The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Great Fife Road Show 50th Anniversary
Lochgelly Centre, January 18
When Barbara Dickson sang her 1979 hit Caravan Song she wasn’t referring to the procession of vehicles that she set out with across Scotland nine years previously. But the caravan that carried the singer-songwriter from Rosyth and her friends in the Great Fife Road Show had toured at a significant time in the careers of Barbara and Rab Noakes especially.
The two musicians were just about to launch their first albums, both released on Decca Records, home to the Rolling Stones, when the Great Fife Road Show pulled into towns the length and breadth of Scotland.
“It had started in 1968 after hours at St Andrews Folk Club,” says Rab.
“There were two Davie Stewarts involved, or rather one Davey and one Davie. Davey was the singing partner of John Watt, the great Fife songwriter and singer, and Davie was a traveller-singer, known as The Galoot, a great character. The idea was to form a kind of folk troupe, like the tours that went around with music hall entertainers but focusing on folk music.”
An invitation to perform in Belfast the following year, with Davie “The Galoot” Stewart as guest, solidified the idea and with John Watt bringing a touch of professional discipline to what could have been a rowdy show, the troupe went on to tour East Anglia.
“It went really well,” says Rab. “John had us organised into groups and kept us in line. There was a kind of voyage of discovery about it and when we talked about going on the road in Scotland, the next year, 1970, it seemed that, in next to no time, 20 to 30 venues wanted us.”
At least one venue, in Ullapool, wanted the Great Fife Road Show twice. When the motley selection of land rovers and family jalopies rolled into Ullapool in the afternoon, it was to find that the evening concert had sold out.
A second show was hastily arranged and promptly sold out too.
“It really was an exciting time then,” says Rab.
“Barbara was just about to make her breakthrough. My first album was on the horizon and Brian Miller, the guitarist, was about to form his popular duo with fiddler Charlie Soane. So, it was a case of seizing the moment, I suppose.”
Attending a friend’s funeral last year, Rab and a number of the Road Show’s participants got chatting and decided to mark the Scottish tour’s 50th anniversary.
In a one-off concert at the Lochgelly Centre, Rab, Barbara, Davey, Brian, and fellow survivors, Cilla Fisher, Artie Trezise, Maureen (Chalmers) Blyth, Davie Craig, Noel Farrow, Jim Herd, and Jimmy Hutchison, will remember absent friends and, says Rab, “sing old songs and new songs and tell old jokes. There might even be some new jokes, too.”