Through the hesitant sunshine we headed to the picturesque and newly-thatched King’s Head, in another foray into the south of the county, this time to North Lopham. The spacious bar given over to us proved to be a perfect place, with its low ceiling and wooden floor. The bar filled up and we had a pleasant mix of familiar faces and new, our ranks being swelled by several singers and musicians from across the border. This gave great variety to the usual programme of local song, music and step dance. Highlights, as ever, were the dulcimer duets of Richard Blake and Tom Knight, and the varied instances of step dance, from four practitioners, all with their own unique styles. There was also a great selection of songs, including some wonderful harmony singing. Special mention must be made of Michael Czarnobaj, not only for coming all the way from Ely, as he does so regularly, but also for performing the broom dance, with a broom borrowed from the pub for the purpose.
In all, it was an enjoyable occasion, with our usual traditional fare, and great to see some new faces amongst the stalwarts. It would be great to give the pub a return visit at some point in the future. In the meantime, the “Tune-Up” events continue monthly, with dates being finalised for 2027. Catch us at the Trust’s Traditional Music Day on 19th September, in the British Legion, with a tune workshop preceding it for those wishing to have a run through a selection of tunes of different types from our repertoire – see the programme for full details. Our next ‘stand-alone’ event follows that, at Dereham Cock on Sunday 18th October. As ever, we hope to see you then.
We hope by now that you have seen some of the many glorious photographs of FolkEast 2026. This year saw the Trust’s busiest ever programme for the festival, and as a consequence, our biggest presence there yet. This is due to a cast of many talented and wonderful people who gave their time, energy and enthusiasm to the Trust over the weekend.
EATMT staff member Em’s son Casper was keen to explore the stall – and show people how to find itOur spot this year was really welcoming and perfect for an impromptu session or two!The podcast tent was busy all weekend with people coming to share tunes, music and memoriesGeorge, providing a lovely demonstration of a Jigdoll, accompanied by MikeThe Walter Pardon session was delightful…… and drew an animated audience
We would like to say thank you to all those who led workshops playing, making or painting. Jill, Tom and George led some complete beginners in first steps to playing melodeons and dulcimers, Peter and Gen helped people young and old create or decorate (and in some cases both) their own jig doll, and Lyndsey, brilliantly assisted by Barry and Monika led a session aimed to introduce players to the intricacies of playing for step dancing.
Sid Goldsmith playing his cittern in a ‘secret’ concert in the beautiful church on the Sotterley estate at FolkEast. Sid will be performing with Jimmy Aldridge at Traditional Music Day!
We would also like to thank those who led sessions in tunes or song or both – whether in the trust tent or in the Hop In. Eammon, Paul, and Chris and the Unthank Irregulars deftly and wonderfully steered song sessions, the Walter Pardon hour, slow tune sessions and general musical merry-making of the finest East Anglian kind.
Tom Knight dropped in – and was happy to demonstrate various instruments to our curious visitors!
We must also thank those who worked behind the scenes to help make our FolkEast go with a swing – those who helped with logistical support and moving things around the county, and not least friends and family of EATMT staff who stepped up to help in many wonderful ways.
Lastly we’d like to thank all those who stopped in – to say hello, share a story, have a look at what we were doing, break out their instrument and play or to give us a song. We saw familiar faces and met many wonderful new folks too. Here’s looking forward to next time!
In 1952, as part of his extensive collecting of traditional music and song in Britain and Ireland for the BBC, Peter Kennedy found himself in the north Norfolk area of Blakeney and Morston. Here he collected country dance tunes, primarily from Blakeney blacksmith Herbert Smith, information about the dances and a few songs. These, along with more material collected locally by Kennedy on another trip in 1955 and by Seamus Ennis in 1956, were eventually released, firstly on cassette, then later as a CD, as Norfolk Village Songs and Dances. (1) Prior to that, some of the material had been used in at least one of the As I Roved Out series of radio programmes, broadcast on Sunday mornings. (2)
Before we delve into the contents, it’s as well perhaps to consider the provenance of the release of this material. The story seems to be that, on leaving his employment with the BBC, Kennedy took all of the recordings he and others had made with him, claiming them as his own. He then released them in a large series of cassettes on his Folktracks – later Folktrax – label. They were subsequently reissued as CDs, with sparse information, aside from track listings, and a distinctly low-rent feel about them. Considerable controversy has raged about this situation and the products themselves and I don’t wish to go into that here. Suffice to say that these releases were at least a way of obtaining these wonderful – essential – recordings, until Peter Kennedy’s death, after which they became unavailable. Topic Records obtained the rights to the material and started a reissue programme (3), but only a fraction has been made available and that includes nothing from the disc in question. It unfortunately means that the material is very difficult to find. More about the presentation later, but at least the music was released for a while, even if in far from optimum form, from what was by any standards an incredibly productive initiative, producing a large body of priceless recordings of the musical heritage of the British Isles.
