Here are the rest of John Terry's recordings of Peter Bellamy's performances at Stainsby Folk Festival in 1981. John recalls that Peter did a short song spot in the middle of the Saturday evening ceilidh, where the band playing was the High Level Ranters. This is the first of the two sound files you can listen to above. The second is a recording of his Monday concert appearance. With a mixture of traditional songs, settings of poems by Rudyard Kipling and Henry Lawson (the latter possibly a result of his recent Australian trip) and witty repartee, we'll sure you'll agree this a bit of a treat for the Bellamists amongst us.

This is a live recording of Peter Bellamy performing at the 1981 Stainsby Folk Festival, which we have posted with the permission of Jenny Bellamy. It came to us from John Terry, who did the sound engineering at Stainsby at the time. John was something of a one-man-band with the PA, which was officially known as Pots and Pans. He also worked with many of the local Derby bands and first became involved with folk music through acting as a roadie for the Druids, Ram’s Bottom, Roaring Jelly and R. Cajun & the Zydeco Brothers. He went on to do the sound for many Radio Sheffield concerts and at Sidmouth Folk Festival and all over the country for John Kirkpatrick with Umps and Dumps. He later got involved with Ashley Hutchings and the Albion Dance Band in its earlier incarnations, both pre and post John Tams’ involvement.

John takes up the story of this recording: “This was made from the PA desk when I was doing the sound for Stainsby Festival, near Chesterfield. I’m pretty sure the recording was made direct to cassette, because there’s a break where the tape auto-reversed in the middle of 'Molecatcher' and I lost a few seconds! The intermittent ten-second buzzing on the tape is an adjacent hot food stall’s warming cabinet, which worked on a thermostat and which took me almost the whole festival to track down! 

“I don’t have too many specific recollections of this particular concert. The festival lasted three days, the 29, 30 and 31st of August. I remember that Diz Disley was there, with Johnny Silvo in tow, and they came in a giant pink Cadillac, which got stuck in the mud. The recordings I made were mostly just for my own enjoyment – I worked at Stainsby for seven years, if I remember correctly, missing just one year when they forgot to ask me. Ken and Marion Blankley were the organisers. The concerts, which always ran over time, were some six hours long, and I remember not really having the time to enjoy them live, with so much going on, so having the taped recording gave me the chance to listen properly and appreciate the performances second time around!”