I know this is rather last-minute but if you have a desire to be near the Thames at Hampton Court, this Friday, day after tomorrow that is, the 11th of August, Matt and I will be performing Old English Ditties at Garrick’s utterly charming Temple to Shakespeare, at 19:30pm.
It is truly the most magical venue. Built by the legendary Shakespearian actor David Garrick to entertain his guests with intimate readings, its acoustics and its architecture are inimate, and GORGEOUS. There will be food and wine available in the interval, and the ducks and geese can be heard throughout! We will do such lovely things as “The Miller of Dee”, “Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be” and also some sea shanties, and MAYBE some French ditties too while we’re at it. Tuneful and charming, and altogether lovely.
Here is one of the songs, performed at St. Thomas’s Hospital earlier this year:
On 26th of July, Matt and I were thrilled to perform at the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the German Military Cemetery in Cannock Chase. Over 5,000 war dead are buried here, in Stafford. It is one of the most stunning cemeteries I’ve seen. Well worth a visit. It has a dip in the middle of the long rolling plot of land, and on one slope are the First World War dead, and the other are the Second. Prisoners of War, sailors who drowned, and many shot down from the sky are laid to rest here, and every year teenagers from Germany and from Staffordshire stay at a nearby camp and tend the graves. The cooks at their camp are German Army chefs who come over and give of their services for free. The teens invited us to eat with them and we had some sausages in a white sauce with potatoes, which were VERY tasty, then we went and gave an impromptu concert for them in a nearby tent. NO acoustic in tents! None! But they were so attentive it worked. I said that Matt could play any style and to our astonishment, three of the young people asked him to play AC/DC! Like, retro! They also enjoyed our 1910s songs, I hasten to add. They particularly liked “Stay Down Here Where You Belong” of Irving Berlin.
The next day it rained but we performed the German prisoner-of-war song “Möwe du fliegst in die Heimat”, which means “Seagull, you fly to my homeland”. We needed to do an English version so that we could sing for both nations, but there’s no way to make the word “Seagull” sound poetic in English…they steal chips, they get into bins, they terrorize children. So I made it “bluebird” and the translation must have worked, because a few people assumed it was an English song, even though we did the German version as well! We then performed “Auf Wiedersehn” in the original German and then “Auf Wiedersehn Sweetheart” as was made famous by Dame Vera Lynn. At the high cross in the centre of the cemetery we were requested to do “Something modern and hopeful” so it was the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change”. Unamplified, the wind made our whistling bits inaudible, though I could see that most of the audience was whistling with us! I have video footage of this event and will post it in time…DO subscribe to the YouTube channel if interested! Which is HERE
On the 10th of September we will be closing an evening of quirky acts at the Spice of Life nightclub…I believe Matt and I will be on at 9:30pm, that is 2130hrs. It’s £4 to get in. We’ll be doing our best Edwardian pop music! When I have a link I’ll edit this post and add it! But if you’d like to get it in the diary it’s at 6 Moor Street, W1D 5NA, which is in Soho, just off Shaftesbury Avenue. Nice and central!
I’ll be playing the autoharp and Matt will be playing whatever he can physically manage to bring. Probably a bit like at this gig we did in Ealing a couple of weeks ago…but I’ll wear less of an “Ealing” Edwardian dress, more of a “Soho” one.
Maybe see you there!
Oh, nearly forgot! We will be performing medical songs and exotic songs at Mosquito Day at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 4 to 6pm on the 18th of August! Details: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-tale-of-control-campaigns-and-cunning-tickets-36059665430
Our visit to France was incredible. I have here a couple of fragments of footage, and a few photographs, but really only a book would do this trip justice.
We discovered the amazing work that the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German War Graves Commission, does. The reason for the “Volksbund” is because when Germany was defeated, it was bankrupt, and it was people – Farmers, Priests, Rabbis, old ladies – who helped to bury and record the vast numbers of dead. The Volksbund have been operating through donations from relatives and descendants, and volunteers for the vast majority of their existence and it was only very recently they started to have some government help. 
They are still kept going by amazing volunteers, one of whom gave me his baseball cap with their “Peace” logo on it.
We also met the young people who are involved so closely with the Volksbund. In fact, within a short time after our arrival at Luxembourg Airport we were whisked along motorways and then into remote French forests which had the unmistakable whiff of the First World War – something about the nature of the terrain, the eerie feel of the place – and in the depths of one of the forests, a campfire where these Scouts were playing guitars and singing old old songs. They were girls and boys and they were called Pfadfinder. Matt immediately blended his guitar with theirs, and I did my best to sing along to their songs. Then we performed “Tipperary”, and then it was nearly 2am but Arne, the incredible man who organises the events that the Volksbund puts on, was telling the children, who looked to be from about 8 to 15 years of age, the many stories of the ongoing discoveries of the Volksbund. Very near the place we were sitting, in the forest of Caures, the remains of Hans Winkelmann were found and identified, and the day after that, we would be burying him beside his beloved brother Karl. That was the big event we were to perform at.