Anyway, to return to the content of the disc under review: this north Norfolk coastal area proved to be a fruitful one. In the neighbouring villages of Morston and Blakeney Kennedy found reference to the Long Dance and a tune to accompany it. Ann Mary Bullimore, then landlady of Morston Anchor, gives a delightful description of the dance, which took place in “our barn”, as she describes the annex or lean-to room on the side of the pub (easily visible in old photographs of the place) and also plays the tune for the dance on the pub piano, increasing speed as she does so (although this doesn’t seem to have happened when accompanying the dance). Peter Kennedy, by his own admission, decided that ‘long dance tune’, or something similar, wasn’t name enough for the tune, and decided to call it Rig-a-Jig-Jig, the title of a play-party song of the nineteenth century. (4) The song has no connection whatsoever with the tune – it was merely Kennedy’s whim – but it is as Rig-a-Jig-Jig that this Long Dance tune has gone into wider currency.
In neighbouring Blakeney, Kennedy also recorded the tune from fiddler Herbert Smith. (5) He plays it with the clear intonation and solid rhythm of a seasoned player for dances, being about 60 at the time the recording was made. Here we have a local tune for a local version of the ubiquitous Long Dance, from neighbouring villages, played by people for whom the dance, and others, was an integral part of their social events. The late Barry Callaghan was quoted as saying in 2007 that the tune is “a favourite jig widespread throughout East Anglia.” (6) This isn’t really the case. The recordings from Smith and Bullimore seem to be the only ones made; it doesn’t appear anywhere else in Norfolk, or elsewhere in East Anglia. In fact it seems to be a very rare example of a tune with very limited location, as far as a narrow ‘traditional’ rationale is concerned. It has of course become very widespread throughout the Folk Revival. What Barry Callaghan was probably referring to was that John and Katie Howson’s Old Hat Band played the tune, (7) which doubtless was responsible for it being picked up locally. More nationally, its eventual popularity was probably due in the main due to seminal revival band Oak recording it. (8)
Herbert Smith
Be that as it may, both Ann Mary Bullimore and Herbert Smith give very spirited performances of the tune. There is also quite a bit more from Herbert Smith, and to these ears this material is worth the price of admission alone. Aside from Rig-a-Jig-Jig (to stay with its new name), he gives us more jigs with Tommy Make Room For Your Uncle and Starry Night For a Ramble, the latter rather different from the EFDSS-published version, which seems to have gained wider currency. (9) Snippets of talk, not all included on the CD, have him mentioning such tunes being used for dancing locally. We also get the hornpipes The Four Hand Reel and Blakeney Hornpipe, the latter a version of The Lass on the Strand and the former quite remarkably different from more common versions of the tune. (10) We also have a version of the Heel and Toe Polka and another untitled one. Herbert Smith says, “Take your partners for a polka” before launching into an un-named three-part tune which then merges into the ubiquitous Oh Joe, the Boat is Going Over. This tune, divorced from the Oh Joe part, now has fairly wide currency locally and has been recorded by several prominent revival musicians. (11) We also have a Highland Schottische tune, which seems to be totally unrelated to any other tune of that, or similar, name, and a version of the Varsovienna, with his comments as to how the tune fits the dance. Clearly, Herbert Smith has had a considerable influence on local musicians and the wider ‘English Country Music’ revival, despite the limited nature of the availability of the recordings. His highly rhythmic, relatively unadorned style and clear tone would be ideally suited for the dances he played for locally. (12) What is also remarkable is the fact that his tunes – or versions of tunes – are unusual, both for the area and more generally. Herbert Smith was a sterling example of an English country fiddler. For that reason alone, and given that there aren’t really that many examples of such players, this recording is of paramount interest and importance.
