67 f The Lost & Found
Nick Dow made a series of fine folk albums with awful covers in the ’70s and ’80s, before quietly slipping away. But lately he’s been back in action. Tim Chipping asks the question…
recluse, he’s not doing a very good job of it. But after four albums, released between 1978 and 1986, that are up there with the finest this country has to offer in the sub-genre of richly baritoned and deftly expressive English traditional singer-guitarists, Nick stopped. Very little was heard for 25 years. Then in 2011 new Nick Dow albums began to quietly and frequently appear, on CD this time but still self-released as they’d been before. And still overflowing with a palpable pas- sion for and visceral connection to the songs; many in previously unknown ver- sions from his own collecting.
N
ick Dow is not one of the great lost folk singers. For one thing, he’s sitting oppo- site me prior to giving a talk at Sidmouth Folk Week. For a
When I meet Nick I joke that I only have one question, which is to tell me the story of his life. I don’t get to ask another.
“It’s been one hell of a life, it really has. I was born in Camberwell and we moved upmarket to Peckham! I had a pretty rough childhood but we never went hungry. We’re going back to the 1950s now. My ambition was to get out of London, it always was.”
“My first experience of seeing a tradi- tional singer was when I was grabbed by the collar and bodily hauled off to The 100 Club to watch Son House play the blues. That was a revelation, I’d never seen any-
thing like it. I did the usual path into tradi- tional music: blues then jazz, then I went to my local folk club which was at The Bird In Hand in Forest Hill. And a selection of guests passed before my juvenile eyes, singing songs that I’d never heard.”
“I remember seeing Seán Cannon,
Tony Rose... I didn’t really understand what was going on. I thought, ‘These songs are really just as relevant as the blues I’d heard at The 100 Club.’ A couple of the tunes stayed in my head so I started to copy what I’d seen. And then I saw Mar- tin Carthy in about 1972 or ‘73. I was astonished. What he was doing on the gui- tar was phenomenal. And his advice when I very shyly walked up to talk to him was, ‘Don’t listen to me, listen to what I’ve been listening to.’ But I didn’t know how. To me,
Photo: Mally Dow
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 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
