"It was fantastic to see you again and hear you sing and play in your oh so distinctive style. Your charm and humility is so heartwarming in these days of brash incompetence!!!!!” Mim Erasmus (nee Backhouse) after Tenterden Folk Festival.

So what have I been up to? Well, over the summer I did my stint as Folk Tutor at the Workers Music Association Summer School again - my 4th year. It's interesting and challenging work with a group of 15-20 adults with a variety of interests, skills and instruments. It's also the only place I ever call for dancing. At the end of that month there was a storytelling festival on Teeside, a quiet September and then it’s been mad, non-stop work ever since! There’s always too much or too little, never just the right amount! I’ve done a lot of schools work this term around home and down in Kent. That’s our annual Bards Ballads & Beyond tour organised by Tenterden Folk Festival. Bing Lyle and I taking a mix of song, dance and stories into various schools, a couple of which we’ve done every year for nearly 10 years. It really pays off, the kids have a good grasp of folk music and quite a repertoire. Tenterden was a real success and I enjoyed it a lot this year. Highlight was the final concert which I shared with Fanfare Ciocarlia, a 14 strong Gypsy brass band from Romania. Amazing music and a great occasion. I also enjoyed interviewing Mim Erasmus who you might remember as Miriam Backhouse when she lived in UK 26 years ago. She’s now resident in S.Africa and it was interesting to hear about the folk scene there and to hear some of the songs she’s writing now.

Going back a bit I started the year with an unusual project. Sue and I (my wife, a writer) were employed by Amber Valley Council in Derbyshire to do a health/writing project called Body Language. We interviewed lots of people in doctors’ surgeries and hospital waiting rooms about their ailments and body image. We recorded their comments and then with 3D artist Richard Kensington we created The Heanor Chair Person - an 8ft high 'papier mache' figure covered all over with sound bites of their responses. It toured various venues around Amber Valley and the scheme got a very good write-up by the council—made us feel quite proud that we were responsible for it. I did various festivals over the summer and enjoyed them a lot— three days at the Rochester Sweeps Festival in Kent in May where I did 8 x 1 hour storytelling/song performances in the Charles Dickens Centre: Chippenham Folk Festival at the end of May which, again, was very enjoyable - a nice mix of singing and telling: I kicked off Oundle Arts Festival with an open-air performance in the churchyard until we were driven away by the bell ringers! That was followed by a day at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum in Sussex. It was a pleasant, laid-back day, one of those events where you never get a large audience but do get nice comments and interesting reactions. It was good to pop into the North Cray house again, the scene of one of my favourite performances ever - on the final Popeluc tour. From there I had to drive straight back to be at Wickstead Park in Northants for Monday morning. Stories in the Park (the 2nd year) brings schools into the park to hear storytellers, have a picnic and a go on the rides. A good day out for the kids and enjoyable work all week.

THE NEW ALBUMS

To mark my 25th anniversary I wanted to do a new CD which was representative of my work now. Therefore it had to include both songs and stories, as the time I spend on each is very much 50/50. Once I started recording though, I realised that I had too much material - stories take too much room! So I went back to an idea I’d previously discarded - of doing a pair of complementary albums. One is mainly songs with just a couple of short stories and the other stories with a song and a couple of bits of music. Although I didn't plan it that way these albums also tie up all kinds of loose ends—there are a couple of songs I've been doing for a while which people had wanted me to record but I hadn't until now; there are several songs I had been wanting to sing but been unable to find a way of doing; and one which was on a never-completed album which I started recording back in 1979! plus, of course, a couple of new songs.

The stories are a pretty similar mix - a couple of favourites, a couple of new ones and one I've tried several approaches to. On both albums I'm helped out musically by regular collaborators Lucy Castle, fiddle and Bing Lyle, accordion; plus, for the first time, Lorin Halsall, bass; and Rob Barber, drums. Lorin and Rob played with Lucy in a band called UPR a year or two ago. Although it is all, basically, trad. English material the sounds range from unaccompanied vocal, through my usual vocal and guitar, to a Hungarian influenced big band version of the Outlandish Knight and a very Maramures flavoured Death & the Lady. Oh, and there's also a tango!

Full track list is:

THE OUTLANDISH KNIGHT (the song album) - Green Brooms, The Dark Eyed Gypsy, The Outlandish Knight, Be Polite Be Kind (story), Banks of Sweet Primroses, As I Roved Out, Basket of Eggs/Rambling Sailor, Death & the Lady/Maramures Funeral Song, 3 Men Went a-Hunting, The 3 Sillies (story), 3 Maidens a-Milking Did Go.

