Helen Brown finds that youth music is a growing force in the Barnard Castle area

MARTIN Carthy, one of folk music’s greatest innovators and one of its best loved, will be making a guest appearance at the Witham Hall on Friday, November 28. Carthy is showing support for Barnard Castle’s newest young folk band, Cream Tees, who will perform the world premiere of their own folk composition, Rooted – A Teesdale Suite.

The concert is the climax of a year-long project with Music at the Heart of Teesdale (M@HoT), an organisation created to encourage and revive local folk music and its traditions. The project came about when two fathers met while collecting their daughters from a ballet lesson.

After moving to Barnard Castle from Hexham, conservationist Neil Diment, was looking for an outlet for his daughter, Milly, to pursue her love of folk music and continue her eduction on the fiddle. “It was a chance meeting.” says Neil. “I was collecting my daughter from ballet at the Witham, when I met up with local folk music historian and theatre entrepreneur, Mike Bettison, who was also collecting his daughter. Anyway, we got to discussing music, and my search for an organisation for Milly to join. To cut a long story short, he and I set about creating M@HoT.”

That was five years ago and with the help of various local bodies and funding, mostly from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the two began looking for experts in the folk field to teach the relevant music skills to young people. The group's main idea of setting up a new youth folk band was soon realised and a dozen young musicians between the ages of 11 and 18 named themselves Cream Tees.

“We’ve had fantastic help from professional folk musicians Sophy Ball and Ian Stephenson, who have put in a huge amount of work on the New Composition Project,” says Neil, who can reel off a huge list of people that have become involved in the project.

“We got all the band members in a minibus and took them on a whistle-stop tour of the iconic places in Teesdale. They clambered down to the Meeting of the Waters, shivered among the ruins of Bowes Castle, were saddened by the story of hard times and cruelty at Dotheboys Hall, but the sun shone on Cotherstone Moor. Even so, we were glad to return to the warmth of our spiritual home at The Hub in Barnard Castle,” he adds.

There, with the guidance of tutors Sophy and Ian, the young musicians began to turn their emotions and feelings into music to capture the essence of the dale.

Four separate tunes eventually emerged: Teddy Boys Anthem, Cream Tees Schottische, Meeting of the Waters and Teesdale Rambler, which were arranged with additional material by Sophy and Ian. The new compositions were rehearsed at a residential workshop at Langdon Beck youth hostel in June, and recorded on CD at The Hub in October.

Fiddler Milly, the band's leader says: “I think it’s the best thing I’ve done so far, it's great that we’ve written this and are now raring to perform our own piece of music inspired by where we live."

Rosie Cross and Mike Bettison will open the show with Notes from Teesdale',their entertaining mix of songs and tunes they’ve gathered as part of the M@HoT research project. Rosie says, “The concert will also give us an opportunity to celebrate the first three years of the project and to say a big thank you to our many friends, supporters, sponsors and volunteers, who have helped us begin to achieve our aim of reviving the folk music, song and dance traditions of Teesdale.”

The Rooted Concert also features concertina player and former gamekeeper Septimus Fawcett, who was born in Baldersdale, and is now in his 80s, but still performing the tunes he learned from his shepherd father, Sam, before most of us were born.

Guest star Carthy is regarded by many as the greatest English folk song performer. Mike Bettison was delighted when Martin agreed to support the project by performing at the concert and says: "We feel honoured to be able to welcome to Barnard Castle one of folk music’s great ambassadors.” Martin recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the this year's BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. His settings of traditional songs with guitar have influenced a whole generation of artists, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, both of whom he has appeared with on stage.

Rooted – The Teesdale Suite. Friday, November 28, 7.30pm. Box Office: 01833-631107 or thewitham.org.uk.

For more details contact Neil Diment at neil@ndiment.co.uk