Tamnation

Colin Irwin celebrates the re-emergence of the enigmatic John 'laughing boy' Tams

Enduring images from the memory vaults, Part 392: it's what? 1971? '72? A group of reprobate students on a pub crawl across Derbyshire were drawn to a pub in Derby on a dank Sunday night. Someone had said it housed a folk club. That it was the grooviest place in Derby. That The Druids - a group mentioned only in hushed tones of awe and reverence in the company we kept at the time - sometimes played there. It was a Singers Night and we saw no Druids. But the tall, sallow-faced guy with mad hair who seemed to be running things sang magnificently and when my friend John Wheeler got up and sang Thorneymoor Woods he congratulated John on the song, keen to hear chapter and verse on how, where and why he'd learned it. We shared ale, bonhomie and warm handshakes and went on our way. "What did he say his name was?" asked a high-spirited Wheeler, three sheets to the wind. John Tams, I said. And we all somehow knew that wasn't the last we'd hear of him.

Vivid, affectionate visions of Tams litter the ensuing decades. From Muckram Wakes to the Albion Band to Home Service to Stalking Horses to The Questionnaires to endless appearances as actor/singer/musician/musical director at the National Theatre to producer, Tams has been a pivotal figure down the long years. A warm singer of natural emotion adaptable enough to skip from a traditional ballad - for which he might, in his younger days, have accompanied himself on concertina - to sharp, potent, noisy, violent self-written folk-rock songs featuring him playing searing electric guitar. And while his hangdog expression, deadpan manner and intense knowledge of traditional song always presented the illusion of a deeply earnest academic, he was one of the funniest front men who ever trod the boards. Hilariously surreal rambling introductions suggested he had a future in the Jasper Carrott/Billy Connolly/Mike Harding school of folk comedy, but Tams developed instead into one of the few songwriters convincingly able to marry the rich history of English folk song with modern sounds and pertinent social comment. There was an abortive attempt to become a teacher, a bizarre spell as an eccentric tea shop host and some odd, very odd, appearances in panto; but Tams' role in the whole genesis of current folk song is severely underrated. It was he, after all, who was instrumental in the introduction of brass to Home Service to rid the folk-rock movement of its rigid rhythmic restrictions and release the music from the impasse it reached in the mid-'70s.

If John Tams has seemed a peripheral figure then that's the fault of toe-rags like me for not shouting loudly enough. And while you could be excused for imagining he'd disappeared off the planet in the last five years, you'd be hopelessly off beam. In fact he sailed daringly close to becoming a household name playing the part of Daniel Hagman opposite Sean Bean in several series of ITV's war drama Sharpe, for which he also wrote the music. He even produced a best-selling album from the series which featured, among others, Kate Rusby.

His character was killed in the last series of Sharpe so that was finally that, freeing him at last to do something he'd yearned to do for a long time ­ make a solo album, put his own band together and go back on the road.

John Tams remains one of the scene's most enigmatic characters. The night before driving to Derbyshire to meet him I'd seen Bill Caddick in a folk club (also in fearlessly fine fettle as it happens, but that's another story) and asked him about Tams, his former Home Service partner. Caddick's eyes lit up, instantly hauling out a fund of anecdotes about National Theatre commissions for overnight songs and retreating from the pub armed with red wine to knock them out. "Waste of time really, we'd stay up all night writing this stuff and then the next day they'd find the play was overrunning so they chopped the songs out," said Bill. I asked if they'd fallen out, a question Caddick found hugely amusing. "Nobody falls out with Tam," he said. "He's never in one place long enough to fall out with him."

Tams is over 50 now but looks little different to the way he did in that club in Derby all those centuries ago. He's still skinny as a lettuce. Still redefines the word sallow. Still looks like he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Still has slightly mad hair. Still wields a wickedly acerbic sense of humour. Still has a fondness for red wine. Still talks with passionate conviction about his conviction in the music and the roots that shaped it. Still looks impossibly sad when in fact he's blissfully happy. Matter-of-factly he mentions going to the NME Awards as a guest of one of his co-stars in The Mysteries, Sue Johnstone, up for a gong with Caroline Aherne and the others for The Royle Family and passing the time of day with Blur, Sir Paul and all the others. Ken Livingstone was there too. "I said to him 'Are you going to come and see us at the National Theatre?' He said 'I dunno, I'm a bit busy trying to be Mayor of London'. I said 'Frank Dobson's been..." He said 'Book me a ticket!'"