TAPPING AT THE BLIND - (mainly stories) Tapping at the Blind, The Maestro, The Armless Maiden, The Man in the Woods (song) The Woman Who Married a Bear/Bear Dance, At Last We’re Alone. (Note: this is definitely not an album for the kiddies. It's adult material - but that doesn't mean blue.)

I am selling the two CDs separately for those who want only songs or only stories but they do very much go together so one CD is £10 but the two together are just £15! How’s that for a bargain?

REVIEWS

Both albums have been well received verbally. I haven’t sent them out very widely for review but here are a couple:

Pete Castle The Outlandish Knight/Tapping at the Blind MATSO24 & MATS025 from eds autumn 2003

This is a pair of CDs which reflect the two sides of Pete Castle’s performance. 'The Outlandish Knight subtitled 'mainly songs', provides a yin to the yang of 'Tapping at the Blind', which carries the message, 'mainly stories'. It might be worth pointing out at this stage that the second of these carries the unusual notice, 'not suitable for young children'. So here we have a 'Certificate 18' folk CD That alone must make it worth the price?

The former album carries a series of creditable and workmanlike performances of narrative songs which Pete delivers in a strong steady voice with accompaniments by daughter Lucy with Bing Lyle, Lorin Halsall and Rob Barber. The style is mostly simple and straightforward but the hypnotic driving quality of the title track owes a great deal to Pete and Lucy's earlier exploration of Eastern European music in the band 'Popeluc'. The token story on this track 'Be Polite, Be Kind' is followed by the sparse unaccompanied rendering of 'Banks of Sweet Primroses'. This is a juxtaposition which allows the listener to compare the storyteller and the singer. The story is melodic and the song has a wonderfully intimate spoken quality.

In the second CD Pete tells a series of stories which carry morals and warnings. This is often stuff which makes the message on a cigarette packet seem like a casual comment. There are real health warnings among Pete's stories, some of which are from classic collections like the famous, 'Household Tales' of the Grimm brothers. It's strange how in a ballad with a melody to carry the story the unpleasant can be glossed over and accepted but the Story of the Armless Maiden is horrendous in the extreme and sadly not as fictitious as one might wish. The tales on this album are lacking in political correctness but are bold and daring. The whole package of two CDs is worth every penny of the £15 total price and it is unlikely that you’ll find stuff like this very often. Paul Davenport

Tapping at the Blind and The Outlandish Knight

Reviewed by Peter Dicken in Storylines

Pete Castle always has an engaging smile in his voice, which helps to move the story along and on Tapping at the Blind there are some good stories, told in a simple unaffected style. Enjoyable though most of these tales are, the tone of the telling is sometimes too conversational to be effective as recorded home entertainment. The Maestro, for example, is so homely that even though the ghostliness eerily shines through, it sounds as though it is there to fill a space, not to fulfil a purpose. The Armless Woman did have me sitting up and taking notice, an excellent story, well compiled and researched, horrifying in its closeness to reality, yet relieved, paradoxically, by its excess. Some light relief is provided by the delightful The Man in the Woods and the brief finale, At Last We're Alone! is bound to leave a smile on anyone's face.

Whereas Tapping at the Blind is mainly stories and a couple of songs, with The Outlandish Knight, Pete is on much firmer ground. Here there are two lighthearted stories, suited to the teller's style. Be Polite, Be Kind is the apocryphal tale of unborn twins so polite that they never did see the light of day and The Three Sillies is a version of a popular and instructive story wrapped up in attractive packaging. But where this CD really scores is in the songs; from the witty Green Brooms to the clever girls in The Outlandish Knight and Basket of Fggs the quality of both the lyrics and tunes is excellent. The music is decently understated but with a driving rhythm that makes the listener want to get up and dance and becomes especially poignant in As I Roved Out. However, although Death and the LadylMaramures Funeral Song may well have been enjoyed by the band and could be the focus of an end-of-the-evening session I found its self-indulgence disappointing on an otherwise good album.

OTHER NEW PUBLICATIONS

Especially of interest if you’re into things about Kent or werewolves is: HUGHES, the wer-wolf: a Kentish Legend of the Middle Ages written by Sutherland Menzies in 1838. Hughes was one of the first books Steel Carpet published back in 1989. It was pretty primitive, done on a type-writer with scissors and glue etc and it sold out ages ago. I’ve now rejigged it all and added a lot of extra info. - extensive notes, more werewolf stories etc, and it’s available again price £5.00

I have also produced a couple of books of poetry—not mine I hasten to add!

