f32 “I
was happy enough on Bill Leader’s label ’cos he was a mate but he got into difficulties and sold to Highway and that turned out to be very unsatis- factory. I was ready to do a solo album and approached Topic and they weren’t interested and I approached Fellside and they said yeah, but I had to guarantee to buy so many a year so I did the sums and I thought hang on, I might as well do it myself. It’s funny times. People are saying it’s the end of the CD but I sell most of my stuff at gigs, always did. I came out of the barcode system several years ago because I didn’t want the CD in high street shops. I wanted people to come to me direct. ”
He’s been a club organiser since his early days as a student
teacher, but he’s also a dance caller, step dancer, dance band mem- ber, folk community activist, teacher, renowned fount of knowl- edge, relentless enthusiast and invigorating multi-instrumentalist, adept on everything from melodeon and bouzouki to banjo, dul- cimer and guitar. Mostly, though, he’s a singer and performer who’s never achieved or asked for any great measure of acclaim but has consistently come up with the goods that have been key to the ongoing wellbeing at the grass roots of the British folk move- ment. It’s somehow ironic that a new generation – imaginations fired by discovering the lost ’70s singer Nic Jones – may have paid homage at the Sidmouth and London Nic tribute shows and stum- bled on the delights of Pete Coe, his old compadre from Bandoggs, little knowing he’s been right under their noses the whole time, constantly gigging and making wheels go round.
He starts chortling at the first mention of last year’s celebrated concert, which saw Jones singing on stage for the first time in 28 years with a reconstituted Bandoggs. “It was a fucking night- mare,” he laughs. “We kept losing him. As soon as we got there Nic kept bumping into people and started wandering off. We had to do a soundcheck and we couldn’t find him. He was fine but I was a nervous wreck. He was very positive about it all, he kept pulling me up on my phrasing and things like that. And he’s still got the same sense of humour.”
The original Bandoggs, a supergroup of sorts which also fea- tured the late Tony Rose and Pete’s ex-wife Chris Coe, was actually disappointingly shortlived, releasing just one self-titled album in 1978 and playing one three-week tour and a few other scattered dates. “It was very enjoyable but it wasn’t very well attended. I don’t know why. We were all quite well established at the time but maybe people weren’t sure about it… and Bill (Leader) didn’t have the money to commit to us. I think Nic and Tony were quite dis appoin ted by that tour. We all lived at different ends of the country and we couldn’t afford to do any more. By then me and Chris and Johnny [Adams] were in the New Victory Band, so it was really just the wrong time for us with Bandoggs.”
If this makes him sound disgruntled it isn’t meant to. Sitting in the café at Cecil Sharp House he remains constantly animated about it all. The friends he’s made, his love of traditional song, the singers he’s seen (“George Dunn from the Black Country, lovely singer, amazing man… I organised the press for the party when he released his LP… pride of place in my collection is a signed LP”) and the ones he didn’t (“I’ll always regret missing Cecilia Costel- lo”) and his enduring passion for the music and the scene that has evolved around it. Fame and fortune was never on the agenda. “The only way up is round again…” he suddenly says. He ponders what he’s just said…”Hmmm…the only way up is round again…I like that. I’ll keep that.”
He reflects on the numerous projects occupying him and talks of being “under siege” from the administrative overload, but such is his hunger, you know he wouldn’t have it any other way. 20 years ago he launched Ryburn 3 Step, a folk community project involving a breathtaking variety of activities, based in the Ryburn Valley in West Yorkshire (the 3 Step in the name refers to song, music and dance). Entirely independent and largely self-funded and self-sufficient, it started with village dances and has evolved over two decades into a formidable force, promoting folk arts in schools alongside concerts, workshops, song nights, barn dances, a radio show on Phoenix FM, one-off promotions, a monthly folk club and regular dance workshops involving English clog (led by Chris Coe), Appalachian step (Sue Coe and Jake Jones) and York- shire Longsword.
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