There is more to the disc than Herbert Smith though. Thirty tracks in total, although one is a snippet of Smith demonstrating his tuning – and the fact that he tuned his fiddle a tone low, which does not seem to have been an unusual practice. (13) Of further dance tunes we have a very sprightly Yarmouth Hornpipe on mouth organ, played by Leslie Lawson, the same tune also given here by Percy Brown, with ‘Shrimp’ Davies step dancing. Percy Brown, a melodeon player who lived near Aylsham, (14) was of course another musician who has exerted great influence on the Revival, although probably not through these recordings. (15) His muscular and rhythmic playing was much in demand to accompany dancing, and particularly step dancing.(16) He also sings the light Kitty Gray and, to finish off the CD, gives us Sheringham Breakdown, in conjunction with fellow melodeon player Bob Thompson, to accompany an un-named step dancer. Bob Thompson does not seem to have any tracks released elsewhere and remains a less well-known figure, although the late step dancer Richard Davies of Cromer remembered him playing. Here he also gives us an alternative (and perhaps more usual) Heel and Toe Polka. A third melodeon player – showcasing what was undoubtedly the region’s most common instrument for pub music and to accompany step dancing – is Albert Hewitt, father of renowned step dancer Dick Hewitt, and certainly no slouch himself as dancer and musician. Here we have the Southrepps Hornpipe (17) and The Breakdown, as given – actually Sheringham Breakdown again. All three show their prowess as dance musicians, Thompson and Brown with similar styles on two-row instruments and Hewitt more austere with his one-row playing. Step dancing really needs to be seen, of course, to be experienced properly, but the two step dance tracks work very well, the CD ending on a spirited note as a step dancer comes in about half way through the track. It’s a shame we aren’t told who they are.
Percy Brown
As well as the instrumental music, there are also ten songs, as well as a short track of Herbert Smith talking about singing contests locally. Phil Hamond of Morston, a blind ex-army major, gives us Still I Love Him, accompanied by his own melodeon, and the unaccompanied The Foggy Dew. His rich dialect-inflected singing somewhat belies his background and social status. (18) The Foggy Dew is common enough in East Anglia; Hammond’s tune is quite unusual for this well-known song. Neville Grout of Cromer sings the emigration song Castle Gardens, to melodeon accompaniment, although the notes don’t state whether it’s his own. (On aural evidence it doesn’t appear to be.) This proceeds at a leisurely lilt, a track slightly marred by a bit of pitch fluctuation. Blakeney’s Billy Dickerson gives us the locally-composed The Young Girls of Blakeney, a fanciful paean to the girls of the village. The remainder of the tracks seem to have been recorded in Southrepps and some were undoubtedly taken down by Seamus Ennis on his visit there in 1956. (19) Sid Load gives us the sly and once-popular Rap-a-Tap-Tap (Farmer’s Servant), one song broadcast in As I Roved Out in January 1955. (20) He certainly relishes the story in the song. Leslie Bane gives us a steady and clear The Dark-Eyed Sailor and Faithful Sailor Boy, both perennial East Anglian favourites; an excerpt of the former was also broadcast in January 1955, in the same programme. Another track given here which was broadcast as above was Leslie Lawson’s magnificently paced The Dolphin. Finally we have a couple of tracks certainly recorded by Seamus Ennis – he took many songs, although often just fragments, from brothers Harry and Ben Baxter in Southrepps Vernon Arms – the latter was the landlord. Here Harry Baxter gives us a soft-voiced Blow the Candle Out and then both brothers perform a rousing In Scarborough, a rare example of unison singing from the area.
So, Norfolk Village Songs and Dances gives us a wonderful selection of music recorded in the 1950s, a time when there were still a great many practitioners in evidence, even if elderly. It is of course just a tiny fraction of the material collected in the British Isles at the time. There are three volumes devoted to Harry Cox, for instance, to give a local example. This disc, running at a little under an hour, gives us a supreme collection of music from this tradition in north Norfolk. It is a crying shame that it has never had a ‘proper’ release with presentation and notes of which it is worthy. An example of the shoddy packaging is that the monochrome inlay contains a picture of a fiddler, but it isn’t even Herbert Smith. When asked about it, Peter Kennedy admitted that he was just looking for a suitable photo, didn’t have one of Smith or any of the other performers, and so used one of Lincolnshire fiddler James Fussey. (21) That requires no further comment as to the respect accorded the material. More importantly, the disc has been long unavailable and Topic Records seem to have stopped their reissue programme years ago. One can only surmise that there just isn’t sufficient interest in the material in this country to warrant the expense of packaging it properly and reissuing it in a form worthy of the material. In some places, box sets of discs of such material might be issued, with weighty booklets of information to accompany them – Yazoo Records’ 7 CD set of Kentucky Mountain Music springs to mind as an example of such specialist-interest material (22), but there are many others – but sadly there does not seem to be much interest in England’s traditional musical heritage, apart from the relatively small amount of aficionados, and so I strongly suspect that the material will remain unissued. Be that as it may, this is a superlative recording. The Herbert Smith tracks are essential and all of it is wonderful stuff. In lieu of any alternative at present, find someone who has a copy of this gem and ask them to make you a copy!