SPONSORED BY SPIRAL PAD is a little book of poems by Sue Castle (my wife) and

EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY is a collection by Derby City Poets. They are both very good.

FACTS & FICTION

I continue to edit the storytelling magazine Facts & Fiction, which is the only independent storytelling magazine in the UK. It's based on traditional oral storytelling but covers all other aspects of the art too. Over the three years or so I've been in charge it's developed nicely and now I'm quite proud of it. It’s a lot of work and doesn’t make money (just covers its costs) but its stimulating and interesting and opens a few doors. I even managed to stir up a bit of controversy and get some angry letters recently which is pretty good as the storytelling world seems even more unwilling to debate than the folk scene.

"It's been a while since I listened to traditional folk and I'd forgotten how wickedly dry and unsentimental these songs can be. The revelation on this album is "FANNY BLAIR", a lean, angry piece of early 19th century tabloid journalism which deals with the case of a young man hanged for raping a child. The balladeer takes the side of the accused and threatens vigilante justice on the "perjuring little whore" who sent him to the gallows. It's fearsome and troubling and Castle ends it with a series of isolated chords that sound like question marks. Was Henry Higgins really innocent? How do his protestations weigh against the vivid image of the eleven year old Fanny stood on a table to deliver her damning testimony to the court? It's a mighty piece of work, as timeless as the Oresteia and as up to date as this Sunday's News of the World.

Other pieces are more familiar. "THE TREES THAT (sic) GROW SO HIGH" is a classic — bawdy, blackly humorous and full of pathos. "THE CUCKOO", which has one of the loveliest melodies in the repertoire, appears here in a version freshened up with extra lyrics.

Castle has a warm, open voice — and his treatment of the songs is listener-friendly but doesn't muffle the jagged edges. He cares deeply for the stories they tell and makes sure that all the words can be heard. The accompaniment is generally light and the purely instrumental tracks are jolly and run of the mill. My wife, who knows about these things, says "THE ROGUE'S MARCH" is a virtuoso piece and she's heard it done better. Certain tracks, notably "THE BUCKWORTH MAY SONG", are heavily influenced by Romanian folk music — an influence imported into the mix by fiddle-player Lucy Castle-Hotea.

MEARCSTAPA is an old English word for boundary stone. Castle and his band beat the bounds of the tradition and occasionally step outside it into the territory of world music. It's a CD I'll be listening to again and again for its lucid treatment of some very great songs." reviewer: Tony Grist.

 PETE CASTLE: THE JENNY & THE FRAME & THE MULE

"Folk music has always had an edge over most other types of popular music in that it is used to record history through song. This new album by guitarist/vocalist Pete Castle is a 'concept' album telling the story of Richard Arkwright and his Cromford Mill, and specifically the rise of the cotton industry. This was the dawn of the British industrial revolution, and the longstanding rural workforce were slowly moving to the towns to find work in the huge mills and factories which quickly appeared to benefit from the inventions of that time.

So, THE JENNY... is a collection of songs and readings — the songs based on traditional songs and tunes of the period, the readings taken from contemporary accounts. In style, THE JENNY... reminds me of the groundbreaking semi-documentary albums that Ashley Hutchings and the Albion Band made back in the 70s, but the musical line-up here is 100% acoustic, with no rock trappings. The seventeen songs and narrations describe a stark lifestyle for most of the workers in the mills, many of them uneducated children. As a historical document of a time long gone this album is a fascinating example of the genre, and musically a fine folk album as well." Reviewer John M.Peters

AND FINALLY:

Both EDS and Tradition magazine ran interviews with me in recent editions. Both were extracts from a much longer interview which Roy Harris did. Here is the complete transcript:

PETE: A combination really. If pushed to one word I'd probably say now that I’d plump for ‘storyteller’ but with the proviso that at least half my stories are sung.

PETE. Really that's always been the case. I think it’s usually been the song words that have attracted me first. Over the years I've sung a shanty or two or song that I'm not entirely convinced about to try to please the audience, but I'm definitely not a shanty singer, and I wouldn't do it now.

