Saint Stephen’s Old Church Fylingdales Robin Hood's Bay North Yorkshire

storytelling with music song

native American style flute

lyre  bowed psaltery

Folk Club Appearances: Black Swan, York. Whitby Folk Club, Filey Folk Club. Last In First Out, Whitby. Mickleby Folk Club. Saltburn Folk Club. The Station, Whitby.

Exhibitions of Lyric of 'John Hodgson's Song' (The White Horse Song) and Poetry at Northallerton and Thirsk Public Libraries in North Yorkshire as part of Keith Armstrong's 'White Horse of Kilburn Project'. 

Monday 6  to Saturday 11 August 2007

Week long interactive poetry writing and storytelling project

with demonstration of weird and wonderful wooden musical instruments.

Museum Charges apply.

CHARCOAL TO THE RESCUE.

Are we at the beginning of the Charcoal Age? We have had Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages and now the Age of Technology. According to Dave Hutchinson of Sawdon Charcoal could save the World from Global warming by putting oxygen into the atmosphere during its production and locking up carbon in the end product. Charcoal is also capable of retaining immense amounts of water so, added to infertile soil in dry places, it can retain in the soil whatever water there is. It also attracts the bacteria necessary for soil fertility. It could make deserts green.

Learn all about this and more during Ryedale Folk Museum’s Traditional Charcoal Burn from 6 to 11 August 2007. Of course, ‘Burn’ is not really the right word to use. Charcoal is made by a cooking process, the water in the wood being expelled and the wood carbonised, technically known as ‘solid-phase pyrolisis.

This process is 30,000 years old and, in antiquity, before coal mining, the substance we know as ‘coal’ was called sea-coal as it was pick up from the beaches as it fell into the sea from the cliffs. Charcoal was then known as ‘coal’.

The charcoal burners or makers were the oil barons of their day and scientific study has indicated that the discovery of copper, which led to the Bronze Age, may have been due to the accidental overheating of charcoal kilns in the copper rich soil of the forests of the country we now know as Iran.

And did you know that dragon and ‘worm’ legends may have grown from the observation of the charcoal burners and their kilns working high up in the hill forests in Winter?

Are these just yarns or the truth? You can hear Dave Hutchinson tell it all round his traditional charcoal kiln

at the Ryedale Folk Museum from 6 to 11 August 2007.

Also, as part of this Family Event at the Museum, the amazing Tony Morris, Poet, Songwriter, Multi-instrumental improvising musician will be leading an Interactive Poetry Writing event. So successful was a similar poetry event last year run over 3 days that Tony has been invited back for the whole week this year.

Following the use of the wood theme of the Event, Tony Morris will also be demonstrating a whole array of wooden musical instruments from his musical instrument collection.

Additionally, there are the Museum exhibits on this 3 acre site with approximately twenty reclaimed buildings and artefacts representing the working ways of old Ryedale, including an early photographic studio. This gem, set on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park in the picture postcard village of Hutton-le-Hole, and the Traditional Charcoal Week Event are a ‘must visit’ for any Family interested in the past and the future of the Planet.

Usual Museum charges apply.

Following Tony’s involvement in May 2006 running a song workshop for pupils of Lindhead School Scarborough in a re-enacment of the Cleveland Ironstone Miner’s Association’s formation and Demonstration Day of 1872 at the Ryedale Folk Museum, Tony has written a rousing song ‘Ironstone Miner’s March’ to commemorate that day in 1872. This song seems to be growing in popularity and has already been broadcast on BBC Radio York’s North Yorkshire Folk Programme where Tony is Resident Poet.

 Performance of 'Iron Rush' Monday 5 March 2007, Marriott Room, York Library.

A select early evening audience enjoyed this performance. Comments ranged from 'I really enjoyed that' to Brilliant!'

‘Iron Rush’ and ‘Most Requested’, billed as ‘Two Shows in One’ and performed by Tony Morris, BBC Radio York’s Resident Poet on the North Yorkshire Folk Programme was well received by a substantial, mixed age audience from Glaisdale and District. Anyone who has heard Tony on the programme will know that he is a talented radio performer with a unique style of presentation of his own material. Anyone who was present at Glaisdale’s Robinson Institute will now recognise his considerable ability and presence as a solo stage artist.

As the crusty, shambling old North Yorkshire ironstone miner, Tom Lennard in ‘Iron Rush’ he was totally convincing in his portrayal. This entertaining, very senior citizen mesmerised the audience with his talk of his family history and the social and working conditions of the Great North Yorkshire Iron Rush of the 1850s to 1900 bursting into authentic sounding song now and then to illustrate his point or telling a story in ballad form to the accompaniment of a bowed psaltery which he described as ‘a modern instrument’.