Chris Holderness August 2026
Notes: 1. The album was first released as a cassette and then, in expanded form, as Ftx 328. No date given. 2. Broadcast on 02.01.55. A copy of most of it is in the Russell Wortley Collection in the British Library. See: Chris Holderness: MT221: Southrepps: Singing and step dancing in a north Norfolk village (27.01.09) mustard.mainlynorfolk.info for more details. 3. Six releases of Peter Kennedy material were released, some multiple CDs, under the editorship of Reg Hall, as an extension of Topic’s Voice of the People series. 4. Words are given at tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Rig-a-jig. 5. See: Chris Holderness: MT179: Herbert Smith: Fiddling Blacksmith of Blakeney (08.08.06) – as 2 above – for details of Herbert Smith’s life. 6. Mentioned in The Traditional Tune Archive, as 4 above. 7. A recording is on The Old Hat Concert Party OH1CD (1999 – CD reissue) 8. Oak: Welcome to Our Fair Topic 12TS212 (1971) 9. The Old Swan Band recorded Starry Night… as Starry Night For a Randy on No Reels Free Reed FRR 011 (1976), mishearing, according to Rod Stradling, Herbert Smith’s title. 10. The Old Swan Band also recorded Blakeney Hornpipe as Blakeney Breakdown on No Reels, as 9 above. Rod Stradling told me that the only way he could get the recordings originally was by sneaking a tape recorder into Cecil Sharp House; Jim Eldon recorded The Four Hand Reel on The Brid Fiddler Stick SDCD003 (2004 – CD reissue). 11. Herbert Smith’s Polka was recorded by Webb’s Wonders on Bob Davenport: Down the Long Road Topic 12TS274 (1975); Tufty Swift: How to Make a Bakewell Tart Free Reed FRR 017 (1977). 12. For more details about Herbert Smith’s playing and that of other East Anglian fiddlers see: Chris Holderness: The Devil’s Box in the East – Traditional Fiddle Playing in Norfolk and Suffolk (08/24) www.eatmt.org.uk. 13. Another example is Herefordshire fiddler Stephen Baldwin: English Village Fiddler Leader LED 2068 (1976) and Here’s One You’ll Like, I Think MTCD334 (2005). 14. See: Chris Holderness: MT211: Percy Brown: Aylsham melodeon player (30.11.07) – as 2 above – for details of his life and music. 15. Some tracks of Percy Brown’s playing were included on English Country Music from East Anglia Topic 12TS229 (1973). This was very influential – reviewed in a previous newsletter. 16. See: MT211, as 14 above, and Chris Holderness: MT291: The dancing Davies: Step dancing fishermen of Cromer (11.02.14) – as 2 above – for more information about step dancing in the area. 17. The names of Yarmouth Hornpipe and Sheringham Breakdown seem very long-standing and widely-used in the area. It’s unclear whether Blakeney Hornpipe and Southrepps Hornpipe were equally so, or added by the collectors. Katie Howson plays a version of the latter on The Old Hat Concert Party – as 7 above – where she calls it Albert Hewitt’s Hornpipe. 18. See: Chris Holderness: MT198: Billy Lown and Philip Hamond: two north Norfolk singers (01.02.07) – as 2, above – for information about Phil Hamond. 19. Full details given in Chris Holderness: MT221, as 2 above. The article contains photographs of Seamus Ennis collecting in the pub; Ben and Harry Baxter can be heard more fully on As I Roved Out: Songs from Norfolk: Ben and Harry Baxter (Folktrax Ftx 234). 20. More details of the broadcast of 02.03.55 are given in Chris Holderness: MT221, as 2 and 19, above. 21. James Fussey’s playing can be heard on Folklife Feasts and Customs of Cambridge and the Fens (Folktrax Ftx 423). 22. Various: Kentucky Mountain Music (Classic Recordings of the 1920s and 1930s) Yazoo 2200 (2003).
One of the many wonderful things about folk and traditional music is how expansive and inclusive it is. Songs blend with tunes blend with singers – and just as the songs reveal themselves differently in different seasons of life, so too do different combinations of musicians unlock alternative aspects of this music. Sid Goldsmith is one such musician. A multi-instrumentalist who stumbled into the folk world running sound at his local as a teenager, he now features in several different musical incarnations: with new-folk trio, Tarren, with the Tamsin Elliot Trio, with Jimmy Aldridge, with whom he’ll be headlining this year’s Traditional Music Day, and with Jimmy and Lady Maisery for the Awake Arise and Wakefire projects. This conversation took us from early days running sound in pubs, to possibly the most wonderful instrument-acquisition story you’ll ever hear!
