News from Nowhere

Once, twice, three times Robb Johnson

2025-09-28T16:58:04Z

Back in mid-September we attended an online LTYLR concert with Robb Johnson and Leon Rosselson. Rosselson had decided that he would stop performing when he passed his 90th birthday: but this concert had been a year in the planning, so at 91 he was still there. There'd clearly been some intention that he and Robb Johnson would accompany each other's songs, and no, that didn't really happen: but each of them was absolutely on top of their own material. In the circumstances, Robb Johnson may be slightly eclipsed in my memory by, shall we say Leon Rosselson's genuinely powerful delivery of The World Turned Upside Down.

Ten days ago we went to Mddlesbrough for a gig at Toft House, which was billed as Robb Johnson and the Acoustic Irregulars, but Fae Simon couldn't make it, so we had the slghtly more irregular Irregular due of Robb and Sian Allen. This didn't at all diminish the celebratory atmosphere: it was the 200th gig to be held at Toft House, and there was cake, and balloons. Plus a new album: he is so prolific that this is no surprise, but it's always fun, so welcome to The Optimist Hotel. Support act was Sue Conroy: "Protest anthems and witty ditties", it says her, and I wouldn't argue with that.

Robb's solo set last Saturday was one of my highlights of the Hartlepool Folk Festival (but you could have guessed that). It was too short, but that's life, and it leaned towards the greatest hits, which is a sensible approach for that sort of slot. Still learning the ways of my new camera, so have a photo:

Not the greatest photo ever, but I'm pleased to establish that I can do it; in fact the hardest bit was getting it off the phone and onto this journal. Still learning new tricks...

All Saturday's gigs on the Festival's outdoor stage were cancelled, because of Storm Amy. Otherwise Robb would have had another set, and I was entirely up for it.

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Third time lucky

2024-12-01T17:24:09Z

Had things gone according to plan, we would have been in Middlesbrough last night to hear Robb Johnson with the Acoustic Irregulars. Things being what they are, the gig was cancelled, through no fault of the organisers (an earlier gig had fallen through, and the travel was no longer affordable). Of the three recent gigs we had booked at Toft House ("The Home of Unpopular Music"), this was the second to be cancelled: also not their fault that Pete Atkin had covid and has rescheduled for the spring. So last Saturday we were taking nothing for granted, eyeing the weather nervously: there was a thin blanket of snow over Durham, and threats of worse elsewhere...

The good news is that we had a very enjoyable evening with the Coal Porters. Beyond our street, the roads were clear, and once across the river there was no snow to be seen; the band appear to have travelled without incident too, from the village near Peebles where they had played the previous night. The internet informs me that the Coal Porters disbanded in 2018, but it doesn't seem to have cramped their style. If anything, there was the feeling of old friends with other projrcts getting together to have fun without long-term commitment. I liked vocalist Neil Robert Herd's explanation that "we have been described as 'alt-bluegrass'": it doesn't disown a perfectly reasonable description (banjo! mandolin! Bill Monroe song! high speed!) but nor does it actually endorse it. I also appreciated the costumes: three men in suits, bassist in teddy-boy drapes, fiddler Kerenza Peacock in a cotton print dress (but the print was of "some of my favourite feminists") and silver sparkly boots: that's what I'd call making an effort.

I can't find anything on YouTube which conveys the flavour of the performance. But here's what they did for their obligatory encore (Sid Griffin was prepared to hold forth at some length on this topic):

Post-encore, we also had an audience-participation version of Dylan's You ain't going nowhere: and then we came home. I wasn't tempted to buy a CD, but I'd go back for more of the live performance.

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Simpson and shopping

2024-03-03T17:53:18Z

An eventful weekend: Saturday evening was Martin Simpson at the Witham in Barnard Castle, Sunday morning was Sedgefield Farmers' Market, and then, since we were on a roll, more shopping.

This journal gets repetitive ( so feel free to skip the gig report )

The Farmers' Market, too, is also pretty repetitive, yet every every month has its excitements. ( I am a connoisseur! ) After which we came home and collapsed. Except that Robb Johnson chose that evening for a Shoreham Palladium concert on FaceBook, so there was more music in the evening.

