On a briskly bitter Friday evening in May 1975, in the small harbour town of Girvan on Scotland’s Clyde Coast, the doors of the Beach Pavilion opened.
Glam rockers Mud had just knocked the Bay City Rollers’ Bye Bye Baby off the top of the charts, but the audience arriving through the doors of the Beach Pavilion weren’t there to see the latest stars of the hit parade. The guests assembled to entertain the crowd that night included now-legendary Aberdeenshire balladeers The Gaugers, influential traditional English singer Pete Bellamy and collector and singer of Australian folk music Martyn Wyndham-Read.
And it wasn’t only the line-up of guests that was ambitious — the cover of the Festival programme declared in smart, gothic script that this was the “1st Girvan Traditional Folk Festival”. Despite their aspirations, perhaps the organisers collecting the £1 entry fee that night would scarcely have imagined that their Festival would flourish over the following five decades and became a fixture in the Scottish folk calendar.
Folk before the Festival
Girvan was no stranger to traditional music. In the centuries prior to the Folk Revival, town fiddler Johnny McGill (1707–1760) and street singer John McCartney (c.1795–1857) were the musical celebrities of their day and left legacies of music & song which resonate to this day.
1975 wasn’t even the first time the town had played host to a folk festival — local man, Tommy Mitchell and folk’s irrepressible impresario Danny Kyle had run the Girvan Folk Song Festival in September 1964.
The early festivals made a lasting impression on Lorraine O’Connell, David Stevenson & Bobby Robb
Guests at this early Girvan festival included Josh Macrae, Matt McGinn, The Kinsmen & many others. The success of the event precipitated the formation of the Girvan Folk Club and when the Festival was rerun in October 1965, it was a local family, closely involved in the new club – the Robbs – that had taken over the organisational reins.
These early Girvan Festivals in 1964 and 1965 predate even the seminal first year of the Blairgowrie Folk Festival in 1966 that was foundational in the formation of the Traditional Music and Song Association. The Girvan Folk Song Festivals of ‘64 and ‘65 – now over 60 years distant – can perhaps lay claim to being Scotland’s very earliest, fully-fledged, folk festivals that presented a programme of events extending over multiple days.
“I think we’ll run wir own.”
Girvan Festival proper would gestate for another decade and would ultimately emerge from a desire for a festival that could foster the informality and fun of friends playing and singing together.
A group of Girvan friends, who sang together in the folk group The Lave, made a trip on a Saturday evening to the Marymass Festival, a few miles up the road…
Och, we just couldnae get in anywhere, an there were nae sessions gaun on then. So we just got back in the cars an came back doon tae the Queen’s Hotel and were sitting having a pint. Harry says, “That’s a hell of a way to run a festival, wi nae sessions. I think we’ll run wir own.” So with our respective wives, we formed a committee and started the Girvan Folk Festival.
Bobby Robb in The Sang’s the Thing by Sheila Douglas
The early committees, Marianne & Ben Robb, Harry & Iola Aitken, Bobby & Nancy Robb, Mary Canniffe and Stewart Sheddon established the Festival as it is celebrated today — over the Mayday bank holiday weekend — and from which we take our current tally (50 and counting!). These early committees would run the Festival for the first six years and their energy, enthusiasm and ambition would lay the foundations of all that was to follow.
Bobby Robb reminisces on the founding days of the Festival
Bobby Robb relates a story about inviting Borders tradition bearer, Willie Scott, to the inaugural Festival that gives an insight into the organisers’ first night nerves…
We had phoned up Willie Scott, and his son said, “Willie’s in Australia, but,” he says, “he’ll be back on the Thursday before the Festival.” I didnae expect tae see him — no an auld fella like Willie. Mind you, he wasnae that auld then — just in his seventies. On the first night, I jumped in the car an went down to the festival shop. I was just comin back up when who should I see but this figure wi the shepherd’s crook! I says, “Well, it cannae be bad if Willie’s here. If he can make it, the rest’ll make it!”
Bobby Robb in The Sang’s the Thing by Sheila Douglas
Girvan Festival initially dished up the very best in traditional song from Scotland, England and Ireland for its audiences. June Tabor, Belle Stewart, Cilla Fisher and many others appearing in those first years. Within a couple of years this song offering had been extended to include generous helpings of instrumental traditional music — tunes! In particular the Festival served as a home-from-home the Glasgow Irish diaspora and the early line-ups included Four Provinces Ceilidh Band, uilleann piper Pat McNulty and lauded Derry singer Kevin Mitchell.
With the tunes, came the tune sessions and Girvan Festival’s split personality as a Festival for both singers and tuneheads was established.
Session musicians at the 4th Festival in 1978 including Jimmy McHugh (1930–1999) & members of the Four Provinces Ceilidh BandMany other Festival provided inspiration for Girvan at this time, including Kinross Traditional Music Festival, Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival, the Inverness Folk Festival and Ayrshire’s own Marymass Folk Festival.
Tak the road & seek ither loanins
Festival organisers Ben & Marianne Robb moved away from Girvan to seek work when the local coal mine closed and, around the same time, fellow committee members Harry & Iola Aitken also left the town. Given the gap that had opened up on the Festival committee, friend of the Festival, Pete Heywood was asked to lend a hand. Pete was the husband of previous Girvan guest Heather Heywood and the organiser of Kilmarnock Folk Club so was well-placed to help.
The first few Festivals of this new era would see first billings for guests including Boys of the Lough, Lizzie Higgins, Adam McNaughtan, Sean Cannon, Mirk, Willie Scott and return trips to the Festival for Ossian and The Gaugers.
In the following years, Pete’s enterprising spirit proved well-placed to capitalise on the early committee’s ambition. Over the course of the 1980s, sponsorship already secured from the Scottish Arts Council was supplemented with funding from the Scottish Tourist Board, Kyle & Carrick District Council, Tennent Caledonian Breweries Ltd, William Grant & Sons and Girvan Tourist Association. This funding provided a solid financial foundation for Festival events for the next decade and a half.
A preview of the 8th Festival in 1982 from the pages of the Carrick Gazetteto be continued…