Here is a fragment of footage from it. I apologise that there is no more than this:
But before that, the NEXT day, was something very close to our hearts. We had found an old piece of music, a heart-rending song, scribbled down in a trench in Verdun by the composer Ernst Brockmann. I won’t tell the story again, because at least two past blog posts on this website tell it already. But it was the next day that we were to honour him.
It was damp and the clay round his grave, of course, fresh from the recent exhumation. The Pfadfinder youths, some Reservists from around Brockmann’s area of North Rhine-Westphalia (incidentally, where I finally found the book with his song in it) who had seen active service, 
and of course Arne, and Maurice, the Media-man for the Volksbund, all stood in a circle round his cross, which still says “Unbekkanter Deutscher Soldat” and one of the Pfadfinder girls read out his dates and the biography they’d managed to find, and looped a copy of the song around the cross, along with a small German flag. We then performed his song for him, after 100 years of his lying there, unnamed. It was so deeply happy an outcome, at last, that I didn’t feel tears. Not until the Pfadfinder brought out their guitars and sang a regimental song of the 39th Fusiliers, which was so full of hope and youth, and in the setting of all those crosses, truly devastating. No words for it. 
This is why youth are so closely involved with the Volksbund. This is about past and present and future.
We hope we can get some donations for a stone cross with Ernst Brockmann’s name on it.
After the big ceremony the next day, we had a look at the cemetery where Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande were to meet the next day, overlooking the view of where so much blood poured out a hundred years ago, and had a final, quiet and rather melancholy visit to Brockmann, warm rain falling, so very alone in that hillside cemetery. 
We flew back to Heathrow, drove through the night to North Yorkshire, arrived at 2am, and did the cylinder-making demonstration for the Swaledale Festival the following day. We sold one CD and one cylinder. A devastating commentary on the relevance of the CD!
It’s too small to tell in this photo, but we each wore our VDK forget-me-not pin. 
After recording the CD “Songs of the Great War” I sent a copy to the German War Graves Commission; I was interested in finding out more about the composer of “Bald Allzubalde”. The old sheet music in which I found the song (dated 1917), said that he’d composed it on the 20th April, 1916 and died there on the 7th of June, 1916. They told me they would start a search, and incidentally, they liked my CD and performance and would I and Matt be interested in coming over and singing the song, and a couple more, at the hundredth anniversary commemoration of Verdun? Would we!
Here I think I should remind everyone what this extraordinary song sounds like:
And it uses accordion, guitar and clarinet on the CD! Well, two months ago, Arne Schrader of the Volksbund Kriegsgräberfürsorge contacted me to tell me that they have found him! He was buried nameless, as “E.B.” of the 39th Fusiliers. And they sent me the exhumation photos. I have never, ever had an experience like this! They positively identified him, and found that he had been buried with a clock. On the 27th of this month, I and Matt will go over there and with some Wandervogel, or Boy Scouts, lay a wreath on his grave, restore his name to him, and sing this song over him. As I say, amazing. Then the next day we will perform at the Romagne sous Montfaucon cemetery, where a Commonwealth, a German and a French section lie side by side, and a lone trumpeter will stand at each, and perform “Aux Morts,” “Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden” and “The Last Post” in turn, and we will sing later in the ceremony. This story of Ernst Brockmann, young composer buried without a name, is one that I was certain that the radio would be all over. I have told as many producers as I can find, but no bites. Astonishing, really. If anyone knows anyone, please spread the word. I think this is a great story, and important.
Never mind!
We’ll be rushing from the Verdun battlefields to the Yorkshire Dales to demonstrate wax cylinder making…driving through the night!
I was also hugely honoured to be a living exhibit in the Edwardian Parlour that is in the TRULY BRILLIANT and UNMISSABLE exhibition “Remembering 1916” that is in South Croydon at the Whitgift School…seriously, GO. It is a fiver for seniors, seven quid for adults, next to nothing for students. 
Open to the public from 10-5 daily. It has more rarities than I would have thought possible, and is put together with passion and no expense spared. Take a train from Victoria, and just go! Then I sang in the concert that opened the exhibition. That is one extraordinary school.
My CD “Songs of the Great War” has been reviewed by a major critical music journal, at long last (Well, you see, it’s not classical, and it’s not jazz, is it! Even Norman Lebrecht sympathised) But bless the American Record Guide, they DID review it. Read it HERE.
