Archived Wednesday 1st October 2014 - TOM LEWIS - at Faversham Folk Club, The Chimney Boy

Faversham Folk Club
Tom Lewis
7.30    
Ticket Price £6 / £7

"“Widely acknowledged as North America's finest exponent of contemporary nautical songs” (it sez 'ere) (Canadian Society for Traditional Music), Tom Lewis brings to the stage wry humour, button accordion, ukulele, a great voice and his unique experience of more than 40 years bridging the sea-going and folk-singing communities.

Born THOMAS JOHN LEWIS on April 16th 1943, in Belfast, Northern Ireland; then moving with his family to Gloucester, England for his Grammar School years; Tom joined the Royal Navy as an Engineering Apprentice in 1959, just a few days after his sixteenth birthday.


Posted to a naval training establishment in Scotland in 1960, he soon started frequenting THE HOWFF Folk Club (in nearby Dunfermline) being exposed to such luminaries as Willie Scott, Alex Glasgow, Ewan McColl, Archie Fisher, John Watt, Louis Killen, et al. Strangely; considering later developments in Tom's interest in contemporary nautical song; one of the few folk singers to whom he was not exposed during those three extremely formative years, was Cyril Tawney. Around this time, Cyril and his songs were becoming celebrated throughout the world of folk music and soon came to have an enormous influence on

Now after twenty years; hundreds of thousands of miles in cars, motorhomes and aircraft; tours in Australia, Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States; major festival mainstages and tiny, under-promoted coffeehouses; and six more recordings; for Tom and Lyn the road just keeps on unwinding before them. In a way of life where enormous success is not having a day-job, Tom Lewis has translated his love of singing into that 'enormous success' and more - his previous existence as a sailor and his reincarnation as a musical ex-sailor bringing enjoyment for all."

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