Pitmen Poets: from the Land of Three Rivers to the Strawbs
June 04, 2024
Colin Randall writes:
On first hearing of the Pitmen Poets' new album Re-union, experience told me to stand by for a rebuke from Bob Fox.
Twenty-four years ago, when I made Fox's Dreams Never Leave You my Daily Telegraph folk album of the year, he reminded me more than once that I'd initially been less enthusiastic, commending it more as a gateway to his work. But as I wrote rather more recently (2021), the record "simply grew and grew on me".
All the same, it was arguably a bad if honest look for a critic, albeit a part-time one whose main job was in news. And I feared at first that the same might happen with Re-union.
L to R: Jez Lowe, Bob Fox, Billy Mitchell and Bennie Graham. Photo: Pitmen Poets
Regular readers will recall the praise I heaped on Bare Knuckle. I made it my album of 2022 and the band's superb version of Ed Pickford's The Workers' Song my track of the year.
But Re-union also has much to commend it. The late and much-missed Vin Garbutt’s Land of Three Rivers, presenting the Wear, Tees and Tyne (in that particular order) as components of a proud North-easterner’s make-up, is a masterpiece that Fox covers with pride and respect.
The band scores heavily again with such tracks as the trio of Jez Lowe songs, Barry and the Anthracites, Hoping Mr Loach and Long Walk Home, and the opener is another excellent Pickford rallying cry for organised labour, If They Come for You in the Morning.
As we have come to expect, Billy Mitchell and Benny Graham play their full part in ensuring a consistently high quality of performance. The Coal Owner and the Pitman's Wife, with Fox again in fine voice, perfectly evokes the contrasting lives led by rich and poor, as intended by its author William Hornsby, a Durham miner from the mid-19th century.
My one quarrel is barely rational, a personal dislike of Part of the Union, a novelty hit in 1973 for the Strawbs. Back then, I was among those who saw it as mocking workers. The Strawbs insisted this was not the case but I still find the lyrics and tone tend to infantilise trade unionism; I also don’t think it’s much of a song anyway. That said, it's rousing enough in this interpretation for me to guess that the Pitmen Poets bring down houses with it.
It's a trifling complaint. And unlike Dreams Never Leave You, it has taken only a few listens for Re-union, to establish itself as a worthy successor to the comprehensive triumph that was Bare Knuckle.
If you trust my word, buy the album from the band.
See also:
Pitmen Poets: sold out in person, but live online
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