PETE. No, definitely not. Most of those songs were probably story songs as well. I sang 'Masters of War', wrote 'The Iron Lady' about the Falklands. They were pretty much telling stories even though they were political. I still think traditional stuff, storytelling stuff, must have a modern, contemporary relevance, commenting on what's going on now, not just museum pieces.

PETE Some of them do, yes. I think the same about songs and stories. Most of them are about people and people haven't changed since they first became people. The trappings of what you've got, where you go and what you do change, but basically, inside, I think we're the same as we were when we lived in caves. And so if you're talking about feelings and peoples’ relationships, things like that, it doesn't matter how old the story is. It still works.

ROY. On the other hand it could be said that a modern generation is unlikely to believe in fairy tale princesses, tales of feudal days and disaffected peasantry and the like...

PETE. That's a shorthand though isn't it? A stereotype, to enable you to avoid having to go into a 45 minute description about who she was and what she was. That's the superficial aspect of the story, and what really matters is what they do, their relationships to each other, troubles they have to overcome and how they reconcile it, things like that. And I think whoever it is, whatever age bracket, you can tell them stories about ogres and fairies, things like that and they see past that and they enjoy it because it’s some innocent, helpless, little person overcoming the ills and wrongs, coming out on top by using their wiles. A song I've recently started singing is Green Brooms, which I've been aware of for donkey's years but haven’t sung before. I introduce it by saying "You'll all be able to identify with this; it's a song about a teenage son who can't get out of bed before noon every day and his Dad threatens to set fire to his bed if he doesn't get out and find a job. And I know about that situation because I've had a son like that and I'm sure many others have."

PETE. There probably are, but I don't do any. In a way that seems too restrictive - identifying one particular person in one particular setting, whereas if you leave it more abstract everyone can identify with it, it won't go out of date.

PETE. I started out, 14/15 years old, wanting to join a pop group because the Merseybeat thing was big at that time. I got a guitar for Christmas and started to play that sort of stuff and The Shadows etc, but somehow progressed. I was hanging around with people 3 or 4 years older than I was and they had a lot of American R&B, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles - Smokestack Lightening, that kind of stuff.... Then I went to college at Bretton Hall, Nr Wakefield, Yorks, and there was very little outlet for that there, but there was a folk club. So I thought "What can I play on acoustic guitar in the folk club?" The answer came down to 'The House of the Rising Sun' and 'The House of the Rising Sun'...! so I went, and gradually got into Dylan and Paul Simon, those kinds of things. After college, living near Spalding, I started to go around folk clubs in Boston, Peterborough, and so on. I saw John Pearse, Martin Carthy, Alex Campbell - I believe I probably saw you too. So from the singer/songwriter type of folk music I got into Carthy, Nic Jones, people like that. I was writing songs as well as singing traditional stuff. When I started seriously thinking about going out for gigs I thought that the two styles did not really go together so I had to make a decision about which did I really want to do. I chose the trad stuff.

PETE. No it wasn't really, not a sudden 'flash of lightning'. It was a long road, gradually going back one step at a time from English pop to American pop, to the roots of pop, and so on. And in folk I learned from the revival people, then looked back to the source people. Which I probably listen to a lot more than any other kind nowadays.

PETE. I had enjoyed teaching but the school I eventually ended up in I did not enjoy! I was fed up and there seemed no way out but there was, perhaps, a possibility of doing music full time. I thought "Give it a go. If I don't now I never will in the future. If it doesn't work out that’s too bad but at least I gave it a go."

PETE. No! Couldn't stand it. It was bad enough then but with all the restrictions now.... I do enjoy going into school now, doing what I do, I'm sure I teach the kids far more in the half a day that I'm there than I did in a week as a teacher.

PETE. When I first started professionally it was just past the boom years really.

PETE. 1978, 25 years ago. There were plenty of clubs, you could make a living purely from clubs and festivals, which you couldn't do now. There were some hard years - lots of hard years! but still, they've been fun years. Then, I think there was a bit of fragmentation. Some clubs were trad clubs, some were contemporary clubs, and somehow I was never traddy enough for the trad clubs nor contemporary enough for the others, so I went around the clubs that had a bit of everything. I'm not too annoyed about it but I think some people have perhaps misunderstood what I was doing. I've never been fashionable enough to be in with some of the movers and shakers of the folk scene. I had to try to be fashionable at times but now I've reached the stage where I can do what I want to do and if people don't want it, okay, they don't....

