I dropped all performing elements as soon as they ceased to be compulsory. Tis isn‘t a reflection of the teaching – some very highly respected and regarded singers, musicians and dancers visit Newcastle to teach, but I have never really been very good at being told how to sing or what to do generally. I liked the way I sang, I had no great aspiration to be a professional singer and the associated desire to ‘improve’ and I self-importantly thought there should be more to a vocal course on a folk and traditional degree than tuning and jaunty repertoire.


What I did find at Newcastle was academia - theories, people who talked and thought about things and understandings. Te other thing I found were three other women living in a dingy flat in Elswick who drank and played the fiddle. Tis became my lodgings. an effort to include me in aſter-pub-sessions they would sing a song.


In


We got quite good, or at least thought we were, and started singing them at the pub. Other people thought we were quite good and we started geting invited to sing things elsewhere.


Tis was all quite vague aesthetic judgement because at this stage, the majority of our singing was done in a heavily inebriated state. When we realised people were offering to pay us for things, we started to do things like rehearse and arrange things. I had already started the Tree’s Company co-operative agency so we had an easy way into the bookings side of things, and Maggie Boyle put a lot of work in to promote us.


She got us an album deal with Fellside Records and off we were.


You see, this really wasn’t the business plan model of going about things, but really rather a series of good fortune choices within a network which had the capacity to support me. Te Witches of Elswick were brilliant. We had a real laugh and all really enjoyed making some wonderful music together.


Te songbook of Forest School Camps, a fabulous organisation with marvelous ethos and music.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64