“To be a great folk singer, you have to be a great storyteller, as Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith are clearly aware. The duo are both fine singers and multi-instrumentalists.”
The GUARDIAN
So let’s start off with the kind of obvious connection, Sid. How has being from East Anglia informed your musical career and your journey?
I guess I discovered folk music when I was in East Anglia by the Milkmaid Folk Club turning up at my local boozer, [The Railway, in Wymondham]. A couple called Terry and Jane bought the pub and set up the folk club in the back room of the restaurant.
I’d sort of gone from grunge music, grunge and rock, and worked backwards through electric blues to acoustic blues, and I was just on the cusp of thinking, okay, maybe folk music is okay. I was playing guitar through this huge PA amplifier at the time, and because I had that, I got the job of doing sound for the folk club.
I think I was like 18, maybe 19, and I did sound for Martin Carthy, Peggy Seeger, Vin Garbutt, Tommy Emmanuel, John Renborn, James and Nancy Kerr – all these people came through, and it was just this incredible awakening exposure.
Any particular moments that stood out? That’s quite the education you had there!
Vin Garbutt arrived with this shock of crazy hair and his completely outlandish character. I’d never met anyone like him, and I remember just being in tears with both his comedy and his tenderness, and talking about all these political issues that I’d not really engaged with, but was starting to think about at the time, and everyone was sitting there singing this all out of them in this room that I’d really only ever associated with getting pissed as a teenager and listening to rock bands.
It just really went in, what this kind of music and performance can do to a group of people. It was incredible, seeing and experiencing how we can all share this thing in the room together. So I’ve sort of been chasing that ever since, really.
Is there something about folk music that makes that experience different to other genres?
I think there are a few different ways, actually.
Firstly, in the song tradition at least, it’s often actively encouraged for people to to join their voice in, and in doing that, it changes the dynamic. You’re not just part of an audience; you’re part of the performance. Then there’s the informality of the performance – performers are always very keen to interact with the audiences. There’s a back and forth with the audience of energy and conversation that you don’t really get elsewhere.
With some of the people that I saw in that folk club, there was a lot more talk in the music, and that might have been a bit over the top, but you also often left feeling like you got to know a person and their story during the night.
For me, music has always been a tool for connection. So I’m always looking for songs that I know can create a moment where there’s an exchange of energy between me and the audience, and they’re the tools rather than the end goal, I guess.
But of course the whole canon of songs is fascinating in itself for the historical content that’s in there.That’s maybe another way that it’s different is that you’ve got all of this music that is a shared heritage as well? So I think on some subconscious level, even people that aren’t already converts to folk music do kind of sense that there’s something more than just that this person’s written a song.These things have grown over time and been altered and become part of our story.
I think the first time I saw you play, you were playing a cittern, which isn’t a particularly common instrument to see or hear. What’s your journey with musical instruments been like? I’m assuming you didn’t start off there? The grunge and post-punk scene weren’t renowned for citterns, after all….
Well, when I started it was just guitar really. I’d been playing electric guitar for quite a long time, and then I got an acoustic guitar to play acoustic blues. So I was doing all the Robert Johnson 12 bar stuff. My first girlfriend played folk music, and her dad was a banjo player, and he actually used to run the Sunday sessions at the Railway. We used to have these afternoons where we’d just absolutely raise the roof off the building with our voices, have a Sunday lunch, and then get back to it and raise the roof again.
But the evolution to the cittern was much later. I met a group of people when I moved to Bristol that were playing mostly Irish traditional tunes, and I ended up picking up the double bass to play in that, and I was really enjoying backing the tunes. Having come from a song tradition, learning how to rhythmically back tunes was really fun. And then after a while of doing that, I felt like I was missing out by not playing the melodies. I got hold of the English concertina first, and that was my first tune instrument. I’ve probably been playing that for about ten years at this point.
Lockdown was when I got hold of the cittern, and that’s kind of become my main thing to a degree. At the moment I’ve been concentrating on the concertina again for a particular project, but each of these instruments enables you to straddle both worlds, so you can play the tunes, but you can also back the tunes, so you can jump between those roles and it’s always lovely to come back to.
What drew you to that instrument?