PETE. Oh it has. There are nowhere near as many clubs and there aren't very many that are as well supported. I really love folk clubs, I must say that. They're still the core of what I do, of my philosophy of how to do it. I've had some fantastic nights in folk clubs, but also some of the most frustrating disheartening nights too. I don't like the way some have got so businesslike and fashion conscious if you like... who will only book the people who are 'flavour of the month', and other things that annoy me about how lazy some clubs are...

PETE. In terms of everything. Attitudes like "We've got a dozen people who come. We can get by with that so we don't need to tell anyone else." "We know 10 songs so we'll sing those 10 songs. We don't want to know number 11." "We can play this on our melodeons so we don't need to get any better." Some organisers are brilliant, some couldn't organise a thing! The most annoying thing about some organisers is that they don't know anything about the wider scene. They know what they read about in the fashionable folk press and don't bother to look at other events or even read more widely. Some are so parochial, they guard their clubs like a personal empire. That's illustrated by clubs where you try year after year and can't get a booking, suddenly the organiser changes and you're booked for the next 6 years in a row. Or vice versa.... Failure to start on time, going on too late, bad timing of floorspots and guest spots, failure to provide accommodation previously agreed.... It goes on...

PETE. Well, the travelling is a bit of a bind, bad weather, bad road conditions. And you've got to go out whether you actually want to or not.

PETE. Performing. When it all goes well. For me, that's my drug. That keeps me going, now and again when you get it right and they know you've got it right, and you continuously search for it to happen again. This applies to telling as well as singing, I don't differentiate between the two. I' ve just done 8 one hour sessions in the course of one weekend and they were all different in that the audiences were different every time. One session had a lot of children, another had a lot of elderly ladies, that’s part of the challenge.

PETE. I can't really remember. From around 1985 I became aware that there was storytelling going on because I was running a folk club at Eaton Bray and I booked a storyteller for that. Then when I was working in schools stories seemed to do well and I wondered if perhaps they might fit in a folk club gig so it was then a case of hunting around for something suitable to tell in clubs. Some of my ballads had similar stories anyway so why not try telling it instead of singing it?

PETE. Usually in folk clubs I'll put in 2 or 3 short stories, roughly the same length as a song, if it does well I might try something longer in the second set. But mostly the balance is towards songs. Some clubs will say 'no stories please', others say 'We hope you're going to do some stories'. Sometimes an audience member will come up and offer a story. It feels good to know you've moved them to respond in that way. I've done telling at old peoples’ luncheon clubs and had people come up and tell me stories that are close to things in my repertoire.

PETE. Schools of all kinds. Further Education places, Youth Clubs, The Rotary, that sort of thing. Recently, the local elderly persons circuit. Community plays and songwriting projects involving whole villages, that's very exciting. Like the village project at Bassingham, Lincs. That was the first one. Rosie Cross, ex-Pyewacket, now an Arts Officer, asked me to do that. It took about a year to do and produced drama and home-made songs. At the end we had a packed village hall, with the W.I, teenagers, schoolkids, old folks, it all went out on Radio Lincolnshire. I've done similar things now all over the country.

PETE. There is, there are story clubs and there are tellers booked in arts festivals, and story festivals. I'd like to see more grassroots clubs to help the form spread and continue but I'm not sure that will happen.

PETE. Both of those. I have the folk club approach - but a lot of tellers come from theatrical/literary angle. They do take up a more of a star system, less participation.

PETE. The latter. I work in places without much setting facilities. All I need is an audience. I don't use a PA if I can help it.

PETE. I use the same kind of material wherever I go and it usually works. I sing folk songs not Daisy, Daisy. Obviously not the heavy stuff but things like The Devil & the Farmer’s Wife can be appreciated by anyone. I'll go anywhere I am invited although experience has taught me to be wary of some gigs - works parties for instance, places where they don’t realise that they have to listen, but basically I'd consider anywhere. And the stories often work where the songs don’t. I’ve done some interesting work at the Summer School of the WMA (Workers Music Association) at Wortley, Sheffield. They have all kinds of music making - brass bands, choral, orchestras etc, people of all standards. I’ve done their Folk Music course for the last few years and it’s very refreshing because a lot of them are new to it. I did my first bit of dance calling there.

PETE. Yes, last year working on reminiscences we created a play. Great fun.

PETE. I want them to run in tandem. I wouldn't want to lose either.

