Barbara and Pete are local to our corner of Hampshire – so local that Pete was able to slip me copy of their album, almost surreptitiously, in a folk club. Sadly, it lacked the customary plain brown envelope and wad of used fivers but these are early days.
To describe an album like this as easy listening might be considered an insult but, in truth, Pearls And Wishes is very easy to listen to. Barbara and Pete mix their own songs with familiar old favourites, always a good plan to ease the listener in to new material, but their own songs stand up well to close inspection. They open with a couple of stanzas of ‘Hangin’ Johnny’ which morphs into their own ‘Pearls From Cadiz’, a beautiful song which I took for traditional on first hearing, ‘If Wishes Were Horses’ is derived from the old nursery rhyme but the best song in the set is ‘Helmand To Jesmond’. This oh so clever lyric mingles the thoughts of a soldier in Afghanistan with those of his woman back home. Four short verses and a chorus combine in epistolary poignancy conveyed in everyday language.
This is followed by ‘Wor Donkey’, a story that Martin Simpson used as the basis for his ‘Jackie And Murphy’. Barbara and Pete treat it very differently writing a period-sounding tune with a music-hall style chorus. From Gallipoli we go to Australia for ‘Who’ll Come A-Waltzing’. These are apparently the original words that Banjo Patterson wrote to the tune that Christina MacPherson borrowed from the Scottish tradition, with a different chorus, before the better known version took over and is almost, but not quite, the “Queensland setting” of the song. Later come ‘Diamantina Drover’ and the pair’s romantic view of sailing the southern oceans in ‘Mimosa’.
Between them, Barbara and Pete play guitars, mandolin, ukulele, harmonica and whistles and can move comfortably from unaccompanied harmony to a big arrangement. Although they have played together in a ceilidh band for more than twenty-five years I think that this is their first album as a duo and very welcome it is.
Dai Jeffries
Artists’ website: www.roughditchfolk.com
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