Oh! On the 26th of June I’ll be performing songs about the cinema with the Mighty Wurlitzer, at the Musical Museum in Kew! With, moreover, Donald MacKenzie at the console! Following me will be Laurel and Hardy’s “Angora Love”, Mack Sennett’s “Teddy at the Throttle” and Charlie Chaplin in “The Rink”, all with Wurlitzer accompaniment! Starting at 3pm. Do come along and say hello!
The Renaissance CD is all recorded, and all I’m waiting for is booklet text approval from my colleagues! I’ll announce when this beauty will be available! It’s tremendous fun, and will contain the bawdy Broadside Ballad “Watkins Ale”. And this song:
It’s taken a while but it’s here at last. A journey from London’s West End to Canadian recruiting halls, to the roses of Picardy and the Chimes of Normandy, taking in French Inns with saucy barmaids called Madelon, a New York peace rally, a German destroyer (complete with shanty), a nursing station in No-Man’s-Land, a German trench in Verdun, and the poppy fields of Ypres. We have rarities that haven’t been recorded in a century, and we have the most well-known WW1 songs of them all, dusted up and polished to shine in their original, fresh and energetic glory.
You can purchase a copy HERE.
Okay that’s enough sales pitch. But I really do believe in this CD. It contains violin, clarinet, piano duo, cello, saxophone, xylophone, glockenspiel, trombone, harp, flute, accordion, banjo, Irish bouzouki, mandolin, drums, guest soprano Emily Atkinson (who also plays the xylophone), piccolo, bass saxophone and even some Hawaiian slide guitar in the interlude to “Long Long Trail”. All has been arranged carefully by Mr. Matt Redman (www.matt-redman.co.uk where you can hear the Hawaiian slide guitars for yourself!) so you never hear all of this at once, but selectively according to the mood and background of the piece.
There are two songs in German and one in French, and translations are given in the booklet. You get a lot for your £10!
I am at the moment selling it through BigCartel, which is a more personalised service than Amazon. For now. I may move to a distributor later. It depends on how things go. At the moment I haven’t got any sound samples up, but as I have more time I will do something about this. In the coming weeks I have a lot to do, telling radio, TV and print media about this recording while it’s fresh, and also a mini tour of Ipswich for Music in Hospitals, and then a week in Swaledale for the WW1 show, followed by some community outreach work: the Festival’s “Wandering Minstrels” scheme. Then it’s some horsey ragtime songs for Derby Day with the Saint Cecilia Choir in Epsom. I may have some time after that!
Anyway! Step right up! The CD is available and can be bought! And all credit to Harrison Phair photography, who captured the image that is the cover. For your interest, I’ve attached the original version! A lot of people think that the CD cover is a composite and the crowd is from 1914, but we only made it look that way. The parade was rounding the vintage streetcar singing “Pack up your Troubles”, and I joined them with “Tipperary” at the moment the photo was taken. It was in Fleetwood, on the 11th of November, 2014.
The CD’s track list:
1 If You were the Only Girl in the World
2 Somewhere in France
3 Over There
4 Roses of Picardy
5 Gegen England
6 Stay Down Here where you belong
7 The Rose of No Man’s Land
8 Bald, Allzubalde
9 Kristiania
10 Red is the English Rose
11 I’m Always Chasing Rainbows
12 Chimes of Normandy
13 Quand Madelon
14 You’d Better Be Nice to them Now
15 Pack up your Troubles in your Old Kit Bag
16 Till We Meet Again
17 Long Long Trail
The CD preparations continue apace, but meanwhile here are some videos of Centenary activity! And a photo of myself and Matt performing in the driver’s seat of a WW1 Battle Bus!
Now! On the hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War, Matt and I were up in Cromer, performing for veterans in Nursing Homes, going from bedside to bedside. Many requested “Cowboy Songs” which, believe it or not, I can do, and Matt can certainly play, but one said “I would like some songs of the Great War.” We did “Home Fires” of course, but we also did “Somewhere in France” and how he loved it. Was amazed anyone knew any of the songs, let alone one off the beaten track. That evening, the hundredth was celebrated in Norwich with a candle-lit vigil. Here we are performing for 3,000 people in front of the City Hall.
The following day, more bedsides, then London’s Green Lanes, to replicate a peace protest that happened on the day after War was declared. And someone filmed that, too. Note we’ve not had a chance to change our clothes.
Then the week after, we went back in time to the Edwardians, for the Horniman Museum’s Edwardian Late. Great fun, though incredibly hot.