PETE. It can be all of those things but above all I see it as entertainment. If it does other things for some listeners so much the better but I'm a bit wary of people doing telling as therapy or enlightenment etc because they may not be trained as therapists and what might they open up? Storytelling as a tool from a trained therapist is fine, but I would draw the line at telling for someone who asked me to tell as a sort of therapy group.

PETE. I would leap at such a chance. I think it would be a good medium for stories. I once saw Garrison Keillor doing one of his shows from a theatre in America, just standing talking to the camera. It must have been the cheapest show ever done. He just stood there and talked to the audience and it was absolutely riveting and I think to do a programme like that would be fantastic. Another person that did it to great effect was Dave Allen. He was thought of as a comedian, but he was a great storyteller. There has been storytelling on telly but in children's shows, with props and costumes. The Keillor thing was done with a live audience, I should think that would be far easier than just standing talking to a camera. Without an audience, that would be difficult. I think that properly handled storytelling on TV would be a great thing.

PETE. Family music began when I met my wife Sue. We used to sing together in folk clubs as a duo, also with various groups. Sue only stopped when I got into being a pro. Our son Chris isn't into folk music, he likes House and Garage etc. Lucy was into it from the start, as soon as she could get a note out of the violin she started playing along with me. She became a very good player, and at around 17-18 years of age she decided she wasn't going to follow the classical music career she had planned out but would go into folk music, although East European folk music rather than British, though she still played some English music with me. Her East European interest led me into it - Romania, Hungary, Transylvania, then specifically the Romanian district of Maramures. Her research led to bringing a Maramures musician to England, enlisting me into a trio playing a mixture of English and Romanian music - a band called Popeluc. We did a lot of touring at home and abroad and it was a great experience, opened a lot of doors. It's ended now but Lucy and I still play and there is an influence into our English songs.

PETE. My storytelling magazine... I've been editing it for about 4 years. It comes out quarterly. I took it over from the late Richard Walker, known as 'Moggsy the Storyteller'. He’d done his bit and we agreed that he would do one more edition then hand it over to me but sadly he died, so I took it on at a moment’s notice. It has built up nicely. It's a lot of work but I enjoy editing it. I get a lot of support from the storytelling world. I get plenty of material submitted. My biggest problem is fitting everything in. Sometimes the magazine is full a month before publication so the problem becomes what to leave out.

PETE. I suppose there could be some things that I wouldn't include but the only things I have rejected so far have been from people who sent poems and short stories thinking it was a writers magazine. Basically I try to cover as wide a spectrum of the storytelling world as possible, and the nooks and crannies where telling is relevant, bits of folk, theatre, film.

PETE. I'm pleased to say I've managed to create some. The biggest thing though was when I dared to print a bad review. I didn't write it, I just published it. And I think it was a very fair review, the writer obviously caught a well-known teller on a bad night and said so. Someone cancelled their subscription because of it! But controversy is no bad thing, constructive criticism makes people think. As I said, not everyone shares the same opinion, one mans meat etc. There are some readers who say the mag shouldn't be controversial - the 'we must stick together' attitude, but on the whole reaction to the magazine is good..

PETE. We have gone up in pages from 12 to 34, without an increase in cost. Added many more subscribers. I would definitely like more subscribers so that we could afford a colour cover and just a few more pages. Content wise I'm pretty happy with it. It has a good variety of articles written by a good variety of people. Sometimes I commission articles, sometimes people volunteer them. And there is an open invitation for people to send in stories, and they do. For the last edition I went out and hunted up an Iraqi story. I glean from wherever possible. We circulate to GB, Europe, USA, Australia, not hundreds abroad just the odd one here and there but it's encouraging. I'd like more. I love doing the magazine. I consider it my hobby as much as part of my work.

PETE. That's my publishing and recording arm. Steel Carpet is an anagram of my name. All my own recording now is on Steel Carpet and I've done storytelling tapes including other people. Also CDs of Derbyshire songs with various singers and Kentish stuff. But basically it's my own stuff. I don’t want to record just anybody.

PETE. Just keeping going is a success. I've never been a superstar but I'm still here. I've progressed as a performer a tremendous amount, which is another plus. And I hope I've given a lot of people a little bit of pleasure along the way. That's success.

If you run a folk club or are involved with Village Hall entertainments; if you are a teacher or a librarian or if you may be interested in using Pete in any way, as either a musician or a storyteller, whilst he is in your area then please don't hesitate to get in touch. He's always willing to consider opportunities and to do a deal on fees, particularly if it's a 'good cause' or something different and interesting.