John now lives in Matlock with his wife Sally and daughter Rosie in - at the risk of sounding like an extract from Hello magazine - a lovely house that's impossible to find. Wander outside and all you can see is a bunch of ants knocking a ball around at Matlock Town Football Club, some quiet country roads and a bunch of hills. Can't have been easy in recent months to drag himself down to London every other week to appear in the National Theatre's revival of The Mysteries, let alone carting off to Russia for months on end to film Sharpe.

Yet those long periods in the isolated environs of Eastern Europe provided much of the impetus and inspiration for his long-awaited solo album Unity, that's finally being released after an endless array of false starts. Half-driven loopy by homesickness and alienation, he still became emotionally immersed in the character of the people he met in Russia and the erratic political landscape of a nation in chaos.

"Yes, it was amazing," he says quietly. "We filmed in Russia and Turkey, down by the Syrian border. It was both broadening and narrowing at the same time. You took in a country that had recently fallen to pieces. It was in complete chaos and had been for some time when it fell to bits. There was no infra-structure at all. The schools had gone to pieces, the police had been overtaken by the mafia. They were KGB men on Friday and on Monday there was a mafia barracks with the same blokes, same automatic pistols. It was like Dodge City, real Wild West stuff, the chain had come right off."

"I don't think it's any better now. I'm writing a screenplay at the moment about it. About the Ukraine gifting lands back stolen in the revolution to try and re-start communities and attempting to reinvent those communities against mafia pressure."

The poignant origins of the Unity album ­ and Tams' comeback as a performer ­ were at Lal Waterson's funeral at the end of 1998. Tams co-founded the No Master's co-operative with Jim Boyes in 1990 and played a key role in coaxing Lal back into recording again. He'd produced one of her songs, Midnight Feast, for a No Master's sampler with son Oliver Knight on guitar, which directly led to the brilliant Once In A Blue Moon album released by Topic (and if you've got about three weeks I'll tell you in enormous detail exactly why it's the most original, moving, devastating album of the 1990s).

"Lal was one of the few total artists I've ever met. A wonderful painter and sculptor and one of the most extraordinary imaging writers we've had. She had a style much broader than Yorkshire or English or even European, she was global. Maybe Jacques Brel is comparable. Her funeral was very moving but upbeat in many respects. George Knight was determined we should celebrate, that there should be no tears. So somehow it didn't seem inappropriate when Ray Williams, who did a lot of engineering on the No Master's albums, said it would be a fitting occasion to start on something new."

A band was gradually assembled. Graeme Taylor on guitar, Andy Seward on bass, Alan Dunn on keyboards and accordeon (check him out at Sidmouth playing with Rolf Harris!), Keith Angel on drums plus guest vocal appearances by Barry Coope and ­ biggest surprise of all ­ Linda Thompson coming out of retirement. Unity was recorded pretty much live at Oliver Knight's studio in Robin Hood's Bay and, says John, is intended as a tribute to Lal Waterson.

The songs ­ from epic narratives like Spanish Bride to stirring political anthems like Unity and sardonic swipes at New Labour on Whole New Vision ­ date back to the early '90s. "1992 was a pivotal year. Labour failed to win an election that we all thought they were going to win and that made a lot of changes to my life. Not least that I got depressed for months and could hardly speak to anyone. I couldn't believe we failed. So much so that Sally and I decided to get married in order to throw a party to cheer everyone up. We had the Pavilion in Matlock Bath and had a party with a 30-piece band. A couple of weeks after getting married I started filming Sharpe and went to Russia. The sense of isolation there galvanised me into trying to keep my spirit together by writing. Given the distance homesickness can be quite painful and focuses the mind and brings a clarity to the writing. A lot of the songs were written from that distance."

The album's flagship track Unity had its roots even earlier. "I'd done a play with Bob Davenport for the 7:84 Company. Thatcher had tried to lose as many threats from the art world as possible and one of them was 7:84. She had the grant pulled out but the TUC sponsored a final tour which was Six Men Of Dorset, about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. I wrote a lot of the music including a song called Unity. The opening night was at the Crucible in Sheffield and although I wasn't there because I was doing a concert with Home Service at the Royal Festival Hall, they said that opening night was full of miners who'd come straight to theatre from the mines and turned it into a working mens club. That song Unity was sung on the picket lines the following day, which is about as affirming as you can get if you can use something as a fist as well as a song. Grimethorpe Colliery Band recorded it and Bob sang it with proceeds to the Miners' Hardship Fund."