In the second show Tony Morris bounced on stage as himself with an array of musical instruments. He had numbered his most requested poems and invited the audience to shout out numbers between one and seventy-three. He then performed the poems and stories that related to the numbers some humorous, some with political themes, some from his book ‘Farewell to Friends’ and finishing with the raucous and nicely observed ‘Road Rage’.

The two shows worked well together as a lively, thought provoking, educational and, above all, entertaining piece of theatre. I can imagine Tony as Tom Lennard in Schools in a theatre in education project holding young people spellbound. If this show or either of its component parts comes your way it is well worth seeing.

 

	Ryedale Folk Museum:
	24,25,26 July 2006
	'Burning to Write - Charcoal Burn Interactive Poetry Project'
	Family Event
	Whole families joined in the workshop and were inspired to write a poem on the white side of a wallpaper roll. The roll of Community Writing and Art was then displayed with the aid of a little blue-tack and is likely to become a permanent feature in the resources centre to show what is being achieved at the Museum.
	When Tony Morris was not encouraging writing he was talking and demonstrating an array of wooden musical instruments.
	"Mesmerising! Brilliant!" was how one parent with a large group described it.

 

	22 May at Medieval Banquet as 'Antonius Sayer of Songs'
	With Bard's Harp played on his shoulder and Lyre Tony Morris performed his ballads of the 'Nunnington Worm', 'A Farndale Farmer's Tale' and a medieval carousing song.

 

	5 May Demonstration Day Event
	Measure of success-children went hope singing the chorus of 'The Pilgrims Song' from CD 'Trappy Lad', they had learned at the workshop led by Tony Morris

 

Launch Event at The Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le-Hole,

Easter Monday, 17 April 

'TRAPPY LAD'

Audience Quotes: 

 

"We enjoyed the event very much and really learned some new stuff"

 

"Theatre in Education really does work"

 

"Thank you for introducing my son to real folk music by a real folk singer" (Father who'd brought his musically interested son along)

 

"Magic!" (Mike Benson, Director of RFM)

 

Review/ Folk Roundabout Issue 139

TRAPPY LAD 

– Tony Morris (Own Label AFINTCD.03)

   Performance-poet-in-residence at York's Black Swan Club and on Michael Brothwell’s North Yorkshire Folk radio show, Tony continues to plough his own resolutely individual furrow with his most ambitious project yet. It’s a concept piece comprising songs and stories of ironstone mining in North Yorkshire, and was inspired directly by Tony's research in to his family's history, during the course of which he discovered that his great-grandfather and his son were in 1871 both ironstone miners living at Goathland and (presumably) working in the Grosmont mines. This discovery spurred Tony on to attempting to ascertain whether there existed any folksongs on the subject of ironstone mining; apparently not, and so Tony set about writing some - and, while exploring the workers' situation, telling their stories in his own inimitable way. It’s a tribute to Tony's ingenuity, then, that even having had the opportunity to carry out only a limited amount of research, he's managed to get right inside the lives of these workers and create a series of songs and performance pieces which really convince. He freely admits that there has been some "embellishment for the purpose of storytelling", a practice which is perfectly admissible of course and has proven precedents. Tony's sonorous and resonant voice proves an ideal vehicle for transporting these songs out of the dusty pages and into the air that you breathe. His expressed caveat is that in using a specifically non-literary language (and IargeIy without undue affectation or concessions to overt "regionalist Yorkshire-ism”) and a raw, even primitive (as in the accepted sense of "primitive art) vocal style, his work is likely to alienate lovers of "beautified" folk music; but this rough-hewn quality is, notwithstanding the occasional touch of artiness, exactly right for the subject in my opinion, and it works extremely well. Some pieces (like Struggling On

American Beef and Heroes Of Eston) have a loose strummed guitar accompaniment, others (like The Ballad Of John Lawson) a more considered backing (using bowed psaltery); still others, like The Reward and Tale From A Bottle, are performed acappella.

