This page gives details of Calennig recordings, when and where we did them and how to get hold of the ones that are still available. Apart from the new releases Live In Wanaka, New Zealand (a Gin And Raspberry CD, specially produced by Martin Curtis - one of our favourites!) Songs and Tunes and White Horse and of course, A Gower Garland (from Wildgoose), only the Sain albums are available at the moment; but watch this space!

Meanwhile, take a look at these 3 CDs:

NEW RELEASE - Limited edition - (click here for ordering details)

LIVE IN WANAKA, NEW ZEALAND

Gin And Raspberry GRCDO26

Calennig toured three times to New Zealand, and our concert night in the stunningly-beautiful Southern Alps town of Wanaka will always be remembered with special fondness. We have Martin Curtis to thank for that; he brought along his big, old tape machine to make a personal memento of the gig, never meaning to distribute it. Some years later, I had the stroke and it looked like I would never play again. As a tribute to Calennig, Martin thought he would bring out a CD - and he realised he'd got a whopper, capturing all of Calennig's excitement and communication with the packed audience. It's 74 pulsating minutes of sheer joy!  

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeons)

Pat Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

Martin Curtis (extra vocals)

OTHER CDs  NOW AVAILABLE

As a tribute to Calennig and as a boost to Mick's health the following two "lost LPs" are now available. Many thanks to Dave Bulmer and his team for their enthusiasm and help in making this possible in such a short time. (Click here for order details).

Andy Jackson 

SONGS AND TUNES FROM SOUTH WALES

Greenwich Village GVRCD 214

Calennig's first album, recorded by Bill Leader at Leader Sound, Halifax, May 1980

Musicians: 

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeon, anglo-concertina, harmonium, bombarde, guitar)

Pat Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

Calennig was still only a year or so old, but we were beginning to find our feet on the South Wales material I had been collecting. There was so much fresh, unheard stuff on this album... we also linked tracks with traditional sayings, which gave it an extra edge. Bill, of course, did a brilliant job and the album actually made it into Melody Maker's folk top ten.

YOU CAN TAKE A WHITE HORSE ANYWHERE

Greenwich Village GVRCD 224

Calennig's second album and our last for Joe Stead, recorded by Brian Snelling at Foel Studios, Llanfair Caereinion, May 1983.

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, anglo-concertina. diatonic accordeons, keyboards)

Pat Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

The White Horse was the Llantrisant Mari Lwyd, whose page you can visit from that link. This time the rhymes were on the sleeve of the album, but the songs and tunes were enough to turn heads. There are several beautiful pieces on here which we no longer perform, for one reason or another, but there are also a number of songs which have become Calennig anthems.

 Please order these three releases direct from:

A good price for such important collectors' items must be £12-00 each plus £1-50 p&p.

Special Offer!
Why not buy both Songs and Tunes and White Horse for £25-00, incuding postage? 

Please make cheques payable to Miskinfolk (if ordering from Andy Jackson) or Pat Smith

GOWERTON FAIR
Sweet Folk All SFA 074

Solo album by Mick, recorded by Alan Green at Mid Wales Sound Studios, Castle Caereinion, summer 1977

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, anglo-concertina)

Mike James (melodeons, extra voice)

Peter Daves (oboe, recorders)

Paul Downes (acoustic guitar)

Phil Beer (fiddle, mandolin, extra voice)

My first venture into a recording studio... Joe Stead asked me to do the album for his label, and I was so gobsmacked that I just said Yes to everything. It was recorded and mixed in a day, and it sounds like it! But at least I had the pleasure of working with Paul and Phil, not to mention my then Swansea Jack colleagues Mike and Peter. Alan Green was no slouch, but he insisted on a completely "dry" sound for folk records - a somewhat old-fashioned way to lay down tracks, methinks. Even today, we go back to this album and rediscover songs that we have forgotten but which are still worth singing. Here are the tracks:

THE SEVEN WONDERS
Arfolk SB376

Swansea Jack's only album, recorded by Callum Malcolm and Paul Sumerling at Castle Sound Studios, Edinburgh in April 1978.

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, anglo-concertina)

Mike James (voice, melodeons, brevette, guitar)

Peter Davies (recorders, oboe)

Pat Smith (voice, spoons)

Lesley James (voice, tambourine)

The cover sums this one up... long hair, afghan coats, boots. We'd done a couple of mind-blowing tours in Brittany for a pretty high-powered agent and Arfolk, a label based in Lorient, asked us to do the album. A few days let loose in Edinburgh, a lot of Broughton bitter and we made an album which, for its era, is still pretty interesting! It's my ambition that, one day, there will be a Swansea Jack reunion... a lot of good people passed through that band over the years. The album reappeared a few years later on a French budget label, and people in Brittany still remember our tours. And we never got a centime out of Arfolk...

