Gardeners Green Folk Music Club is kicking off a new season of events with a house concert this Saturday, beginning promptly at 7 p.m.
Graham Metcalfe, a collector and singer of traditional English folk songs, performs. He hails from the village of Upper Poppleton, near York. He has been singing for fifty years, both on his own and as part of various combinations of well-known singers on the English folk scene, and contributed to various CDs. For the last thirty years he has been an important part of the extremely rich traditional music scene in Oxford, where he is known as “Oxford’s favourite Yorkshireman”.
Metcalfe says he was “born at an early age in a Yorkshire village, the only music to follow was rock’n’roll. However, it lost something in the dialect, so after trying this and that, I stumbled into folk music, which at first I treated like an old sock - at arm’s length - but it soon grew on me and it’s been downhill ever since.”
Metcalfe possesses a rich, warm, mellow voice, singing folk songs as perhaps they were always meant to be – sung by an ordinary man in the way he wants to sing them.
The style is true Yorkshire, and true Metcalfe. Perhaps best known in trios like Folly Bridge, Metcalfe is an impressive singer in his own right. He is naturally relaxed and totally at ease with his chosen material, which he performs with real conviction and not a trace of complacency.
To reserve tickets call 250-337-5337. Cost is $20 and includes hot drinks and a bountious dessert buffet. The music club will also hold another one of its popular charity raffles for Families for Children during the evening, with great prizes, as always. Metcalfe and his wife Lucinde are keen to have a singaround/song exchange after the concert, anyone wishing to participate, or to just listen, are welcome to stay.