This is a project of considerable artistic merit, and (if taking into account Tony's caveat) should have a wide potential appeal-base; it certainly ought to interest the folk/local historian as well as the folksong specialist. I also think it quite likely that those enterprising singers who are sufficiently open-minded and willing to venture beyond the safely tried-and-tested will feel encouraged to rise to the challenge of interpreting one or more of Tony's original compositions into or within the context of their own song repertoire. After all, industrial song is an accepted folk tradition. Heartiest congratulations to Tony on this most fulfilling release. (tonymorrispoet@yahoo.co.uk)  

 

Review from THE LINK - Vol 3 No4

In the notes accompanying this bold CD Tony relates: "My great-grandfather, Robert Mutten (and his son, John) were both, in 1871, ironstone miners living at Beck Hole, near Whitby working in the Grosmont mines. There was no traditional folk canon of ironstone mining songs (unlike coal and lead mining). No travelling minstrels or local bards and storytellers created poems and songs about these times in which they lived - newsworthy events to be then picked up by other people. I have tried to get the feel of the period 1850 to 1900 in the ironstone mining communities of the (then) North Riding of Yorkshire and to write songs that might have been written and sung at that time. Bearing in mind that the miners came from all parts of the United Kingdom, I have tried to avoid using any specific regional accent. There are some Yorkshire words and inflections but only those that might have been readily assimilated into the language of incomers. I have chosen tunings for guitar, when used to accompany songs, and a vocal style that some may find raw, rough, 'primitive' even, in the sense of the 'primitive painter' or 'primitive art'. You may find this particularly so if you prefer the 'beautified' music that often, since the days of the Victorian collectors, has passed for 'Folk Music', a state of mind that has infected many modem folk musicians and composers." The feeling you get listening to this 16 track CD is that you're there in the pit or at the fireside where such songs were originally sung. Website: www.tonymorrispoet.com

CHANGING TRACKS - Tony Morris (Own production; no label or catalogue
number.)
Frequent visitors to Roland's excellent Black Swan folk club in York can't
escape the entirely welcome, and now firmly established, presence of its
unique roster of gifted performance poets, among whose ranks is the
unforgettable, larger-than-life bohemian Tony Morris. He describes himself
as a bard in the old tradition, yet his style is every bit as heavily
influenced by the beat poets and it's hard not to become totally involved as
he intones, recites, gestures, caressing and cajoling the words - and,
importantly, their sounds - into submission to serve his markedly individual
poetic purpose. His creations are engaging commentaries, compassionate and
characterised by a sensitive poetic realism, harsh or soft as requisite yet
with these elements equally often in telling juxtaposition (I was
occasionally reminded of the work of Adrian Henri here). Tony's delivery -
unlike that of some of the more over-the-top performance poets - really
suits his material (all his own work of course), and he's careful to tailor
the performance idiom accordingly. In recent years Tony's taken increasingly
to accompanying himself on a bewilderingly eclectic variety of musical
instruments (only one at a time though, before you ask!). These often wild
improvisings can seem overly random, yet can be heard to encompass their own
peculiar atonal logic (at times, as on Exit Maureen, there are even hints of
the microtonal experiments of Harry Partch). As well as his trusty bardic
lyres, Tony gives us a bluesy harmonica for Health Warning, ostensibly
out-of-control, all-over-the-place guitar for Road Rage and White Van
Driver, a quasi-lyrical strumming for Red Roses In The Morning, a piquant
Appalachian dulcimer backing for Universal Soldier, a cheeky plonking banjo
for Boxing Is The Greatest Game, bardic harp for The Ballad Of Gellert -
every choice thought through and apposite. Although, as Tony rightly points
out in his brief insert note, since he constantly experiments with different
combinations of words and instruments, this CD is not definitive. And as an
example of a living, constantly evolving art-form, why on earth should it
be?

  'Folk Roundabout'

 

What Woven Wheat Whispers Have to say:

Tony Morris is a poet and improvising musician. He is poet in residence of BBC Radio York's 'North Yorkshire Folk'. Tony is based in York and Whitby and is preparing an album of songs about the ironstone mining industry for release in 2006.

This self-written album combines spoken word poetry delivered expertly with improvised musical settings. Tony seeks to make spontaneous music, emanating from the environment and natural surroundings themselves. He does not concern himself with restrictions and believes music is a primary connection that links us to past ages and our world.

 

Tony is part of the aural tradition, the songs and stories carried down the centuries without being written down. The texts providing education, lore and entertainment all at once. The music on this release could be considered rudimentary, in the best sense of the word. It is not careerist or seeking to show off, it is instead instinctual expression in the moment.

 

Although his music carries on the aural tradition, the poems themselves are in no way stuffy or locked in the past. These texts work as contemporary expressions, exploring a concept and leaving it open for the listener to continue thinking. There is very deliberate structure and diction, the weight of each word intriguing and curious. The way he speaks the poems is evocative and even slightly strange.

 

This is a continuation of the ages old aural folk tradition, authentic and yet distinctive in its own right. Such personal music and poems will never appeal to everyone, but it's the kind of genuinely delightful oddity that we revel in and exist for. Those who are seduced by its charms can look forward to many listens looking into the heart of the fire, the mind somewhere else and the clock hands seemingly stopped.

from Woven Wheat Whispers legal Download site