TRAVELS A DIFFERENT ROAD
Author: BRUCE ELDER
Date: 28 Sep 1994
Words: 963
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News and Features
Page: 21
IS it possible to write an article about Ralph McTell without mentioning
Streets of London? It is one of the peculiarities of folk-style
singer/songwriters, particularly those who have been around for years, that they
are remembered for their solitary hit.
Eric Bogle equals And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Ewan McColl is The First
Time Ever I Saw Her Face, even Joni Mitchell is Big Yellow Taxi and Leonard
Cohen is Suzanne.
Those solitary hits stand tall, obscuring the landscape beyond.
In Ralph McTell's case, his most recent musical offering is a superb cycle of
songs (should we dare to refer to it as a "concept album") dealing
with the life of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Written in 1992 and recorded twice - one version was produced by BBC Radio 2 and
the other released on CD by Leola Music - The Boy With A Note: An Evocation of
the life of Dylan Thomas in Words & Music is arguably McTell's finest work.
It is far removed from Streets of London and is a reminder that McTell, like
most of the other solitary hit folk singer/songwriters, is a much more complete
and talented musician than his success would suggest.
It includes some superb songs, the narrative is stirring and imaginative, and it
successfully captures the pain and joy of Dylan Thomas's life.
The songs depicting Thomas's early life in Wales - Summer Girls with its
recurring image of "My long-limbed salt-teared summer girl and me" and
The Irish Girl about Thomas's courtship and marriage to Caitlin MacNamara - were
inspired by poems such as Thomas's semi-autobiographical Fern Hill which is so
resonant of the joys of youth.
At other points McTell has employed such people as Bob Kingdom, who has been
doing a one-man Dylan show for years, Maggie Reilly (noted for her work with
Mike Oldfield) and actress Nerys Hughes to expand the vocabulary of the project.
He would create a character, a detective or gumshoe, who would go in search of
the real Dylan Thomas. The detective would link a song cycle which, when
completed, would start with Dylan Thomas dreaming of summer girls, move through
his marriage to Caitlin, explore Thomas's arrival in London and his inclination
to head for the pub rather than the pen and desk, his return to Laugharne in
Wales, his infamous US lecture tours, his alcoholism and his death.
McTell recalls the writing of the songs and the creation of the detective with
enthusiasm, but he began the project with scepticism, believing it wouldn't
work.
"This was a bit like Topsy in that it just grew. I mean, it started off
with the germ of an idea and, as I got started ... the only way I can describe
it is ... I just got on a roll.
"I disciplined myself to pondering during the day and writing in the
evening when the house was quiet. I really looked forward to going into that
room and picking up the pen and starting to work. I would limit myself to about
an hour or so and do corrections and things the next day and just sit on it and
wait. It was a wonderful time in my life creatively. I just loved it."
The end result is remarkable. During the project, McTell began to realise that
Dylan Thomas's sad-funny adventures in America - the drinking, the compliant
women, the excesses, the guilt - were not uniquely Thomas. They were the
experience of every artist who travelled to the States and was treated like a
star.
In an interview he did around the time of the release of the album, McTell said:
"I'd tried to take this different view, a nonacademic view, and just look
at a life, a life going wrong, a life running out of control ... We had the
benefit of hindsight and all these books about him to put the picture together,
and I'd like to think it's a kind of contribution, not just to mythology, but to
understanding the man from a sympathetic view."
There is something right and appropriate about this whole project. McTell is a
gentle, sensitive person who found in Dylan Thomas's life an emblematic
statement about creativity and its problems. He is acutely aware that he created
the Thomas song cycle as an act of homage, and the end result is a work
characterised by great warmth and compassion.
* Ralph McTell will be singing some of the songs from The Boy With A Note when
he appears at the Balmain RSL tomorrow night.
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Australian Articles
Plugged,
unplugged; it was a whale of a time
Author: FERGUS SHIEL
Date: 14 Mar 2001
Words: 796
Publication: The Age
Section: Today
Page: 7
LUNASA awed. Ralph McTell and Eric Bogle took it gently. The Topp Twins
turned it up. The Waifs beguiled. And Michael Thomas, well, he was a sure thing.
Welcome to the 25th annual Port Fairy Folk Festival. A heavenly sample of
devilish choices. Easy and bold. Devotional, bawdy, coy and disarming.
