Fowke Tales

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Posted by Jim Yates on Sunday, May 11, 2008

I thought I'd share with the Hangout a bit of what I've been doing musically. My good buddy Al Kirby (Jazzy Al) has been working on his PHD in ethnomusicology. Last year he got together with author/story-teller/actress (and, now singer) Janet Kellough and fiddler extraordinaire Zeke Mazurek and they put together a play documenting Edith Fowke's folk song collecting in Peterborough County and they called it Fowke Tales. Friday night and yesterday we performed it at Peterborough's Showplace and I'm including the write-up by journalist and musician Dennis O'Toole that appeared in Saturday's Peterborough Examiner:

   Fowke Tales

   The Showplace Peterborough lounge was transformed into a bit of Ontario history last night as the 'Fowke Tales' cast cast their spell and wove a little magic out of local tales and trials of the logging days.
   This writer first saw the production last fall at Lang Century Village, and the barn that hosted the inaugural performance was undoubtedly a more rural and funky setting, but the narrative and music of the performance piece carried the day, the decades, the generational leap of the P.G.Towns
clan and their place and part in the folklore of this area, and the history of the province.
     It's a tale of logging and shantymen, and the tall pines and tales that were the stuff of legend; passed from hand to hardworking hand and brought back to hearth and home in the spring of the year, by those that were lucky enough to survive the river log jams and deprivations of a season in the bush.
    Edith Fowke brought her enthusiasm and a tape recorder to the little crossroads store in Douro to capture the essence of a bygone era and befriended Mary Towns, the hardworking matriarch of a not so typical Irish family, and the two worked together to compile an archive of material that would have otherwise slipped away like the first growth forest.
    The casts' support of Janet Kelloughs' 'Mary Towns' came across with all the warmth of a kitchen assembly of friends, Zeke Mazureks' fiddle the link between Al Kirbys' banjo and Jim Yates' guitar; both singing with the simple conviction born of a hard days work and generations gone before. Jeanette Arseneaults' harmony vocals tie the rough hewn timbre of the mens' singing to an angelic thread; and even the modern architecture of the venue gives way to the past.
    Edith Fowke survived the inevitable disdain reserved for those that believed in the honour of the working people, befriending Pete Seeger and being tarred with the same brush that U.S. senator Eugene McCarthy so 'liberally' painted his real or perceived opponents in the 'red scare' of the late 1950's. She eventually succumbed to lung cancer, but only after giving voice to the working people of Ontario, and helping them make their mark on the history of this province as surely as their axes left sign on little communities like Minden, upriver from Peterborough and part of the waterchain that saw rough lumber travel from the woods to the mills and yards of the new prosperity that is yet ours to enjoy.
   'Fowke Tales' plays today at 2pm; it's a lesson in history and music that all can enjoy; you might want to grab the kids or grand- children and catch a treat that is not likely to be repeated in the near future. There are tickets left to be had, catch this show while you can!