The Brighton Taverners played their farewell concert in January this year after a career spanning more than 40 years. Back in the 1970s, they played to packed houses at Brighton pubs and clubs and held a popular weekly residency at the former Buccaneer pub on Marine Parade. Over the years they sold over 10,000 copies of their albums.

 Lost Folk Tapes spoke to Stuart Reed, singer and guitarist with the band since its earliest incarnation. He explains, “We were just The Taverners in the beginning, but then we had a letter from Alan Bell, who pointed out that his band in Blackpool were already established under that name, so we added Brighton to the front of ours.”

Stuart met Pete Cartlidge (guitar) and Andy Tunmer (accordion, keyboards & guitar) at Brighton College of Education in 1966 and the three of them got together as the resident group at the college folk club. “It was a great time for folk music,” remembers Stuart. “Not only did every part of the country had different folk clubs running every night of the week, but the music was also popular in pubs, clubs and cabaret venues.”

This suited the Taverners, who were happy to take the music out beyond the folk club scene and into all sorts of different environments: “Even in the early days of the folk boom, a split had developed between the traddies and the populists. Because we played in widely differing venues, we had a very broad repertoire, ranging from acappella songs we learned from the Copper Family to crossover chart hits by the likes of Simon & Garfunkel and Johnny Cash.”

The band’s first record was Souvenir Edition, a self-released EP that came out in 1976, and their only release as a trio. One of the songs featured, which you can listen to on the music player above, was the haunting Grey October, written by the Critics Group about the Aberfan disaster. This song had been part of the Taverners’ set list since 1966 when it was written.

In the late 70s, Geoff Goater joined the band on bass and with this expanded line-up they went on to record four more albums. Stuart acknowledges the support they attracted from other musicians: “On all of these albums, we were greatly indebted to the input of Phil Beer, Steve Knightley and, especially, Paul Downes. Their friendship, encouragement and musicianship was invaluable. We recorded several of Steve Knightley’s early songs, which are now rarities, since he doesn’t play them with Show Of Hands.” One such song is I’m Looking Out For Number One, featured above, which Steve had written in 1972 and which the band recorded on their 1978 album, Same Old Friends. Lost Folk Tapes has also featured their unaccompanied rendition of Spencer the Rover, from the Copper Family repertoire, which appeared on the same album.

By the early 1980s, the Taverners had been featured on BBC TV and were local radio regulars. In recent years, they have continued to perform at barn dances, ceilidhs, weddings, parties and other private functions, with Stuart’s daughter Amy joining them on fiddle. Stuart concludes, “Sadly, Andy Tunmer died much too young a good many years ago and Pete Cartlidge succumbed to cancer last year. After this happened, we decided it was finally time to wind up the band. At our farewell concert earlier this year, we joined on stage by Steve Knightley, Phil Beer and Paul Downes. What’s interesting is that many in the audience that night were not really folkies in the sense that they’re regular club or festival goers, but local people who remembered us from our days playing in the area. I’d add that it was a farewell only in the sense that it was the last of our 40-odd Christmas reunions - I’ve also been playing solo and the band has been concentrating on barn dances. This will still be the case and there will no doubt still be occasional collaborations between us.”

Footage of most of the farewell concert can be found on YouTube.

The Brighton Taverners website can be found here.