DYDDIAU GWYNION IONAWR/SNOWY DAYS OF JANUARY

Sain 1325M/C935N (vinyl and cassette in Wales)
Seven Seas 280E 52058 (CD in Japan)
Recorded at Stiwdio Sain, Llandwrog, Gwynedd in 1985 by sound engineer Eryl Davies.

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeons, anglo-concertina, harmonium, synthesiser, piano)

Pat Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

Mike Kennedy (bass, drum)

Our introduction to Sain's wonderful studios on the Llyn peninsula. Sain is the leading player in the Welsh recording scene, and taking on an English-language band was a new departure for them. But Dafydd Iwan liked our music and decided to make the album, for which we'll always be truly grateful to him.

Jazz/rock bassist Mike Kennedy joined us in the studio for the recording, which produced a harder-edged sound. It was also the first time we had really worked with a producer, and Gareth Hughes Jones gave us fresh perspective on what we were doing. This was issued on vinyl and cassette in Britain and in 1989 was leased to King Records in Japan, who employed new technology to give us our first CD! It is still available from Sain, or direct from us, in cassette format only.

DWR GLAN
Sain SCD4025/C425N (CD and cassette)

Recorded at Stiwdio Sain, Llandwrog, Gwynedd at the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990 by Eryl Davies

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeons, anglo-concertina, Roland Juno 106 and Yamaha DX7 synthesisers)

Pat Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

Peter Davies (Scottish lowland pipes, English bagpipe, oboe, bombarde, recorders)

Mike Kennedy (bass)

Hefin Huws (guest drummer)

Our first CD release at home, produced by ourselves with Eryl's expert guidance. This was our regular concert and twmpath line-up at the time, although Pat and I were doing most of our work at home and overseas as a duo. Nobody else was treating Welsh music in this fashion at that time, with the pipes, bombardes and bass taking us closer to the Eurosound which was being produced by some of the boundary-breaking bands in Brittany and Galicia. Songs and tunes were blended together in long suites which didn't always endear us to those who allocate airplay time slots.

TRADE WINDS/GWYNTOEDD Y MOR HAFREN
Sain SCD2091/C2091N

Recorded at Stwdio Sain, Llandwrog, Gwynedd in June and October 1994 by Eryl Davies (engineer) and Emyr Rees (producer).

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeons)

Patricia Carron-Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

Peter Davies (Scottish lowland pipes, English bagpipe, oboe, bombarde, recorders)

This project is still developing today! We had suddenly become aware of the collecting work done in South Wales in 1928 by the American folklorist James Madison Carpenter, who was gathering material for his Harvard University PhD thesis on sea shanties. Carpenter visited Barry Dock, where the chairman of the Barry Licensed Riggers' club, a retired tall ship sailor called Rees Baldwin, organised a session which yielded around 50 shanties, sea songs and (fascinatingly for Wales) Child ballads. The most prolific singer was a man called William Fender, who provided 22 of the songs.

Carpenter returned to Britain the following year and spent six years scouring England and Scotland for Child ballads, morris dances and tunes and mummers' plays. He always intended to publish the enormous amount of work he had done, but never did so. It was rediscovered, and eventually bought for the National Library of Congress in Washington, thanks to the work of Dr Alan Jabbour and Dr Kenneth Goldstein. As well as the 50 South Wales items in the shanty thesis, there are 26 surviving cylinder recordings of the voices of the South Wales men.

We followed up Carpenter's notes and found Rees Baldwin's family still living in the area. We discovered that he was a self-educated man who had taught himself to read the classics, and that throughout his years at sea under canvas (1879 to 1908) and afterwards he had written many notes and comments on life aboard tall ships. These fascinating, compelling stories were edited after his death in 1945 by his friend Stan Awbrey, mayor of Barry in 1941 and later to become MP for Bristol Central, and were published in the local paper, the Barry Herald. We took these stories and the shanties and created Trade Winds, a theatre show featuring Pat and myself plus David Ambrose, director of St Donats Arts Centre and leader of the Tales From Beyond The Border storytelling team. Trade Winds was also available as an hour-long presentation, which had been included in the programme at many maritime and folk festivals both in Britain and abroad.

A GOWER GARLAND
Wildgoose WGS 299

Recorded at Wildgoose Studios, Wherwell, Hampshire by Doug Bailey, for release in April 2000.

Musicians:

Mick Tems (voice, diatonic accordeons, Korg XR3)

Patricia Carron-Smith (voice, anglo-concertina, spoons)

This special collection of songs and tunes from Gower marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the legendary "Gower Nightingale", Phil Tanner, and was unveiled at The National Folk Festival at Sutton Bonnington, Leicestershire, in April 2000. A Gower Garland was also the title of a show developed by Calennig and The Rag Foundation and aimed at community audiences in Gower and elsewhere, arts centres and festivals - the show was one of the highlights of the National Festival's programme. A book of Gower songs, music, traditions and folklore is also planned as part of the project.