So, two days ago, we were at the London Transport Museum on Ole Bill, the bus that went to the trenches. The day after that, we were at a “Fundraiser for the Troops” tea-party in Hampstead. We are the specialists in re-enactment! I’m going to be doing something extremely fun for BBC Four in early October, more on that later, then Matt and I will be increasingly busy in the run-up to a particularly special Remembrance Day, given the year we are in. As well as mixing all those WW1 tracks, and making the CD cover, which has gone through several different styles. Nobody seems to agree! I am so sorry not to give you a taster track as I’d promised. I shall do that next post. You shall have a song from Canada, published in 1916.
PS Apologies for the “Tester” email earlier! I had a problem with video embeds and a very capable fellow in Pakistan (highly recommended, Joshuwash on fiverr.com) was in the process of fixing it when that went out!
The Victorian Galleries of the National Portrait Gallery resounded to a sing-off of “Pack Up Your Troubles” and “Tipperary”. I really relished the back-drop of busts:
(If you want to see detail, click on the image)
Jolly fun. We performed German trenches songs to pin-dropping silence and attentive faces, and then everyone clapped in time to the saucy French march of the chorus to “Madelon”. Mr. Redman was his usual dapper self. This was, for him, the third of four gigs that day. For me it was only the third of three.
My goodness it was hot.
We have several interesting things coming up: A re-enactment at the Salisbury Hotel on Green Lanes of the first peace demonstration on August the 5th, 1914, the day after War was declared. And an Edwardian ‘late’ at the Horniman museum, and of course Buxton, Branscombe and Deal festivals. Just hit the ol’ “Gigs” link at the top of this page!
In the meantime, if you’re interested in the Victorian and Edwardian phenomenon in ribbons, lace and chiffon that was the Gaiety Girl, do buy the current copy of the Chap magazine! I’ve written another article for that esteemed – or infamous – organ.
If you’re in the City of London this Tuesday, do come round to St Edmund’s on Lombard Street. Matt and I will be trying out songs from our forthcoming album. It is unplugged, and rather minimal, just the two of us. But it is free. 
St Edmund in the City’s “house style” is to have the musicians play on and off (or constantly if they feel like it) from 12:30 until 14:00, and people can come and go, or just sit for the duration, or get up and look at the building, or what-have-you. In any case, we shall be playing many songs, mostly from the First World War. (This picture shows us at a vintage fair doing the 30s thing. If you think that looks dapper, wait till you see Matt’s 1910s clothes)
And the latest Chap magazine is on the shelves, and in it is another article by me, on Whispering Jack Smith this time. It is criminal how little is written about Jack. I’ve long been annoyed at the contradictory accounts in Jazz Encyclopedias, spurious conclusions by YouTube commentators, and the same quotes showing up again and again on the internet. It’s lovely to go to a library and open old books and feel your pulse quicken as you piece things together, then go to another library, and then another. Also, the last time I went into the British Library I was looking at 1920s Vogues and felt terribly shallow. This time I felt as if I was using the building properly.
More about the Chap magazine HERE
More about St Edmunds HERE
(Both open in new windows)
I guess my entire life has led up to this Centenary. All those hours listening to the hundreds of unfiled 78rpm records outside my bedroom as a child, the sheet music collecting since the age of nine, then discovering all the marvellous, keen-as-mustard musicians in London who are equally passionate about bringing this music to vivid life…well! It’s here. 2014. And I have a heck of a collection of set-lists. Here’s a picture from my first full-blown centenary gig, of many.
In July, with Albert Ball’s Flying Aces – headed up by the amazing dynamo (and arranger for Our Lovely Day) Nicholas David Ball – I’ll be appearing at the Branscombe Festival (more anon), in truly august company. Other performers at this small but oh-so-select festival include Sumi Jo, I Fagiolini and the Royal Marines! ABFA, as you may remember, is a band of First World War Flying Aces who happen to play exceedingly good ragtime.
(Alas, my feathers aren’t visible in the above shot.)
Matt and Zac played banjo, accordion, clarinet, guitar, mandolin, piano, piano duet, saxophone, and also did backing vocals. There were no two numbers using the same combination. 
We are, emphatically, for HIRE. Book soon. We’ll be appearing in the Buxton Festival, at Grange Park Opera, the aforementioned Branscombe, and Swaledale.
We have pacifist songs, we have laments from poppy fields, we have German songs on the inevitability of death in battle. We have rip-snorting recruiting marches, we have hilarious singalongs, and we have tributes to Red Cross Nurses in French and English. Instrumental numbers include all things 1910s including tangos, chorinhos, and of course, ragtime. And some Elgar.
(Zac on the piano, Matt on the banjo, though it was the other way round for the Red Pepper Rag.)
