Hove Folk Club

Bob Wood: Friday 4th March 2011
Report by Roger Johnson

(Yet) another fine evening at the Poet’s Corner. Tonight’s guest was Bob Wood, originally from the West of Scotland but now living in Surrey and the organiser and resident at The Ram Club in Thames Ditton, BBC Radio 2 Folk Club of the Year in 2007. More of Bob later.

Arriving late I had missed most of the floor singers in the first half (apologies to anyone who doesn’t get a mention) but arrived in time to hear a couple singing a charming self-written song telling of the hardships of a shepherdess’s life at lambing time. Our host opened the second half of the evening’s entertainment with Young Man, Girlfriend and Guitar in memory of Suze Rotolo who had died in the previous week before two thirds of the Bandana Brothers gave us an interesting version of a Pearl Jam song and Mike Reinstein previewed two new songs.

So to our featured guest. Bob has an easy singing style with a gentle West of Scotland accent and is a very accomplished finger style guitarist using lots of interesting tunings. Not being a guitar nerd, that’s about all I can say about the tunings used. Bob started with Davy Steele’s opus about Clydesdale Horses (sorry but I can never remember the name of the song) and so I was hooked immediately.

A very eclectic mix of songs followed from sources as diverse as Bill Stathes (Roseville Fair which I always associate with Nanci Griffith), Richard Thompson (Beeswing – surely it isn’t really based on the early life of Anne Briggs), Robert Burns (My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose) and Hank Williams (You Win Again) and more that I can’t recall.

I do though remember a very sympathetic setting of a John Clare poem which was I think my favourite song of the evening. But then, maybe I am biased, regarding Clare as one of the great English 19th Century poets and shockingly undervalued. Was that because he was a farm labourer in his youth or because he ended his life in a mental institution? Who knows, but for me he is the archetypal pastoral poet with such an obvious love of the countryside and hearing Bob singing made me revisit his work. So thanks for that, Bob.

Web site: http://sites.google.com/site/bobwoodfolk

MySpace: www.myspace.com/bobwoodmusic

Back to top