A Gower Garland includes material from Phil Tanner, but it is not devoted exclusively to him. Gower was an area rich in singers and dancers and the project attempts to set Phil Tanner in his social background. Click here to read the CD notes.

COMPILATIONS

Calennig can be heard on a number on compilation albums released over the years. As far as we know, this is the complete list. If anyone has additional information for us, we would be delighted to hear it.

THE SHANTY MEN
Greenwich Village GVR 201 (vinyl only)

Recorded at Wood Farm House, Fressingfield, Suffolk on September 2 and 3, 1977, and at Mid Wales Sound Studios, Castle Caereinion, on May 13 and 14, 1978

Mick was involved in both these sessions, both as a lead singer and as a member of the crew, which also included Jim Mageean, Erik Ilott, John Goodluck, Matt Armour, Joe Stead, Johnny Collins, Don Shepherd, Phil Beer, Paul Downes and more. Mick took lead vocal on two tracks:

GORAU GWERIN 2 - THE BEST OF WELSH FOLK

Sain 1333H (vinyl and cassette) 

Sain sampler released in 1986 which includes one track from Calennig's 1985 album Dyddiau Gwynion Ionawr (see above):

GWLEDD O WERIN CYMREIG/FEAST OF WELSH FOLK

FOM 00/01 (cassette only)

These were the days when Geoff Cripps ran the excellent Folk On Monday show on Radio Wales. This 21-track cassette, put together by Geoff to raise funds for the 1988 Children In Need appeal, featured donated contributions from the leading Welsh and English language performers of the time. Some tracks were taken from current albums, many were freshly recorded specially for the project. The Calennig Big Band (Mick and Pat plus Peter Davies (bombarde, oboe, recorders), Mike Kennedy (bass guitar) and Russell Jones (bodhran) recorded two tracks at Tony Williams' Tudor Crescent Studio in Brynmawr; the one selected was:

ESSENCE OF EUROPEAN TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Seven Seas KICP 81

King Records in Japan used one track from Dyddiau Gwynion Ionawr on this excellent 1990 compilation, which also includes Sileas, Dolores Keane and John Faulkner, De Danaan, June Tabor, Malicorne, Dick Gaughan, Frankie Armstrong and more.

GORAU GWERIN - THE BEST OF WELSH FOLK MUSIC

Sain SCD 2006

Sain's first CD sampler, released in 1992, didn't pick up on any of the tracks we'd recorded for Dwr Glan just two years earlier but was instead a compilation of their two vinyl Gorau Gwerin albums, with tracks going right back to the 1970s. It provided another outing for:

GOREUON CANU GWERIN NEWYDD

Much more aware 1997 compilation from Sain with some of the exciting new sounds breaking through in Wales. It included a track from Trade Winds:

SEGEL OCH SANG/PURJE JA LAULU

International Shanty Festival Finland

R&R CD002

One of Calennig's 1997 highlights was ten mad days in a minibus racing up the Finnish coast and out to the islands with the Finnish Crew and the Sailor Girls, our old friend Bob Zentz from Virginia, Maria de Jesus from Cuba and Daria Drusgala and her band from Poland. The whole thing was put together by Haken Streng and this live album was recorded by his Finnish Crew partner Alf Myllari at a Seafarer's Night in Jakobstad, arranged to raise funds for the port's reconstructed galleon, Jakobstads Wapen. The wine and the Finnish vodka flowed freely through the long night and the audience rapidly grew more and more sozzled - still, it was a great atmosphere! Calennig's contributions were:

MEGIN

Fflach Tradd CD212H

Calennig have two tracks on this album of Welsh and Border squeezebox music, released in January 2000. The tracks were recorded by Ceri Rhys Matthews at Fflach's studio in Cardigan in July 1998. Other musicians on the compilation are John Morgan, Guto Dafis, Nick Passmore, John Kirkpatrick, Boz Boswell, Meg and Neil Browning. The album offers a brilliant cross-section of the kind of adventurous and inventive music being played in Wales and the Marches on instruments which, like the harp and the fiddle before them, have been a part of the heritage of Welsh music ever since they first appeared in our pubs and homes.

PAIDE SHANTY 2000

Cajun Music CMCD001

In July 2000 we were flown out to Estonia for this wonderful long weekend. It was billed as a shanty festival, even though Paide was just about as far from the sea as it's possible to get in that tiny country, and the bill was split between bands with a maritime repertoire and others from Russia, Bulgaria, Italy and elsewhere with no sea connection at all. We all had a brilliant and eye-opening time and this CD was a great souvenir of the event. Thanks, Jaan!

Notes compiled by MICK TEMS

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Last updated March 08, 2010