My Music
Growing up in Jarrow (affectionately known as Little Ireland) with a father who played classical music and a mother who loved Irish songs (her own father was an Irish man from Kells, Co. Meath); with brothers who sang in the church choir; a sister studying music at University and five cousins who lived next door, all taking piano lessons... there was little hope of escaping from music even if I'd wanted to. It's what our families did and loved where I grew up and so who would want to escape?At school, in St Bede's Juniors, there was a Gilbert and Sullivan production every year and the inspired teacher (and later headmaster) Gerard McNally, was very good at winkling out anyone who could hold a note for longer than five seconds in a row and many of us could. So from around the age of nine we learned how to sing and harmonise and perform on stage, lessons I've never forgotten.
Singing in choirs was fun and heading off to St Joseph's Grammar school in Hebburn I wasn't disappointed to find more opportunities to do so. Later, at sixteen I bought my first accordion for £25. It came from Scotland on a train, parcelled up with brown paper as it had no case of its own. I'd joined a small folk band with Benny Hudson who was at St Joseph's and his brother Gerard. At the time I was playing a decrepit twelve-string guitar (with only six strings) but really liked the sound of an accordion. Once in possession of my own I carried it around in a black plastic bag wherever we went until one night, watching a Scottish band playing, I got talking to one of the musicians who was using an empty accordion case on stage to rest his drink on. I managed to persuade him to part with it for a tenner and at last I owned a proper case. That poor accordion was a bruised and battered old thing but served me well for years and lasted an awful lot longer in its red velvet-lined nest.
Loving Irish music, our small folk group went along to Jarrow Hall, Saturday afternoons, where a collection of musicians played Irish music. There were Uilleann (Irish) pipes, fiddles, guitars, bouzoukis, mandolas, a dulcimer and accordion, sometimes banjo, sometimes mandolin, depending on who turned up. Here were Paul Dickman, George Welch, Jez Lowe, Ken Fisher and John Martin, the core musicians. Those Saturday afternoons, playing in the curved room overlooking the Tyne, laid down solid foundations for working in bands and for learning what seemed like hundreds of tunes. It also led to us (Benny and I) joining the Trent House Ceilhide Band which rehearsed in the Trent House pub in Newcastle and whose leader was Norman Bell. We gigged often, up to three times a week locally, and travelled on occasion to Scotland (Mull, Arran and the Borders) and down to Yorkshire. We were a sixteen piece band with a range of instruments and musicians: mainly students and teachers. It was tremendous fun and spurred us on to play regularly at sessions in the Irish Centre, Newcastle.
By this time I was training to be a nurse and of course this ate into the time spent playing but there was never the thought that I might want music as a profession. Coming from Jarrow with its blighted economic history it would have been foolish to even think of such a thing and besides (probably more importantly) I was nowhere near good enough. For me music was pure enjoyment and a little skill, that's all and yet it shaped my teenage and young adult years and it was a time I'll always cherish.
I began to sing more when our small folk group developed into the larger 'Morigan' playing mainly in the Western Pub in Jarrow and a few local folk clubs. Here I found that singing was much more preferable to almost anything else and it's something I've continued to develop.
The move from South to North of the Tyne in the mid eighties changed the music I played. Now it was the Bill Stickers Band, aeons away from Irish traditional music. It was here that I began to sing more, covers mainly and in pubs like the Porthole, the Wolsington House and Tilley's Bar. We had a small brass section and a big sound and again it was fun, a hobby and we worked hard at it, playing large functions from time to time (charity balls and weddings) but mainly on the local pub circuit which is something I've always preferred.
Now in the Katy Freeway (ex. Virginia Slims) it's more country rock and swing. I've always liked country music, not so much 'Crystal chandelier' but rather more Patsy Cline, Emmy-Lou Harris, Trisha Yearwood, Gretchen Peters, Mary Chapin Carpenter and a whole heap of others.
Away from actual performing I lead the 'Willington Songsters' a group of people from the Willington area near the Tyne tunnels. Here it's easy listening: songs from the shows; the Everly Brothers; war time favourites; anything in fact that the group wants to sing and that I can play! I teach a bit of harmony on the way, a bit of technique, but always, always it's about having fun. Which for me is what it's all about.
Songwriting
I've written poems and songs for a long, long time now but it's only over the last ten years or so that I've taken it more seriously and only recently that I've recorded them. I've worked within schools and arts centres over the last decade at least using creative writing and song to help generate writing and stories with children. I've worked with other practitioners too, in particular with Alex Ferguson ((Writers' Guild Award, Sony Drama Award nomination, numerous radio productions and a London run with The Flag, starring Corin and Vanessa Redgrave) who from time to time calls me up and asks me to join him on a project where I write songs on the spot and they are incorporated into a piece of drama he's developing with the children. It's challenging but once again great fun!
Songs on "No Deals,
No Promises" have been influenced by the musical backdrop described
above. There are many more songs on the go and still to come and as long as I enjoy doing
it I'll keep on writing, keep on singing, keep on having fun!