Rory McNamara
"Not Just the Other Guy on the Cover of Streetsinger."

   SO FAR, SO GOOD (2009 Rolltop Discs);
  DANGEROUS BUSINESS (2014 Rolltop Discs).

   All serious music lovers—including those who like to find out about what they’re listening to—know to their cost that the big three have sewn up the music biz of today—or would like to think they have. But cyber space proves this a fallacy, a delusion of the corporate firms’ own making. Musicians now go their merry way along countless highways, and one was first portrayed on a close friend’s LP cover from a very vibrant music scene.

   If it’s true that the web has led to what most see as a smaller world, then it also highlights differences when one scratches the surface a little. The following is not a criticism per se but observation, at a time when it might be fruitful to take stock of differences as well as similarities. The New World and the Old World of Europe do not always ‘hit it off’ every time; each have their own visions, past, present and future. American forms of entertainment prefer bathos or an at-times unhealthy sentimentality (even their news programmes are awash with it), but rarely-if-ever pathos: a universal rather than mere individual form. Country-and-Western is a clear example of the difference, what most English see as “sugary” or even “cheesy” that can be an impediment to wider connection. The European reaction may be difficult also for Americans to understand or connect with: different countries, different horses...

   It’s unreliable to generalise. The music that results is paramount. Rory McNamara is now an ex-pat there, and seems well-adjusted to his new environment. Some from the 60s like John Fiddler and Bridget St. John retain English origins in their music today from across the Pond (but with subtle nods), and Rory sometimes returns to the background of his parents. Perspectives always differ of course, and the wonder of music is that it crosses borders. Let’s trace the trajectory from then to now.

   Rory McNamara inherited the singing talent of his Irish father in leafy English suburbia and played ukelele in a skiffle band at school. In 1966 he played in a very short-lived trio, Saturday’s Children, with Bob Weston (later of Fleetwood Mac)—in Stockholm, where he also first met ‘Mac’ Macleod. After a serious motorbike accident in Spain, and two years in hospital, he returned to St. Albans in Hertfordshire and the folk boom scene there that included Donovan, ‘Mac’ Macleod, and Maddy Prior. One night, the Wellington pub (where he had a steady gig) was gate-crashed by three guitarists who started up themselves—to the ire of the landlady who told Rory that she was paying for him so he should sing louder! They took centre-stage alternately, before disappearing as mysteriously as their entry.

   One of the trio was Mick Softley, writer of two songs made famous by Donovan (‘Goldwatch Blues’ and ‘The War Drags On’) and later three celebrated CBS albums. On one of these, Streetsinger, the cover shows Rory on the right with curly hair: he’d been busking in Portobello Road while Mick heckled. The CBS photographer came along (with some of The Byrds) so Rory handed his Framus guitar to Mick for the cover-shot, still iconic of that scene to this day.

   A few days after the impromptu pub-jam Mick introduced Rory to busking. They worked up some Woody Guthrie songs and, along with some of Mick’s songs, headed (in the van seen on the cover of Sunrise) to Leicester Square—for a few months busking and playing the clubs. When they met again later in Wimbledon, McNamara was planning to busk on the Continent after appearing in a West End musical satirising the Guinness Book of Records. Mick offered his little 1930s Gibson and said he’d collect it later. He reappeared after 18 months at the busker’s door in Amsterdam to reclaim it and catch up on tales. (Softley’s manager, Ashley Kovacs, worked with an agency in nearby Haarlem where the singer probably stayed.) For months they busked together though Rory also did in Belgium and Germany, sometimes in London with the Scottish folk/protest singer Dick Gaughan (Boys of the Lough; Five Hand Reel etc) or gigged with the banjo-fiddle trio Home Cooking. Renowned buskers in the 60s included Dave Brock, Ralph McTell, Clive Palmer, Sandy Denny, Wizz Jones, Roy Harper, Tracy Chapman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, later Bill Bragg and fame first came that way for Violent Femmes. The verb to busk derives from two old languages meaning to seek or conquer: from the troubadours, Mariachi, and blues migrating from the plantation to Morris dancing and even carol singing. Now it is used by the famous as a gimmick.

   In 1974 Rory visited California, playing in the bars of SanFrancisco's Haight Ashbury and North Beach districts. Sometimes as part of a duo called Blind Pig with the late Doug Holloway. He met Billy Marlowe (1943-96) and worked together on a tribute album of his songs, More Is Better (Parsifal Records, Belgium, 1979) with some of Belgium’s finest studio musicians. This first album of McNamara’s came out while he was gigging in the quintet Fishing Trip. He had settled in California by the time Kicking Mule issued Still Got That Look In His Eye (1984, KM323). He returned to his first love, Irish music, with like-minded Bay area musicians for the Mild Colonial Boys, who still mix it with Americana today. A short-lived project was The Frontmen with Stevie Coyle, releasing one LP in their three years in the 1990s. Retaining his English accent (a sort of blend of Clive Palmer and Nick Pickett), he formed The Ring of Truth trio in 2008 in Santa Rosa, California. Actually they’re occasionally a four-piece, but the name refers more to the philosophical rather than musical sense of trinity (as a unity).