"That was the earliest song and the last bit of writing went right up the point of recording when I wrote the last song From Where I Lie, which is about the way small farmers have been marginalised. I wanted to draw attention to that and the fact that so many suicides are occurring in the farming community as a result. In many ways the album is a journal of the last decade. Not in a concept way, but a lot of it is about loss of trade, whether it's coal, shipbuilding or farming." No sign of the Billy Bragg syndrome, then, of finding it hard to rebel when the source of your rebellion has been removed?

"I did find it hard to write after the last election was won by Labour. It is easier to have a pop. I was talking to Archie Fisher about this just after they'd brought in the Scottish Assembly. He said 'I'm finding it easier to write now we've given the English their independence...'"

One song on the album, Spanish Bride, is even set to acquire a life of its own as Tams completes a screenplay based on the story. "It's about what happens when an army moves across a foreign landscape and how it sustains itself. Pedlars, tinkers, doctors, whores, musicians and that whole group which follows an army. In King George's army you were allowed two wives, a home wife and a campaign wife. A lot of the boys would be gone for seven years which is why they had broken tokens and things like that. So when he did come home everything could have changed. He might have a Spanish or Portuguese wife and a couple of children."

"England was in a terrible plight in the first couple of decades of the 19th Century. It wasn't a land fit for heroes. When those boys came home they found they weren't required, that they were adding more problems to the labour market. They'd walk around carrying their muskets and people would close the doors on them, they weren't celebrated at all. So my screenplay is about the rank and file, the ground soldier, the uncelebrated infantryman. I believe everybody has their own war."

"I also wanted to write about what happens to women in war. When my dad married my mum he was a grocer. A big gentle bloke who got married and then the war came and when he came back he was a colour sergeant who shouted a lot. He never really got over it. Going to war changes people. A lot of them had never gone further than the end of their road and my dad was this bloke from Doncaster who suddenly found himself in Africa and discovered he had some sort of leadership powers. He came back and they got on with their marriage but it was a changed man they sent home. I experienced a little of that when I was in Russia."

John Tams was born in a pub after his dad became a publican. His grandad on his father's side was a brass band conductor who taught cornet and violin and ran a colliery band, and his grandad on his mother's side was a gypsy and a dog breeder who died young when a roof caved in on him. His grandmother remarried a man called Harry Fryer who became a profound influence on the young Tams.

"He had an Anglo concertina and I learned to play it at a time when you just didn't see them. There were a few English concertinas played by someone like Louis Killen but not many Anglos. Harry was a great inspiration to me over the years."

He took up the guitar in his mid teens and went to night school to take classes in how to run your own folk club (!) He started singing locally and drew inspiration from visiting acts like June Tabor, Anne Briggs, the Dransfields and Mike Harding, while also making regular expeditions to the Roy Harris' controversial Nottingham Traditional Music Club, which applied rigid performance codes, still stoutly defended by Tams. "It was where you went if you wanted to listen to your music slightly more seriously and you were expected to behave slightly differently at that club. But that was fine. Seamus Ennis doing an evening of stories and playing the pipes does demand and require proper attention. The people Roy booked there were the real McCoy. Friday night in Nottingham was an essential part of learning the ropes."

For all that music Tams would undoubtedly gone down the pit... if the pit hadn't closed. Yes, even in 1965, they were closing mines. So when John left school at 15 he went on the dole. He worked on the dodgems in a fairground for a while before falling in with Roger Watson after a group of Derbyshire residents were invited to appear at Nic Jones' club in Chelmsford. Before he knew it he was singer with Roger Watson and Helen Wainwright in Muckram Wakes. He'd also started to write songs himself. "I felt Roger had written one of the great songs of the revival, a song called Watercresser, which Royston Wood had recorded with Young Tradition. I thought I'd like to try that, so I wrote Pulling Down Song, which June Tabor honoured me by recording and suddenly I was a writer as well."

There was an abortive attempt to get a proper job when he trained to be a teacher but the premature death of his father from cancer convinced him to follow his heart not his head and he struck out for the music. "I was angry about my father dying just as he was about to retire so I thought I had to do what I wanted to do and me and my old man will do it together. A couple of days after he died Ashley Hutchings rang and asked me if I wanted to be on the sequel to Morris On."

He did. And how. Hutchings and Tams were admirable foils for one another, embarking on a celebrated career together in various Albion Band incarnations that eventually led them to a long residency in different plays at the National Theatre, Lark Rise, Dispatches, The Mysteries et al. They worked together on at least one classic album, Rise Up Like The Sun, and evolved the whole notion of a vital contemporary band playing English dance music.