I wanted the cittern specifically because it has quite a wide range, so I can still play all of the guitar chord repertoire as well as the tunes. Supposedly, it was the most popular instrument in England in the mid 1800s. There’s the story that every barber shop would have had one on the wall, and people would have played tunes to each other while they waited for their shave or haircut. It’s fallen out of favour in that form, but it has been brought back as a larger instrument, especially in Scandinavian countries. It did have a bit of a revival here in the 70s and 80sand it’s become really popular for Scandinavian fiddle tunes.
I’m sort of on a one-man-mission to bring it back to the English tradition, but I’m also finding it a really lovely tool for writing on, and making lots of solo arrangements. It’s great for Tarren [Sid’s trio with Alex and Danny] because we all have this ability with our instruments to jump between backing or leading, which means we can kind of swap those roles between us all the time. So it really suits that band.
Why do you think it fell out of favour, and what do you think it tells us about folk and traditional music 200 years ago?
Mostly I think it just needed developing. At that time it was really popular, it was a shorter scale, and it was generally played with the fingers, so it was quite a gentle instrument for parlour and performance. Now it’s much more commonly played with the plectrum, and it’s taken instrumentalists to pick those developments up, or help luthiers develop the instrument into something that really fits into the more modern way of playing tunes.
Musicians and luthiers have this joint role of making the instruments work within whatever style they’re playing in, so I think it’s a journey of finding what fits, and I’m still on this journey with my cittern. My own is built in the Scandinavian style, so it has these slacker strings that are very different to how an Irish bouzouki player would play. You can get these sort of languid, loose ornaments in there that really suit Scandinavian music. But I’m on a constant journey of changing strings to sort of figure out where the line is that really fits with English and Celtic music.
I don’t think that luthiers get quite the credit they deserve in the development of musical styles. There’s a festival that we were supposed to go to in France, that was sadly cancelled, which began as a luthier’s festival, and it’s now a 25,000 person strong festival. But the luthiers are still a huge part of it, and it’s where people go to ask the questions that they need to ask to get what they need from their instruments to develop their music further.
Do you remember a particular tune or song, maybe from the days of The Railway way back, that really piqued your interest?
Probably the most obvious one for me is the Chemical Workers’ song, which Jimmy and I perform together. We sing it pretty much every gig, and that was one of the light bulb moments in The Railway when Vin Garbutt sang it. It’s such a heavy subject matter, and while everyone acknowledged this, they were also having a great time listening and singing it all out. And I think that that was a huge moment for me to realise what’s possible with this music. There are another two that I always come back to that have accompanied me through my whole life that I just find myself singing in the quiet moments are The Joy of Living by Ewan McCall, and Dick Gaughan’s version of Robbie Burns’ Westlin Winds. I feel like they’re running alongside my life, and I often sort of reference back to them to see how I’ve changed.
That’s a really interesting way of putting it. So how have they? Are there any ways you can pick out that they have changed or grown with you?
Themes of nature are ones that I notice. My relationship with nature is always deepening, and whenever I’m listening to that song, the references to certain animals and landscapes are very evocative to me, and I think make me realise how much I need that side of myself – the nature-loving, exploring part of me. There’s this beautiful kind of structure in The Joy of Living, which is one of the last songs that Ewan wrote before he died, and it’s saying farewell to nature and the hills that he can’t access anymore because of his age, and then his children, his love, and then the last verses are kind of summing up within his death of like what he wants to happen. He wants to be returned to nature after his death, and there’s the clarity of those four chapters. We’re always moving through those four stages, so I think every time I return to the song, I feel like I’m in a different stage.
Makes you realise the depth and complexity of songs when they can reach you over the various decades of your life, doesn’t it?
Absolutely, it contains multitudes.
Back to you and Jimmy. How did that partnership emerge, Sid? How did you guys meet and start?
Well, we grew up very close to each other, but we didn’t meet in Norfolk. We actually met in Bristol. There was a group of Jimmy’s friends that all moved down from Leeds together and were playing in the pubs, just in sessions. And I just bumped into them on a St Patrick’s Night session. I was playing Bodhran at the time, and we ended up gravitating to the same pubs to play on the same nights. And Jimmy and I would end up sitting nearer each other so that we could play on each other’s songs. It happened very organically.
Then there was actually a band New Shoots competition where you had to arrange three songs. We entered that with three songs, and we got through to the next round, and we thought, “Well that was fun, but now we’ve got to arrange another three songs”. And then got through the next round, and again: “Well that was fun, but now we’ve got to arrange another three songs”, and then we got through to the final. We didn’t win – we were runners up to Effra, who were a great band – but we then had these contest videos and a little repertoire, and we just started doing gigs locally and really enjoying it. It always just felt really easy. We both had this backlog of songs that we didn’t have a project for, and that we’d picked up along the way.