   They were augmented with seven others, including Fergus Feely (Bully Wee Band and Sean Keane), for So Far, So Good (2009, Rolltop Discs), an album of covers featuring harmonica, mandola and fiddle (male and female played!). The latter is Sue Draheim (1949-2013), well-known in Europe from working with the Albion Band and John Renbourn Group plus albums by Richard Thompson, Wizz Jones, and John Martyn’s Solid Air. The songwriters, outsiders in American music, are little known to Europeans except the late great pacifist Jesse Winchester (‘Sweet Loving Daddy’). Two songs are by Butch Hancock (‘Wishing For You’; ‘Bluebird’), once of The Flatlanders whose Dylanesquery has been covered by Emmylou Harris though probably not those recorded in his Texan dialect. Jim Ringer’s ‘Tramps and Hawkers’, an outsider of 70s music who Rory knew, reminds of Mick Softley’s lyrics about workers down on their luck and the elements to a submerged traditional lilt. Another epic, this time of Americana like Jim Croce or Townes Van Zandt, is ‘The Hubbardville Store’ (Larry Murray), its harmonica like a local warning signal for bad weather ahead. The Irish singer-songwriter Brendan Hearty’s ‘Mongrel Dogs’ is a fast and furious bash, Shel Silverstein’s ‘Jennifer Johnson And Me’ tugs the heart strings. Better known for the hits of Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show and Johnny Cash’s ‘A Boy Named Sue’, bringing us back to the bathos sphere, he also wrote dozens of children’s books only allowed in hardback because loved the artefact and didn’t want his work devalued. So much for the e-book then.

   Rory McNamara moves a little further away from his mentor Softley and the 60s London folk scene for his current Dangerous Business (2014), again on his Rolltop Discs label recorded in Texas and California with new guests. The voice and majority of lyrics avoid outright Americanese, with pretty melodies in a high level of musicianship. Ring of Truth, a “floating ensemble”, now comprise Henry Nagle (pedal steel, vocals, guitar; Chelsea Set, The Spindles etc) and Roxanne Oliva (accordion, vocals, a Celtic music teacher featured on albums by Paddy Keenan and Tom Waits). Her ‘Blue Box Waltz’ is in traditional style from the old country.

   Four songs come from the time working with Billy Marlowe (two are co-writes), of which the title track’s “people tell me it’s a civilized country, I never do answer” sounds like an ex-pat never quite fully assimilated in the new country, while referencing relationships and gambling. First love in Jim Ringer’s ‘Rachel’ fits with another Jessie Winchester song, ‘Foolish Heart’, a respectfully treated ballad. Johnny Cash in his later mode is recalled with ‘Walk Downtown’ (by David Olney) and ‘A Fool Such As I’ (by Bill Trader), which finds space for a Presley interlude. “If you have to tell the truth, careful who you tell it too” advises ‘The Governor’ (prison boss, God, wife?), almost six minutes with guitar solos reminding of Manny Charlton, another ex-pat over there. They were nailed by Buddy Whittington, the Texan who played fourteen years with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers. ‘Beneath A Shroud’ is a haunting piano ballad with thought-provoking lyrics. All musicians close together for ‘The Far Side Bank of Jordan’, the Terry Smith gospel song also covered by Johnny Cash, the Carter Family, and Alison Krauss with Union Station.

   There is more harmonica (this time by Peter Lacques), a tight rhythm section aided by occasional organ and accordion which add width and interesting texture. If you like pedal steel, you will love this. It’s more nu-country than nu-folk and, as with So Far…, love and love-lost are the threads. From the English folk scene, through Europe with Softley, Dave Deighton and solo, to gigging today in the south-western states of America, Rory McNamara is a true troubadour across six decades playing and sharing music—mostly by others—for fellow-travellers. Like Mac Macleod (with Donovan), Nick Pickett, Beau and Bridget St. John among a host of others, the biz breaks didn’t come as they should have, for Marc Brierley, Bill Fay, Shelagh McDonald, and Mick Softley, they turned their backs on that route but not music itself. The best views aren’t always from the motorway (or interstate) but the byways, away from the beaten track.

Brian Banks, 2015.                                                                                                                                                                                           HOME PAGE