"I talked to Ashley about what an English dance band was and I said I thought it should sound like Joe Loss with Anne Shelton singing while people danced. Not long after that there was this big band with Shirley Collins doing Anne Shelton while people danced, which was great. Sometimes we had two drummers Michael Gregory and Dave Mattacks and two guitarists Simon Nicol and Graeme Taylor and we also had the Albionettes. So it was a big band and we found we couldn't find rooms big enough so eventually it became obvious that to sustain the work we had to do concerts rather than dances."

It's a popular myth that Hutchings and Tams ultimately fell out at the National Theatre, that Tams was so frustrated by being bogged down in one place all the time, he formed Home Service as an escape route. It's a theory he strenuously refutes.

"That's a common mistake. In fact it was Ashley who left the National Theatre and left us there. We were doing Dispatches and Ashley went off to do the Albion River Hymn and put the Albion All Stars together perhaps because he was himself frustrated by the time being spent at the National. Maybe it was just time for us to divide. There was a required falling out, but it never happened. We just gently parted. I've never fallen out with Ashley. I've worked with him since and I'll continue to work with him."

Enter Home Service, perhaps the most ambitious band ever conceived under the umbrella of folk music. Originally called The First X1 ­ because there were 11 of them ­ it was built around ex-Albion Band members with the important addition of Bill Caddick as a two-pronged singing and songwriting front line with Tams, and the innovation of a brass section, a lingering idea borne of his own family background in brass bands. Home Service was to survive four years, made at least one album Alright Jack which has survived the test of time, and played some memorable live shows both in and out of the National Theatre. But practically and financially it didn't, it couldn't make sense.

"Part of the journey of the work was to put folk music before an audience that may have forgotten about its existence so in that sense it worked. When you're in the theatre you can't hold up a show while you do a 40-verse ballad but you can drop in little jewels at the right moment either to advance the narrative or stop it or whatever. Instead of flooding the stage with water and bringing galleons on you can sing a sea song and if you do it right everybody gets the gist of where the story's gone. It was a good way of creating a different sort of showcase for the music and we brought in a lot of good people like Shirley Collins, Maddy Prior, Martin Carthy, Peta Webb, Alison McMorland."

"Alright Jack still sounds good to me too. I wanted a band with an English brass section and we had that in abundance. I was pretty freed up to write the songs so I could deal with whatever issues I wanted to say and get as grumpy and belligerent as I wanted. The instrumental side looked after itself because of the talents of the players and apart from contributing the idea of a Percy Grainger suite I didn't contribute to any of the arrangements."

"I'm proud of Home Service. Talking with Howard Evans we discovered we had a lot of things in common and it was an opportunity to blend the two cultures together. He loved vernacular music, British music, and we talked for hours and hours about Grainger and Delius, Elgar, George Butterworth... I'd love to do something about Butterworth. A great character. Before he went away he burnt all his manuscripts so very little of his work remains. At the age of 24 he was a piece of mud along with a lot of other pieces of mud at Flanders."

After Home Service, he came home to Derbyshire. There was the noisy seven-piece Stalking Horses, there was the gentler four-piece Questionnaires. There was panto, plays at the Crucible in Sheffield. There was the formation of No Master's and various production work, including the wonderful Fraser Sisters album. There was a People's Choir, imaginatively named the Rolling Stock Company ("Or the RSC ­ you may have heard of it, it does plays down in Stratford too"), numerous musical directorships, lots of radio play work, panto, scriptwriting (he has scripted a non-speaking movie about the Farne Islands and also has a movie script in the pipeline based on a true story about a music industry scam in Sheffield), the famous tea shop... and Sharpe.

Yes, he says, he is confident about the future of folk music ("looking at Kate Rusby and Eliza Carthy it's in safe hands") and is looking forward to getting back on the road. One of our last glimpses of him was stoically soldiering on after a fuse blew during his set at last year's Cambridge Festival. As the sound died on him John thought he'd had a stroke and would wake up in hospital surrounded by anxious relatives. In fact he remained eyeball to eyeball with a bemused Cambridge audience wondering what he'd do next. He calmly got up, walked to the front of the stage and invited them to join him in raising the roof with an unaccompanied rendition of Rolling Home, the sea anthem he'd originally written for a Sheffield production of Cider With Rosie and already something of a folk club classic. Tams' voice boomed to the back of the marquee, the audience bellowed back the chorus and gave him a standing ovation.

The man is a trouper.

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