The first album pretty much came about after asking which songs we knew, and we just arranged them together and went for it. It was very simple, but it has always felt very easy with Jimmy: the harmony singing just worked.
Did you focus on music from East Anglia?
Very early on we talked about making a project about the music of our home county and just learning all of the Norfolk songs from the big singers like Harry Cox and Walter Pardon, and we pursued that a bit throughout our albums.
What’s your favourite one?
Oh blimey, I love Walter Pardon singing, and I just find it so tender and personal. The one that we always enjoyed singing was Let the Wind Blow High or Low, which is a lost love song. He lost love very early and never found it again and I think you can really hear that in his singing. Yeah, that’s the one that we always come back to, but then there’s so many others, like Lofty Tall Ship. That’s a great one.
So, you’re part of several groups and musical pairings – you and Jimmy, obviously, with Tarren, with Tamsin Elliott as part of her trio, and the Wakefire album was released recently. What can you tell us about that?
Okay, so Wakefire is the second show with Jimmy Aldridge, myself, and Lady Maisery, (Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans and Hazel Askew). Jimmy and I supported Lady Maisery many years ago on a few gigs on a tour, and we got up on stage and sang with them on the last night and had a ball and so we decided to make this Christmas show, Awake Arise, which has now been going on for years. I think we’ve done it seven or eight times now, and that will be out in December again. We’ll be touring with that.
While we were doing that show we wondered what it would look like to do a summer version of it. And so we’ve been kind of working away on that for the last four years. We had some help from the FolkEast Festival from John and Becky [Marshall-Potter] who supported the creation of it, which really helped. And this year we were finally able to go out with a show that we didn’t have to change from where we left off last year. The show was locked, and we had the album with us this year for the first time. So that was really nice to have it as a kind of complete thing that we can go and just perform with confidence for people.
We’re really looking forward to seeing you both at Traditional Music Day – does it feel like a bit of a homecoming?!
Of course! But it’s doubly exciting because I’m going to be moving back to Suffolk in February, and just really excited to get embedded in the music of that area again, and just really, you know, I think because I left when I was 21 or 22 I’ve felt a bit of a loss of ownership of that material, and I think if I’m there and in the landscape, I’ll feel a bit more justified in really, really hunting through and finding the gems.
So much potential!
The other thing, as we’re talking projects, is that I had a discovery a couple of weeks ago that my big concertina, Big Bobby Honker, is going to be 100 years old in January. So I’m now with very little time to spare trying to make him an album in the next month…
Big Bobby Honker? What’s his story?
I love this story. I started playing the English concertina rather than the Anglo, because I saw a video of a lady called Juliette Daum playing this English bass concertina in a church, and I wanted to make that sound. I scoured the Wheatstone Company ledgers and their serial numbers to find these instruments, and it turned out they had only ever made two of them, and no one knew where the other one was. Juliet wasn’t going to sell hers, and so for the last sort of, well, for about 10 years, I asked in every music shop I went in if they’d got a bass English concertina, and the common response was: “What’s that?” Then, in Philadelphia, when I was on tour with a theatre show, I asked in a shop, and the guy said, “Yeah, I sold it last week”. My heart absolutely sank, and I walked round the block and came back and convinced the guy in the shop to put me in contact with the person who he’d sold it to, and I convinced him via his wife – who thought he had enough instruments already – that he should sell it to me, and he did. So I had a theatre show in Princeton in New Jersey in the evening, and I drove up for six hours into the Catskill Mountains, not knowing what condition it was in or anything, and met this guy in a cafe and brought it home, and then brought it home to England, which is just the most ridiculous coincidence. So now he’s back, and it’s his birthday in January.
That’s amazing. And he’s literally one of two?
Yeah, he’s the other one. He could have gone in a skip or been broken up at any point in that time, you know. It’s bonkers. There are other ones that are similar with more or less buttons, but this is the other one that’s the twin of Juliet’s instrument, and no one knew if it even still existed.
So how are you going to celebrate his birthday? What tunes are worthy of a 100-year-old concertina?
Ha! I’d love to make him an album, and I think it’s going to be a mix. There’ll be some of my tunes, and there will be a couple of Irish, a couple of English, and possibly a couple of Scandi tunes, just because that kind of gives a flavour of what I do on it. But then also, I spend a lot of time just playing kind of low droney ambient things on it, so I’m hoping to do something that kind of shows what noises it can make, and that might be quite out there! We’ll have to see what time allows.
