Performed by Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (banjo). Words by Annie Dearman, tune by Terry Conway, arranged by Steve Harrison and used with permission. For many years, Annie & Steve made an annual week-long trip on a the seagoing Thames Sailing Barge 'Pudge', usually sailing from Maldon on the River Blackwater up the coast to Aldburgh, calling in the many rivers along that section of Essex and Suffolk coastline. This song started life as a poem, written by Annie, telling the story of a typical trip and including marine wildlife, collecting samphire to eat, and playing and singing on the barge and in the Olde Albion pub in Rowhedge. Foremost amongst our 'absent friends' is the late Barry Callaghan, to whom the poem is dedicated. We subsequently turned the poem into a song as part of a fundraising show for Pudge, using (with permission) the tune written by the late Terry Conway for his song 'Curlew on the Moor'. 

The Barge Song

Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (melodeon). On Tuesday 9 March 1830, the broken body of 22-year old Rachael Crossley was found at the bottom of a coal pit near to her home village of Kirkburton, to the south-east of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire. She was unmarried but pregnant with her second child. Suspicion immediately fell on William Shaw, father of both children, who had repeatedly promised to marry Rachael, but failed to do so and was now faced with the requirement to pay a further sum of maintenance. Shaw was committed to stand trial at York Assizes, where he pleaded not guilty to Rachael’s murder but was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged outside York Castle on 5 April 1830, less than one month after the murder. His sentence included surgical dissection after death, a legal provision that was subsequently abolished in 1832. Checked against newspaper reports of the crime, trial and execution in the Leeds Mercury and elsewhere, the broadside ballad recounting the story is extraordinarily accurate. We have edited the original text for performance and set it to a tune associated with the earlier and more famous ‘Red Barn’ murder. 

The Kirkburton Tragedy

Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (melodeon). Our version of a song collected in Sussex in the 1890s. Woolcombing was part of the process of worsted manufacture which required the wool fibres to be laid parallel to each other and unwanted short staple wool removed. The combs were heated in a charcoal fuelled comb-pot in order to soften the lanolin and thereby make the process easier. This was hazardous work (due to the fumes) but also highly skilled. The comber in our song is an interesting character who is both proud of the quality of his work, but otherwise lives for his booze! The music is more-or-less in 5/4 time.

Rambling Comber

Annie Dearman (voice), Vic Gammon (banjo) & Steve Harrison (mouth organ) - recorded for our 2005 CD 'Black Crow/ White Crow', released by the English Folk Dance & Song Society. Many versions of the song imply that the woman feels sorry for herself - but not in this lively version which is mainly from the Leeds collector Frank Kidson.

Farewell He!

Annie Dearman (voice), Vic Gammon anglo-concertina & Steve Harrison (melodeon) perform their version of this old song. The text is constructed from several English, Irish & American sets. The tune was collected (for a different song) in Somerset. The recording is taken from Dearman, Gammon & Harrison's CD 'Black Crow/ White Crow', released in 2005. 

Pretty Little Feet

Vic Gammon (voice & banjo), Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (mouth organ). Composed by Robert Donnelly & Will Geddes and published in 1910, it is said to have been inspired by the mining disaster at St Genard in South Wales (1907), and was published in support of families affected by the 1910 Whitehaven mining disaster. Despite this, the song is better known in the USA as result of recordings by Vernon Dalhart, Doc Watson & Hazel Dickens. Vic's 3-time interpretation is derived from the fragment sung by his grandmother. The recording is taken from Dearman, Gammon & Harrison's 2005 CD 'Black Crow/White Crow.'

Daddy, Don't Go Down The Mine

Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (banjo). This is a very rare version of the song, adapted by us from a broadsheet. The text contains a good deal of 'thieves' cant', ie supposedly coded terms to allow criminals to discuss their activities without being understood by outsiders. Amongst the terms used here are 'faking his cly' (picking his pocket), 'trepanned' (betrayed), 'ogle' (eye), 'wipe' (handkerchief), 'jug' (prison) and 'lag' (convict). A few of these terms are still in currency, eg someone might be described as an 'old lag'. Our tune is an adaptation of 'When you and I were young, Maggie'.

Black Velvet Band

Performed by Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (melodeon). This very old song (probably C17th) comprises the bitter reflections of a jilted man. It's only three verses, but what a magnificent final two lines! The original text was improved (genuinely so) by the C19th dramatist John Oxenford, and this is pretty much what we perform here. Our tune (which Steve used to play as an instrumental air long before we found the words in a charity shop on Bolingbroke Grove in South London) is also old, and appears in the first edition (1651) of Playford's 'Complete Dancing Master'. Much of Annie's vocal line is a countermelody that occurred to her on first seeing the text.

Once I loved a Maiden Fair

Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (melodeon). This has probably been our single most requested song over the years. Barking was a centre for trawling in the first half of the 19th Century, but began to decline as a fishing port after about 1860, partly because of the discovery of fisheries further north, after which most boat owners moved their home ports to Yarmouth, Hull or Grimsby. Also, the development of the railway network made it quicker to transport fish from the new ports directly to London, than for the boats to sail down the east coast and up the Thames. Our text is adapted from a broadside printed by Martin in The Minories in London in the early C19th; Steve set the text to a tune collected by George Gardiner in Hampshire in 1905 for 'Swansea Town'.

Barking Town

Annie Dearman (voice) & Steve Harrison (banjo) - banjo tuned to 'mountain minor' gDGCD. Collected in the south-west of England in 1900, this ballad tells its story of tragic love by utilising verses from a number of other ballads. Steve's banjo tuning gives a slightly American feel, but we have never been able to trace a transatlantic connection.

Come Mother

Annie Dearman (voice) performs the song '300 Soldiers' (words by Vic Gammon & Steve Harrison, music by Vic Gammon) which tells the story of often shell-shocked British Army soldiers executed during the Great War of 1914-18.

300 Soldiers.MP3

Annie Dearman (voice, jew's harp) & Steve Harrison (melodeon, mouth organs, banjo, bagpipes) perform songs in a robust and firmly rooted English style, with uncomplicated accompaniments that always give priority to the words of the songs. Our repertory is from traditional singers, the folk song collectors of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, printed ballad sheets, and songs and tunes that we happen to hear and like. We have a particular love of songs that tell historical stories, but are also fond of American material from the 1920s and 1930s, a period when the line between folk and popular music was indistinct. We also have a nice line in political songs, and have written a few telling songs about the places where we live and visit.

Annie and Steve are true community musicians, performing not just in festivals and in folk clubs across England but for history societies, community groups, political events, weddings, birthdays and funerals. 

We are residents at the Ryburn 3-Step folk club. We also perform with Vic Gammon as Dearman, Gammon & Harrison, whose CD Black Crow/ White Crow was released by the English Folk Dance & Song Society in 2005 to enthusiastic reviews. Annie also performs locally with Chris Coe, whilst Steve is a member of the ceilidh/ barn dance bands The Black Box Band (with Chris Coe, Chris Partington, Alice Jones and Sue Coe) and Phoenix (with Rod Stradling, Fran Wade, Kevin Bown & Mike Pinder).


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