With jumper leads packed, tents and sleeping bags rolled up nice and tight,
30,000 set sail by highway and byway to the old whaling town for the fourday
event. Pagans, maidens, the lovesick and the homesick, pipers, fiddlers, gout
and vapors, meditators, imitators and agitators waiting for the sweet music to
roll on.
From day one, 10,000 tickets sold out, 135 bands plugged and unplugged on 11
main stages. Bars, stars and wild guitars. Well, rock me, daddio.
We step out to New Zealand's yodelling Topp sisters, move into the mystic with
India's Dya Singh and are stoned to our
souls by Ireland's Lunasa.
Lunasa are the real thing. Seamless. Pulsing. Transcendental. Rhythm to the
marrow. Reeling, jigging and waltzing in a league of their own.
We refuel on plastictasting Guinness, bananas and Ananda Marga's mighty samosas
before Michael Thomas and the Sure Thing hit the stage. Thomas tells us how he
met an Aussie girl at a show in Edmonton one night; played pool and the fine
Canadian game of shuffleboard; went crosstown in a big yellow taxi; kissed and
promised to meet again in Europe.
Six months later at the Cardiff Working Men's Club in New South Wales, a small
note in neat handwriting is passed to his band, saying R.I.P ... The girl from
Edmonton, the girl from the night of pool, a fine Canadian game and that kiss in
the taxi, died in most tragic circumstances days after they'd met.
Thomas sings For a Short Time. A song about all you can get across in a drunken
hour or so with someone you've barely kissed. Someone whose hair color you'll
always remember. Colin Hay jokes that his songs are all pretty much the same,
give or take a phone call: she left me; she came back; she left me; she never
came back; optional phone call.
There are 60 ways to lose a lover and six million to sing about it under a full
moon in the salty Port Fairy air.
Violin and guitar duo Jodi Moore and Nicole Brophy, 20yearolds from Tamworth and
Nowra respectively, do it with the freshness and ease of young dolphins; the
Waves with bewitching mellowness.
Blues harpsman Chris Wilson's not in a loving mood, though. He prowls and wails,
bellowing at the audience to toss their fing foldup chairs away. Wilson has a
point. There should be foldup chair police. Some have backs as big as buses.
Can't see a damn thing lying on the ground behind them. Rug throwers of the
world unite.
Holland's Csokolom play Hungarian and Gypsy music that's pure demented. Csokolom
singer and violinist Anti von Klewitz says ``Life is very short. Remember
this." We will.
Rory McLeod and Aimee Leonard weave troubador tales while a baby bounces on
Leonard's knee. A holy thing. Outside there is a boy, must be about 10 years
old, standing on the backs of two prone friends playing the recorder through his
left nostril. A star is born.
As night falls on Saturday, Ralph McTell - direct from the pantheon of folk
greats - tells how he met an Irishman working on a tunnel who told him it's a
long, long way from Clare to here. McTell, seemingly much more content the
following night, sings the Streets of London and every rambling man, woman and
child of leisure sings along with him in the big marquee.
Richard Frankland voices up in indigenous rights, while the Stiff Gins harmonise
with raw beauty. Loudon Wainwright calls in sick. And, British act, Chris While
and Julie Mathews, groove in his stead.
From the humblest of beginnings with a handful of acts and an audience just a
few hundred strong, the Port Fairy Folk Festival has grown into a roots world,
jazz, gospel, blues and country fiesta of bewildering variety.
We'd love to have seen Apodimi Compania from Greece, Gambia's Bantabe Binde and
our own Blackeyed Susans, but time nobbles.
Loading up for the journey home, there are people dreaming of stories from other
worlds and other times.
For a short time, it's been magical.
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Australian
Articles
Loner
Johnson now team player
Author: DENISE EVERTON
Date: 16 Mar 2001
Words: 305
Publication: Illawarra Mercury
Section: Applause
Page: 52
KEVIN Johnson has always been something of a
loner when it comes to his music but tomorrow he will team with Ralph McTell for
a Wollongong concert.
The singer/guitarist agreed to take a break from his songwriting and join McTell
on the same bill for the first time in their playing histories.
The musicians, who will perform separate sets, are doing only a handful of
concerts together during McTell's Australian tour.