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A song for Coronation Day

2023-05-06T14:55:56Z

We’ll rehouse the homeless in Buckingham Palace,
Start at the bottom, work down to the top,...

No master, no landlord, no flag, no guru,
No Gauleiter, no commissar,
Just justice and poetry and jam on it too,
and when they ask: "who’s in charge here?"
We all say: "We are!"

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Turning Silence into Song

2022-05-25T12:15:08Z

We spent last Sunday evening livestreaming a celebration of the songs of Leon Rosselson, hosted by the estimable People's Music Network. We didn't log in to the Zoomed concert, because - well, was it Noel Coward who said television was for being on, not for watching? That's how I feel about Zoom. But whether there really is something live about a live stream, or whether it's just an illusion, it felt as much like 'being there' as can be achieved from the comfort of my own sofa. Only now it is saved for posterity, and we can all be there again, any time we choose:

( A detour down memory lane )

The relevance of all this is that the high points of the concert for me were precisely what you'd expect. I enjoyed - well, I enjoyed the whole thing, but an honourable mention for a couple of comedy numbers: Elijah Wald's virtuoso rendition of We Sell Everything and Charlie King's Whoever Invented the Fish Finger. Martin Carthy, who I think had intended to sing History Lesson, had to cancel (a combination of scheduling class and technical problems, so he was neither there in person nor represented by a video). I thought Leon Rosselson's own My Father's Jewish World an interesting story, and The World Turned Upside Down the perfect choice to close with (and Billy Bragg - given that the medium does not permit ense,ble singing - the perfect person to sing it, though I wished his sound was better; don't know what went wrong there...).

But the highlight performers for me were the usual suspects. Martin Simpson - a recorded video, alas - sang Palaces of Gold, as he has every time I've seen him since the Grenfell Tower fire. Nancy Kerr sang Harry's Gone Fishing, which I begin to think of as an old friend (it has certainly taken residence in my ears) though I only know it from her lockdown project. Hooray, then, yet again, for Robb Johnson who demonstrated that I can still like something I haven't heard beforee, with On Her Silver Jubilee. You might think that would be a little out of date by now, but since it opens with Rosselson's memories of the Coronation, and the gist of the song is What, is she still here?, it is even more to the point than it was when written: you don't have to take my word for this.

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Small excitements

2022-02-15T20:54:39Z

It says much about how quietly we live that these were the excitements of the weekend, the things that made we want to record them, and share them.

Excitement at breakfast time: It's not unusual for the phone to ring at breakfast time, but it's almost always a spam call. On Saturday, though, it was my cheesemonger. They had delivered to us the previous afternoon, and at the same time had made a delivery across the road - but the door had been locked, and now A. was not answering the phone, and they were worried. So while I finished making toast and coffee, durham_rambler went across the road and told A. that people were worried about her. Needlessly, it seems: she had been out, had returned just as her shopping was being delivered, had seen them and assumed they had seen her...I liked this example of community mediated by shopping, even if the shopping is carried out by telephone and the shop is half a county away.
Excitement in the post: Saturday's post brought me a client's new book. A book in the post is a pleasure that never gets old, and this one was inscribed with a very kind message.
Building excitement: The Bears have builders: serious builders, with scaffolding and all. This is less fun, but it's certainly exciting.
Shopping excitement: More of a disruption than an excitement. I had, almost accidentally, secured a Waitrose delivery (the Ocado website was not responding, so I had idly checked Waitrose, and found a few slots, including this one, just when I would be preparing dinner) and taken the opportunity to add some favourite Waitrose products to my list (walnut oil, tinned tuna, talcum powder...). I had somehow managed not to ask for delivery in carrier bags: since Waitrose don't take back their bags for reuse, there are reasons why this is the right decision, but it did mean some hasty transferring of purchases into bags so we could carry them downstairs.
Musical excitements (1): I was flustered by this awkward delivery, because we wanted to finish dinner in time for a Live to Your Living Room concert with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan. To our living room, it turned out, but not from theirs: they were coming to us from Nancy's mother's house in Northumberland (that's Sandra Kerr, of course), so we had some fine Northumbrian tunes, alongside the Leon Rosselson and the Australian songs and Nancy's own songs...
Anniversary excitements: Sunday, being February 13th, is a day we observe as an anniversary. We no longer get excited about anniversaries, if we ever did: or, if you prefer, we are excited about every day. Certainly it never occurred to us to go out to dinner, and I hadn't even planned an elaborate meal: but there were parsnips, of which durham_rambler is particularly fond, and we opened a bottle of fizz.
Musical excitements (2): We spent Sunday Night at the Shoreham Palladium - that is, watching a Robb Johnson gig over Facebook. I love the immediacy of these performances, and thought Sunday's a particularly good one. Here's a song I hadn't heard before, topical when he played it on Sunday and even more topical today:

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One from last night at the Hove Pavilion

2020-11-30T17:05:45Z

Because sometimes what you need is a little optimism:

I'm tired of wearing thin these same old words of rage
Some days the bad guys win, but nothing's changed
For though the language fail and the nerves of love grow numb
Somehow we carry on, undefeated.

Holding all people's lives to be of equal worth
More dear than the money talk, or the tricks of the state
The hands that work no wrong, the breath that lifts the song
The hearts that hold each other, undefeated.

Robb Johnson, Undefeated

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Everybody puts their faith in gaffer tape -

2020-08-01T15:15:33Z

- even Steve McQueen.

Witness this photo I took last month of durham_rambler preparing to Zoom:

It isn't always this complicated; he conducts meetings from his desktop, and I attend my reading group via my notebook on the kitchen table. But if we want to sit together for the weekly pub quiz session, it all gets a bit Heath Robinson.

The photo shows - in addition to all the clutter that is our living environment - the tower computer, no longer in regular use, which now comes in handy to drive our Zoom sessions, which display on the television screen; the camera tripod, delicately balanced and aimed at the sofa; one of two speakers (on the cane chair); durham_rambler attatching a microphone to a handy stand (actually a 'Singing in the Rain' bookend); supplies of beer and crisps; and - concealed it its case, the iPad on which we follow the quiz online. It does not show the keyboard and mouse required to log in to the meeting. These complicated arrangements amuse me greatly, but it works.

We have also used a slightly simpler version to attend a concert: Robb Johnson's regular Sunday Night at the Hove Palladium migrated from FaceBook to Zoom, so we rigged up the warching and listening end of things, and durham_rambler used his phone to join in the interval chat. The delays on Zoom made the musical performance less satisfying than usual, and it was a 'Robb Johnson and the Irregulars' electric gig; no criticism of the band to say that I prefer my music acoustic. But they did play Even Steve McQueen, which gave me the title of this post.

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Songs for Europe and other matters

2020-05-18T19:49:52Z

For the third week running, the highlight of our Sunday was the performance that Robb Johnson streams live through his FaceBook page: I write these words as if they had some meaning for me, but all I know is that durham_rambler points his phone at the television (for some reason not his iPad, which is our usual interface) and mutters a bit, and the screen fills with one of my favourite singer-songwriters coming to me live from his home in Hove. This would be a pleasure at the best of times, and these are not the best of times: there's something about it which fills part of the hole in my life that belongs to live music. The contrast with Saturday night's Eurospectacular could not be greater, yet many of his songs are about Europe: there are worse ways to explore Paris than with the aid of the Robb Johnson songbook.

Other than that, yesterday wasn't great. I was feeling a bit under par: a touch light headed, and a somewhat upset stomach. Possibly it's just too long since I went outside and did things, exercise and fresh air, but these are not symptoms which fill me with the will to go out. I spent the afternoon on the sofa, in front of an open window, clutching Jerusalem, which I read a little but mostly dozed over. I didn't think I was short of sleep, I seem to be sleeping well enough (and I touch woos as I type this) but I certainly felt a whole let better for my lazy afternoon, so who knows?

Still not 100% today, but better. Today's acheivement (apart from a little light work) was placing an order with the cheese-stall-in-exile: this shouldn't be difficult, but it does involve using the phone, which is not my strong point, and then guessing what they might have in stock. I was still congratulating myself on this accomplishment when the delivery turned up on the doorstep. I'm getting to grips with the time-lag inherent in lockdown shopping, so this was a very pleasant surprose.

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