Acoustic folk music - keeping up a long tradition

Here’s a video of the first public performance of Eat Right at my house concert at 99 York Street in Kingston in January, 2026:

Here is a video of Ellie’s Lullaby, sung with Randi Helmers, performed at my home, with Tom Ionson filming & mixing.

It happens that I favour pith and gist over froth and gloss. Small audience concerts provide experiences that cannot be reproduced in large spectacles. I present original, contemporary, and traditional songs that feature meaningful content, and often humour. Unlike screen “interactions”, small audience concerts provide meaningful human interaction, and usually, some fun!

Robbie Burns: “Pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth are higher rank than all that.”

Milton: “Fit audience find, though few.”

CAUTIONARY NOTE:

THE VIDEOS ON THE WEBSITE MAY NOT ALLOW IMMEDIATE VIEWING - PLEASE BE PATIENT, AND ALLOW DOWNLOAD TIME AFTER SELECTING THEM….SORRY, IT’S A FEATURE OF SQUARESPACE THAT IS DISTINCTLY NON-IDEAL!!!

Alternate: No waiting version of Ellie’s Lullaby on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLqgIxMux1U

The music starts about 10 seconds in - that is deliberate!

Calliope Music, Meadowlark Studios, Spontaneous Zucchini Choirs, Shacklebreaker Singers, Free Radicals, ……….. etc. ………….

Six albums of adult material, three for children; 10 province, 40 appearance solo tour in 1992, the “Original Trans-Canada Anti-commercial Direct Contact Full Age Spectrum Organic Acoustic Busking Tour”; more than 30 songs composed for choirs, published as We’ll Sing for Pleasure, We’ll Sing to Please in 2020…and still going.

Recordings available

Song contest notice (2025) and Songbook for choirs (2020)

I did three or four house concerts on the 1992 tour, and have done a couple of dozen since. I did four in the past year, the most recent two of which were fundraisers for the local food bank. From 2000 until around 2018 I wrote exclusively songs for choirs, having taken over as director of a fundraising 20 voice choir in 2005. Sometime around 2024 I was jolted into writing some folk style songs in response to nastiness emerging from South of here. (“For that pathological greed, we really, really need a cure”} My latest album would not have been produced without that stimulus!

At present I am continuing as a member of two choirs, the Martello Alley Cats, based in Kingston, and Melodia, with singers from Kingston and area. I am continuing to write new material for those choirs as well as for choirs linked with Queen’s University, and I am still keeping up my folk-style writing for solo performances..

It is my experience that there is something unique and worth preserving about small audience concerts, so I am making them my primary focus these years in my solo work. I joke with people in my search for hosts - it is for a limited time only!! Hardly a joke when you have the seniority I have!

Here is the commentary included in the Living This Day package:

Favouring pith and gist over froth and gloss, I am part of a small group of musicians strongly committed to working to keep acoustic folk music alive. Music is not an industry. Spectacle spurred by profit stifles substance.

It is important to maintain certain ancient cultural features of folk music such as gathering to share stories and humour, and vocalizing together in melodies and harmonies. Sharing common rhythms in small groups is held to contribute positively to mental health and emotional balance. In the current era of electronic overkill, deliberate spread of misinformation, pathological greed, and pseudohuman influence and control, some of these cultural practices are in danger of being lost.

Here’s a link to a video interview I did in January, 2026 with Greg Shanks in Texas:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YzvnsNr_gbs

Thanks, Greg - It was a pleasure!

Here is a video of Come to Me for Comfort, the song which got honourable mention in the International Songwriters’ Day song writing contest in 2025. There were entries from 27 countries, so it wasn’t a bad outcome!! Video: Michael Cranford and Darrell Snedecor.

Another of my interests is growing untreated vegetables for the local food banks. I won an award in 2024 for growing and donating an average of over a ton of hand tended produce for 4 years straight.

I was the drummer/vocalist in two bands in the 80’s, Diner, and Clergy Street Beat. I decided to try my skills again for Money Trouble on the Living This Day album…..and it was REALLY FUN!!!!!