Do you know anything about why he and his twin sister – for some reason, it’s a sister! – were made? Why were so few made? Was it an experimental thing?
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because when they were being made in large numbers, say when Bobby was made, there were a lot of concertina bands around, so you would have been playing a small ranged instrument that fits into a bigger group. So you would have had ones that have just Big Bobby’s low range or just his high range.
Very few were made that were actually like solo instruments that could do the whole thing. I’m surprised there weren’t more but there is a trade off in extra weight and size that comes with the extra range. I guess it was more of a social instrument, more of an ensemble instrument when they were being made in large numbers.
What do you know about the instrument? Do you have any idea where it was made?
So the company was called Wheatstone. Hang on, I can tell you this because I’ve got a document all about him. At the point he was made, the company was in Charing Cross. Charles Wheatstone was one of our most famous inventors at the time. He invented the Wheatstone bridge that enabled a lot of electronics to work, and had a hand in the telegraph, I think. But this, as far as I know, is the only English patented instrument, and he invented it. It’s supposedly the national instrument of England, but there are relatively few people that play them.
I’m not sure I was even aware we had a national instrument!
Indeed! That’s a can of worms that I’ve been wanting to open: regional instruments. Around here, we obviously have a strong history of Dulcimer players. In fact, where I grew up in Wicklewood was only a few miles from Hingham and Barford where some of our best known players came from. Hammer Dulcimer players, like Billy Bennington, supposedly played in the pubs every lunchtime, and I think I don’t know what truth there is in it, but someone told me once that there was a different style for every village or every town in the country. Doing a study on the dulcimers of England would be a really fascinating deep dive. Maybe maybe I’ll have time in 20 years for that, but we’ll see.
There’s a lot of work done by the Howson family among others. There’s some good stuff online about them.
Certainly at EATMT, there’s quite a repository of information. It’s strange to think about the life and things that were going on in these pubs at lunchtime, and every day somebody was going down to the pub to play a tune.
Yeah, I mean we’re doing our best, you know. But maybe it’s time to bring back lunchtime tunes?!
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Sid will be appearing as part of the Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith duoat our 2026 Traditional Music Day on Saturday 19th September. Tickets are avaiilable now – for the whole day + evening concert, or for the evening concert on its own.
In July we ran our first ever one-day Folk Summer School, in Broome in Norfolk. We welcomed fifteen children for a day of East Anglian folk activities and we were absolutely blown away by their enthusiasm, energy, and creativity.
During the day they worked together to:
make bread and prepare a fabulous lunch using locally-grown produce
learn songs from Norfolk traditional singers, as well as put their own spin on Windy Old Weather by creating new verses, actions, and even art inspired by the song
learn some social dances
learn some maypole dancing
learn some morris dancing
try out jig dolls
try out playing our mini melodeons, a sturdy and child-friendly version of the instrument
try out a real dulcimer
We were lucky enough to be joined by Poppy Price-Dowhan who taught social dances and Maypole dances, drawing on her own history as a third (possibly fourth!) generation Maypole dancer, and by Adam Clark who played music and led the song session, including sharing archive recordings with the children of Sam Larner talking and singing. Adam will be appearing at FolkEast Festival on 22 August, and at Bungay Folk Festival on 4 September, as part of his band the Adam Clark Trio. Poppy is currently sharing educational resources over on YouTube as part of the Accessible Ceilidh Project, looking at how ceilidhs and social dance events can be more accessible for everyone.
We’ve received some great feedback from children and parents, so we’re hoping to run more events like this – please make sure you’re on our mailing list if you’d like to hear about the next one. A huge thank you to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Love Norfolk Fund (Norfolk Community Foundation) whose support made it possible to keep this incredibly affordable.
“We would have travelled further and paid far more happily for the quality of this wonderful day.”
“What a fantastic celebration of our local culture and heritage, wonderful to see people working with so much joy and enthusiasm to keep these traditions alive in the next generation.”
“My children absolutely loved this event and asked when they could go back! They’ve been singing and dancing what they learned since they got home. It’s been their favourite summer activity so far. Thank you!”
“It was one of the best things she has done this summer – so well organised and such wholesome activities and a wonderful pace. She had a fantastic time and enjoyed every minute.”
If you’re not already on the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust’s mailing list, sign up so we can keep you informed about future events – and our future Folk Schools programme!
