Concert Review By John Ashford: Local guys sing folk…

(John Ashford has been around folk music for over 70 years. He was a member of the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society in the early ‘50s, and later president of the Seattle Folklore Society.)

 

On October 14th the duo of Bob Nelson and Don Firth presented ballads and tunes, some new and a few that I've enjoyed many times. The setting for the concert was a church with a beautiful old world interior. The hard pews and lack of amplification did not seem to dampen the enjoyment of the audience. The two men have a loyal following and one that knows the repertoire. Their audience attends to hear certain favorites and recover the memories of folksong gatherings held in Seattle's University District in the '60's and '70's or beyond.

 

The material of the two singers consists largely of songs collected, not written, although Bob sang one song that he wrote. Don is an uncompromising singer of British Isles ballads, some performed in Scottish dialect. It was refreshing to hear him do traditional ballads, such as Three Ravens and others dealing with soldiers and maidens.

 

Bob, also, is uncompromising in his enthusiasm for folk songs. Close your eyes and you're back in a coffee house in the 1950's.

 

When he entered the stage, Bob asked the audience, "How many of you are surprised to see me in church?"

 

I wasn't a bit surprised. Bob's religion is folk music.

 

He has to be considered the dean of Northwest folksingers due to his longevity and undying faith in the music. His songs are mostly optimistic and energetic, with a thumping accompaniment. Exceptions were the unaccompanied "Sully's Pail", a haunting song about a mine tragedy written by Seattle-ite Richard Gibbons, and "Wild Flying Dove" by songwriter Tom Paxton.

 

Both Firth and Nelson are singers of the folk revival. They present their songs with a point of view, whether or not it is stated. Their performance is an advocacy of traditional songs from historical periods, labor conflicts, or an anonymous poet's heartache. The category broadens to include anything else they enjoy singing.

 

I have heard many of the same songs performed in clubs in Vancouver, New York, California, and even in village pubs in England. A case of familiarity breeding conviviality.

 

Not only is there an audience for this music in Seattle, there is an international audience. It's their music, after all.

Concert Review By Jordan Myers (John Ashford took his 18-year-old grandson to the concert. It was Jordan Myers first folk concert.)

 

The light from the stained glass windows washed the little church with an autumn glow as we filed into the pews, excited murmurs filling the space where we waited for the music. As Bob Nelson and Don Firth were being introduced, I felt like I was looking in on a closely knit family joining in reunion: the audience, the announcer, the performers- there was an intimacy that truly surprised me. As they began, a complete hush fell over the crowd, allowing their voices and the sounds of their guitars to fill every corner of the room.

 

Watching the two perform, separately or in unison, one feels that behind their good-humored faces hides the history of hundreds of lives. Simple and real and earnest, they are like actors of short stories, giving us a small slice of another era through which we can enjoy a full spectrum of feeling and experience that would otherwise be entirely lost in the sands of time. Though reading a history book can give you times and places of events and an idea of what happened, an essential grain of humanity is lost in transition from the lives of history to the text. Bob played a few songs of cheek and vigor that had me envious of such a vital, simple time, wishing I could travel back and sit around a campfire with the protagonist, or be told secondhand of the extortion of a father by his daughter and her beloved.

 

One song struck me in its beauty of form and execution: a simple, sad Scottish ballad of longing sung by Don without accompaniment. His great voice rose and rumbled up in mourning to haunt the rafters of that fragile church with the memory of a love now centuries dead; the beauty of the ballad and of his steady voice struck me with a kind of pure sadness that is all but impossible to find in modern music- for a moment I felt as if I, too, were wandering the hills and valleys of Scotland singing a hopeless plea for companionship. I had always liked folk music, but never really pursued it- after seeing Bob Nelson and Don Firth perform, I have no choice but to seek it out whenever possible.

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Stewart Hendrickson is Chemistry Professor Emeritus – St. Olaf College, Research Professor Emeritus – University of Washington, and in his new career, an unemployed folk musician (voice, fiddle, guitar; http://stewarthendrickson.com).