Johnson said he would perform an acoustic set with ``a cross-section of
different styles" but had not decided on anything specific.
The show will mark one of the few performances Johnson has done since his
multitude of large-scale AFL centenary presentations around the country in 1996.
He has been concentrating on songwriting, a task he describes as a chore.
``I don't like songwriting at all but I like it when I've finished them,"
he said.
``Live performing has an instant feedback which is gratifying whereas
songwriting is a long process that is more speculative.
``There's no feedback for a long time and maybe never. Then there's recording
which can be an excruciatingly annoying process. There's no rule of thumb with
it at all."
Johnson, a big fan of films, has written music for movies and calls it a
``simpler experience" than writing a standard song because ``generally the
visuals are all done and the dialogue as well so its easier to write something
that plays off what is already there".
As for his career, Johnson says he has a few regrets but if he had the chance to
re-live his experiences, would make the same decisions again.
Kevin Johnson and Ralph McTell will perform tomorrow night at the Illawarra
Performing Arts Centre.
For information and bookings, phone 42263366.
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Australian
Articles
More than just a message from
McTell
By Mike Daley
The Age
Tuesday 20 March 2001
The idea of making music is the nearest to anything spiritual that I
feel," says Ralph McTell, back touring Australia almost 25 years since the
English singersongwriter first arrived here hot on the heels of his Streets of
London hit single.
These days, the London based troubadour's songs plumb more complex terrain with
lyrics that subtly hint at deeper meanings - even while you are absorbing the
poetry of their expression. His public profile is lower, too, allowing McTell to
stroll unnoticed past Lygon Street's latte loiterers. Yet a sizeable crowd
awaits at Readings bookstore, where he signs copies and entertains by reciting
excerpts from Angel Laughter (Heartland), the first of a twopart autobiography
he has just completed.
McTell also keeps global fans uptodate through an internet diary on his website
(www.folkcorp.co.uk/mctell). There, in addition to book excerpts, are details of
his CDs, including the new studio recording Red Sky and recent double CD
Travelling Man: The Journey, The Songs - from London concerts.
Copies of Angel Laughter are yet to arrive here in quantity but Shock Records
are already distributing McTell's CDs (on his Leola label).
"I've found the writing on Red Sky is my most mature yet," says McTell.
"I was really pleased with the ideas and I had the confidence to address
them in a different way." One of the songs, In the Dreamtime, was first
heard on Billy Connolly's World Tour Of Australia, the TV series of his friend
and management colleague.
"It's not a flagwaving song," says McTell. "It shows the deep
affection an outsider can have for this place. I really do love coming here. For
me, it's a question of recognising my own working class - people I've known and
grown up with.
"If I were to define the class to which I belong it would be upper working
class, because even in our abject poverty, my mum had standards. I am totally
intrigued by the Aboriginal people ... and by this business of time and
replenishment. People who arrived here are like the ecology of Australia - seeds
that need heat to germinate."
Subject matter has always been a serious business for the songwriter. "I
just don't want to make fillers," he says. "Recently we've been
rereleasing the old albums; whether they connected or not with the general
public is not that important to me, because I hear the intent in the song and I
know it came from a good place. I've got no regrets at all.
"I was married very young (in 1966, aged 22) and therefore couldn't write
the neverending song about people falling in and out of love ... all those
diatribes about imaginary exotic women. I could only write about what was real.
So I would go back to childhood and look for different subject matter."
Childhood also occupies his autobiography Angel Laughter, which begins in his
infancy (his recall is amazing) and ends at 15, when he became a British Army
boy soldier. The final instalment, already completed but as yet untitled, covers
his teens and ends with his meeting with wife-to-be Nanna, in Paris, in 1965.
Ask McTell which song he regards as his best and he replies without hesitation:
"The Setting (from Bridge of Sighs) in 1986. It ends up about an old guy in
an Irish pub going on about emigration, but it's the subtext that's important.
"There's always something more than just the message in what I write -
except for Streets of London which was 'in your face' and written from a street
perspective while I was busking in Paris.
"I just couldn't go out and write something like that today. So much has
changed. People are not so compassionate. They are angry that there are still
people on the streets - and so am I."
Ralph McTell performs at Dallas Brooks Hall on Thursday night, supported by Doug
Ashdown.
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