Description

How Do You Do? Tom Shepley’s Band

Tom Shepley’s Band were a four piece band who played the North West and Cheshire folk clubs back in the 1970s and 80s. The band’s name came from a street in Hyde called Tom Shepley Street.
Fiddle player Jamie Knowles researched the songs and tunes of the north of England looking for “new” material for the band to play that wouldn’t conjure up that stereotypical image of tripe and hotpot. Before Jamie’s research (much of his research was later to be published in the book Northern Frisk) the band played mainly celtic music and although they never abandoned their first repertoire, the act was to firmly root itself into the tunes and songs of the Lancashire and Cheshire areas that their research revealed. Indeed, the material on this album ranges over a repertoire that includes Ireland, Scotland, Cheshire, Lancashire and Northumbria and some of the collections researched were The Walsh Collection, Roy Palmer’s Poverty Knock, the Charlton Memorial Tune Book, McFadyen’s Bagpipe Music and old broadsides.

Jamie Knowles: fiddle, mandola & cittern
Pat Knowles: electric piano, harmonium & lead vocals
Nan Trench: flute and concertina
Martin Colledge: tenor banjo, cittern, guitar, mandolin, whistle & bodhran

with guest musicians.

Nick Dennerley: recorder
Ian Stewart: side drum

1. Richard Dwyer’s/The Perthshire Volunteers/Oh, she’s coming (3.16)
2. The White Joak/The Wakefield Jigg (3.04)
3. The Collier Lass (5.23)
4. The Stockport Hornpipe/Remember Me (3.05)
5. Not a swan on the lake (3.58)
6. Gee Cross fair (2.16)
7. The Mottram Bellringers (2.29)
8. The first new Dutch skippar/Black Mary’s Hornpipe (4.25)
9. Mottram Wakes (3.20)
10. The Lilting Fisherman/The Priest in his Boots/Father Kelly’s No 1 (3.48)
11. The Dundee Lassie (2.12)
12. Drummond’s Favourite/The Arran Boat/The Earl of Lauderdale (4.32)

With bonus track taken from the BBC Radio Manchester Children in Need Album (1987)
13. Factory Doll (3.38)