We continue our series of John Terry’s live recordings from Stainsby Folk Festival – where for many years he looked after the sound – with this excellent set from contemporary folk singer-songwriter Bernie Parry, recorded in 1978. Bernie is best remembered for his 1981 debut album, Sailing to the Moon, released on the Free Reed label and now available on CD in an expanded version. Lost Folk Tapes got in touch with Bernie and sent him a copy of John’s recording. We were very pleased to hear back from him that he was delighted with the recording and happy to be interviewed for the website.

LFT: When did you first started making music and what were your early influences?

BP: I started playing the violin age the age of eleven, so from an early age I realised I like acoustic instruments. In 1964, I was listening to the Beatles, who were definitely an early influence, but then I saw Bob Dylan on the telly with just a guitar and a harmonica and I thought ‘I can do that!’ I remember putting loads of pressure on my mum to buy me an acoustic guitar and happily she agreed.

LFT: We were very pleased to read on your website that you share our admiration for the Incredible String Band.

BP: I loved the Incredible String Band. The fact that they acted as if there were no rules to making music appealed to me - yet they still managed to be melodic. And I’ve always loved Robin Williamson’s voice - that definitely influenced my singing style. I also liked their use of different guitar tunings and the sense of freedom that came across in what they did. I wasn’t really influenced by their lyrics, which were all a bit airy-fairy for my tastes. I’ve always taken more of a storytelling approach to my own lyric writing, which I think comes from my Celtic roots - I’m half Welsh, a quarter Irish and a quarter Romany.  

LFT: Were there any other key influences?

BP: Strangely, I was later also influenced by a band called Sailor, who released four wonderful albums in the mid-seventies. They definitely affected the way I thought about playing the guitar and I started to incorporate more jazzy and poppy elements.

LFT: What first attracted you to the folk scene?

BP: When I first discovered them, what I liked about folk clubs is that you could just get on the stage with a guitar and play your songs. You didn’t need a PA system or anything. The first club I was involved with, at Easington in County Durham, had a resident singer by the name of Jim Pritchard, who had a vast repertoire of traditional songs. Through listening to him, I seemed to absorb something of the spirit of traditional song almost by osmosis, and though I’ve written songs in all sorts of styles - jazz, blues, modern folk, for instance - I have found myself writing in the style of traditional song on occasions: The Goblin’s Riddle might be an example of this.

LFT: Did you encounter any resistance to performing your own, rather than traditional material?

BP: I think I was lucky in that the club at Easington had a pretty open-minded approach. This was also the case at Trimdon Folk Club, where I was one of the residents, along with Jez Lowe and Ged Foley. If you could sing there, you could sing anywhere! It was the sort of place that got totally packed out and had sweat running down the walls. During this period I was also briefly a member of the Trimdon Folk Band with Jez. He was one of the first people to record one of my songs – he put a version of The Dark Shores on his first album.  The very first,  though, was Johnny Collins, who put a couple of my songs on his Johnny's Private Army album.

LFT: Did you get much of a chance to play gigs outside of your local area?

BP: In the early seventies, I started spreading out from the North-East, getting gigs all over the North of England and the Midlands and some in the South. I got taken on by Ogilvy and Winder during the last couple of years of their existence, too. They were the biggest booking agency in the folk world at the time and they got me into all sorts of places I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play otherwise.  I played quite a few festivals at that time – my first was Durham, but I also played at Stainsby, Poynton, Fylde and even Cambridge, as part of Plexus, in front of 8000 people. I was only ever briefly in Plexus: I like to think it was so I could play at Cambridge!

LFT: How did Sailing to the Moon come about?

BP: Actually, not long before I was given the opportunity to record the album, I’d decided to retire from performing – this would have been in 1977. My parents were running a hotel down in Devon, so I moved down there. I had a final gig commitment to fulfil, which was at Barnsley Folk Festival. In the audience there was someone who was working as an assistant to Neil Wayne who ran Free Reed Records. She really liked what I was doing, so she got in touch with Neil, who offered to put an album out. It was recorded in 1978, but it wasn’t actually released until 1981. I think that the delay was basically down to money – Neil had just released two lavish double album packages – Peter Bellamy’s The Transports and the Tale of Ale compilation and between them these had left him pretty broke. 

LFT: On your website, you mention that you were singer in residence at Darlington Arts Centre and Radio Teeside around the same time. What was all that about?

BP: They had a competition and I was invited to put in for it. I went along and won! I was up against some good competition too, including Robin Dransfield and Dick Gaughan. I think it helped that I was a local lad. The judges included Dave Cousins of the Strawbs and a journalist from the Melody Maker. I ended up moving up there for a year and writing loads of songs. Practically everything I wrote was recorded and broadcast. Some of the songs were for themed shows – I did a concert of children’s songs called The Fish and The Stars, where Plexus played with me. I also did a series of songs called The Bully Beef Diaries. These were based on a true story. My father-in-law had been a prisoner of war during the Second World War and during that time he had kept a diary, which he wrote on toilet paper and hid in an old corned beef tin.

LFT: You released another album in 1983, Playing With Words. What can you tell us about it?

BP: My second album featured a broader range of styles. On the one hand, it was more bluesy, but I also branched out and included instruments such as the Irish pipes. Jez Lowe helped out, too. It was nearly a lost album. It was recorded in a freezing cold studio up on the Yorkshire Moors on very poor quality tape. I took it to Pennine Radio, where my friend Nigel Schofield managed to transfer it to decent tape and save it. I must say, it was actually quite difficult for me to sell albums at gigs back then. I didn’t have my own transport, so you can imagine what it was like trying to hump 50 vinyl albums about!

LFT: So what happened next?

BP: Of course, whilst I was an artist in residence, I wasn’t able to tour because I was spending all my time at Darlington. It was hard to get back into touring after that. My wife and I had been talking about running a pub, so in the late eighties I retired again and spent four years as a publican.

After this I didn’t do anything more till around 1995, when Dave Malinson approached me to do a song book. I said that I’d rather make an album, which he agreed to put out. He insisted it was called Man of the Earth, after what was probably my best known song. I wasn’t over keen on this, as it felt like this was looking back towards something that was now behind me, but it was a decent album and sold a fair few copies. I recorded it at Rob Van Sante’s studio. I then released Random Fandangos, but the sales of this were fairly poor. I started recording again in 2004, when I bought myself a digital recording studio and recorded Songs from Stony Rock. This was a collection of all new songs, except for ISB’s October Song, which I’ve been singing for most of my life. I went on to release an album of instrumentals, Earth Apples, and Interpretations, which is an album of other people’s songs that I wished I’d written. Having my own studio was really liberating. And I do everything myself - the artwork, producing the CDs and so on– - it’s a proper cottage industry. I’ve also done a few gigs here and there, but in some ways I think I’ve always been more of a songwriter than a singer. 

LFT: Will we be hearing any further new music from you?

BP: I’ve finally retired now, for good this time. I had a bad fall four years ago, which resulted in permanent nerve damage to my fingers. This means I can no longer play the guitar to a standard that I deem acceptable. I’m not playing guitar at all anymore, but I have taken up the hurdy-gurdy.

I was talking to my wife about Stainsby -– I can’t remember playing there in 1978, but I do recall they had me back a couple of years later and it went down a storm. I’ve enjoyed listening to the recording of the set from the festival. I wasn’t half bad back then, was I?
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Bernie has a website at www.bernieparry.com, where you can find out more about the man and his music and buy copies of all his CDs. He also has a Youtube channel where you can watch videos of him revisiting many of his best known songs.