Monday 3 January 2022

Day Three - Fine Times

   “Remember when you took my hand”

You can hear an audio version of this whole post here (well, all except for a couple of last-minute 3am amends, mostly to the footnotes). 

Today’s song is called Fine Times and was written by Judy Dinning (listen to it here or a live version with her introduction here). I saw Judy three times at Montrose Folk Club in 2005, 2007 and 2009, twice playing and singing with the band Real Time and once just with Kenny Speirs. Real Time were popular guests at the club performing traditional songs, modern folk and their own compositions with verve, skill and heart. A Northumberland musician with a long and impressive career in various different bands, Judy formed Real Time with Scotsman Kenny Speirs in 2002 and they were partners in life too. Very sadly Judy died in 2013 at the age of 59. You can read about her life hereAlso Kenny answers questions about Judy’s song later in this post. 

Judy had great taste in songs and it was through Real Time that I was introduced to gems like More Love (a song that was written by US folk/americana star Tim O’Brien and recorded, perhaps most famously, by The Chicks, formerly The Dixie Chicks). After hearing Judy sing More Love in 2005 I played it non-stop for weeks (it’s on Real Time’s 2004 album Hell & High Water). (As a side note, Tim O’Brien’s sister Mollie O'Brien played at Montrose Folk Club in January 2011 with Rich Moore – Mollie is less well-known than her brother but a huge talent and that was another night of marvellous high quality music.) Real Time also covered iconic artists like Joni Mitchell (because Judy was an accomplished vocalist and could take Joni’s songs on, no trouble). On their 2006 album Home Thoughts, they covered the Dana Robinson song Safe Home that is the song that started me off on this project last year (more on Dana later in the month). Playing back the Real Time albums recently I also enjoyed hearing her sing The Angel of the North (a song by Australian songwriter Enda Kenny about the Gateshead artwork) and Stay Young (a Gallagher and Lyle number from the 1970s).




Judy had a great touch on traditional songs – I didn’t know many of these when I started going to the folk club in 2004 so I associate old songs like The Water is Wide and The Trees They Do Grow High with Judy’s singing most of all (even though, according to the well-known online encyclopedia, the latter has been recorded by big folk names including Joan Baez, Martin Carthy, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Altan, Donovan, and some wee fella called Bob Dylan). As I said in a post earlier this month none of these artists (no, not even Dylan) were ever played in our house when I was growing up in the North of England (and later London); for us it was like that second British folk revival (1945-69) had never happened. Of those mentioned I think I heard Steeleye Span on TV on Top of the Pops once (and didn’t like it one bit). Incidentally, according to the article I linked to earlier Judy once supported Joan Baez (“one of her all-time favourites”) at Edmonton Folk Festival in Canada (and looking at the festival site I would guess that was 1999 when Judy was in Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies, a band that’s very much still on the go and who we saw at Montrose Folk Club in 2007). Other acts on the Edmonton bill that year included all the Wainwrights, the McGarrigles, Joan Armatrading, Nanci Griffith, Dick Gaughan, Iris DeMent, Ralph McTell, and many, many more. Before going to the folk club in 2004 the only ones I would have known on that list were Joan Armatrading (I had her 1983 compilation Track Record when it was new and played over and over) and Ralph McTell (Streets of London most definitely was on Top of the Pops, regularly, when it was in the pop charts in 1974 and I watched TOTP with religious devotion). 


But back to the song in hand. I almost picked Tim O’Brien’s More Love to write about but in the end I wanted to pick something that Judy wrote (Tim O’Brien is a fairly big cheese, Judy’s star somewhat fainter). I only saw her sing those few times but she struck me as a very genuine person, a real talent and a true music lover (and like at least one other person I’ll write about this month she had classical training but chose folk music for her life and career). I don’t remember her blowing her own trumpet (songwriting wise) at all but somewhere along the line I did hear that she had a solo album (2003’s Fine Times) and I bought a copy. (One of the musicians on the album – amazing slide guitarist Johnny Dickinson – will turn up in this project later in the month too.) Fine Times features songs about Judy’s beloved Northumberland (some traditional and several with words by “Tyneside Bard” Joe Wilson,1841-1875, and tunes by Pete Scott) but the title track was written by Judy and that’s the one that I’ve picked for today. It is a lovely, tender song about her family and memories. It is also, under the name Father’s Song, on an earlier album by Real Time (a live album from 2002 called Real Time that somehow I only heard for the first time this week – perhaps because when I heard them in the mid noughties the band had other albums to promote by then). The song Fine Times/Father’s Song has a deceptive simplicity that matches the subject matter perfectly and she sings it beautifully. I got in touch with Kenny Speirs and he very kindly agreed to answer questions about the song. Everything that follows came from Kenny. 




Fine Times (Father’s Song)


Judy wrote the song some time after the death of her father Artie Henderson. Judy was a proud member of the Henderson family, a well known Northumberland farming family that could trace its roots North of the Border.


The family had Ryehill farm Slaley about 5 miles south of Hexham. Her grandfather sold it to Courage the brewing family and her uncle had the farmhouse while her father had a house on the farm called Woodside. Judy was brought up in this house, which is now owned by her brother. It has 15 acres of land.


So the song is about her father and her relationship with him. Judy was the real deal - a true Hexhamshire Lass from old farming stock. She didn’t read about rural Border life in a book-she inherited it, she lived it. She married a farmer and their son has a large farm near Hexham Racecourse. Farmer’s daughter, Farmer’s wife, Farmer’s mother!


The song was written around 2002 and was released on Judy’s solo album Fine Times the following year. No other recordings by other artists have been made.


I think the song is a wonderful evocation of rural life and its rhythms determined by nature and the seasons. I’m surprised it hasn’t been covered and I’m sure if more people heard it if it was promoted properly it would become a modern classic.


It definitely has more poignancy since Judy died, especially when you consider this song is very much autobiographical, drawing on her own experiences and memories of her father.

We went down to Whitley Mill to dedicate a bench in Judy’s memory in 2015 on 13th December, her birthday. Her family were there, including her mother and her son, and I sang Fine Times or Father’s Song. Later that day her daughter gave birth to her third grandson!


She wrote many great songs, but I would maybe choose Best Kept Secret* as one of her best.


One song she didn’t write that became almost her signature song was I’m Looking For My Own Lone Ranger by Charlie Dore**. The words touched her, and she never did a concert without including it.





Thanks so much to Kenny for answering questions about Judy and Fine Times. I'll be back tomorrow talking about a different kind of geography. Hope to see you then.



*There’s a live version of this song here. It is also on the 2002 Real Time album called Real Time.


**This song was written by Charlie Dore and Ricky Ross (of Deacon Blue). It’s on Ricky’s solo album This is the Life (2002) and on Charlie’s album Cuckoo Hill (2006).



This post is part of my Songs That Stick project for 2022's Fun A Day Dundee (a community arts project that takes place every January). Anyone can take part (you don’t even have to be local to Dundee) and much of the work can be found on Instagram during January (use #FADD2022). There is usually a real-life exhibition later in the year (though this has been online for the past 2 years). The full list of songs I am writing about this year is here. My first post about why I picked this project this time is here.


If you are interested in my Fun A Day Dundee projects for 2020 and 2021 you can start here and here. They are quite different to this one (a short poem and drawings in 2020 and lots of poems and writing in 2021).


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