Forest

We embraced the rich melodic structures of traditional song and synthesized these with fresh musical forms to create a world of dreams, surrealism, Nature, stories and love, very much in keeping with the spirit of that age – Adrian Welham of Forest

Band Personnel:
Martin Welham: 12-string guitar, 6-string guitar, piano, organ, harmonium, pipes, percussion, vocals
Adrian “Hadrian” Welham: guitar, mandolin, organ, harmonica, pipes, cello, harpsichord, harmonium, percussion, vocals
Derek “Dez” Allenby: mandolin, harmonica, harmonium, pipes, percussion, vocals
+ Dave Panton: viola, oboe, saxophone
+ Dave Stubbs: bass

In my last music article I profiled Dr. Strangely Strange, a group that had followed an acoustic folk path blazed by the great Scottish duo, Incredible String Band (ISB). But there were others. One of them is a very unusual outfit called Forest.

NOTE: not to sound like an old fart, but if you’re a young person reading, this article deals with actual people making original music on real instruments in an acoustic capacity. The band profiled here were flesh-and-blood humans who used no digitized buttons, commands, Artificial Intelligence, or “sampling” to create their sounds, and they used no machines other than during the recording process. I don’t say this out of sarcasm. I just feel that times have changed, and music in turn has changed, and it is important to be aware of certain facts.

Like the Strangelies, Forest was a threesome with only two albums on its résumé (though the Strangelies managed two reunion LPs). Both are highly collectible. Both, also, are so attuned to the spirit of their time, they could never have been released outside a window in recorded history of maybe five or six golden years.

Brothers Martin and Adrian Welham and Dez Allenby came from the fishing port of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England. Teenagers in 1966, they played folk clubs in nearby Walesby as Foresters of Walesby, shortening the name after moving to larger Birmingham two years later. Initially, they were strongly influenced by American music and traditional English folkies like The Watersons and The Young Tradition, the last-named of whom they were friends with. But the abstract, dreamlike explorations of ISB and, of course, later Beatles, pulled them in a more psychedelic direction, though one less genial than either of those groups. Venerable BBC radio host John Peel (with whom they lodged briefly) promoted them on three BBC sessions, and “Whispering Bob” Harris on three shows. Peel may have even helped them sign with Peter Jenner and Andrew King of Blackhill Enterprises (whose first signing had been Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd).

Blackhill then arranged an album contract with Malcolm Jones‘s fledgling EMI subsidiary, Harvest Records, home of Floyd, solo Barrett, Barclay James Harvest, Kevin Ayers, Roy Harper, Edgar Broughton Band, and other progressive rock acts of a curious ilk. Aside from maybe Syd, Forest was the most curious.

First release was the single “Searching for Shadows,” followed by an eponymous LP. In his liner notes to the album, Peel describes the songs as being “full of sunshine, leaves and running water.” Like ISB and the Strangelies, the music is all-acoustic, with offkey harmonizing and exotic, raggedy instrumentation. If the Strangelies’ music is appropriate for a harvest festival, Forest sound like they chose a denser locale in which to record…an old-growth forest, perhaps. All is burnished by a casual mixing job, which some might argue enhances the music’s charm. The listener cocks his head with “These are either schoolboys horsing around, or they have a key to a door (leading to the “forest” of the subconscious?) that only a few even know about.” For me, they come closer to the latter.

Although the band earned a few gigs due to Forest, the LP shifted a meagre 10,000 copies. So the group did the logical thing: they made their follow-up even more Gothic.

The Guardian included Full Circle in its list of “1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” one of only 14 from the year 1970. I’ve been dismissive of subjective lists and inductions by anonymous humans. But I’m guessing The Guardian‘s credibility factor exceeds that of certain rock music halls-of-fame, arriving as it were without the internal politics, not to mention self-aggrandizing New York and L.A. entertainment executives in sharp-looking suits.

Full Circle glows with simple, childlike wonder. The music is weird, but accessible, the songs filled with a baroque and elegant macabre reminiscent of Poe or The Turn of the Screw. “Graveyard” (Adrian Welham) has a simple arrangement with guitar, pipes, cello, and flute, and concerns a specter’s visit to a graveyard and subsequent stumbling on a corpse that could very well be its own. “Hawk the Hawker” (Dez Allenby) has a country vibe, with fiddle and pedal steel guitar, except this “Hawk” fellow isn’t a jilted lover (or medieval falconer) but the band’s friendly “supplier.” The crème de la crème is Martin Welham’s “The Midnight Hanging of a Runaway Serf,” a tune pushing close to progressive rock. The title describes the story. It’s a stunner.

Both Forest and Full Circle feature will-o’-the-wisp sleeve illustrations by a mysterious woman named Joan Melville. To discuss artwork (indicative of the song lyrics), the group met with her in her rural cottage while sitting in the nude and indulging in tea and meditation.

A familiar tale followed the release of Full Circle. Extroverted glam rock was supplanting the kind of cerebral hippie-folk that Forest did so well, and the record did not do well. Discouraged, Allenby quit to attend school. The brothers Welham pulled in two new members and soldiered on, completing a tour of Holland that included a well-received appearance at the 1971 Pinkpop Festival alongside Fleetwood Mac and Focus. They then notched their last Beeb session with Peel. But no more studio recordings were released. The band folded in 1972. Peel is reported to have said that, of a multitude of bands that at various times crashed at his home, Forest is the only group he liked as people.

Today, Martin Welham and his son Tom make up the acid-folk band The Story. Allenby has released one album independently as Southernwood with his wife Cathy. Adrian Welham’s whereabouts are unknown. He was last sighted in the Southern Carpathians managing a sleigh ride business catering to tourists.

Single:
“Searching for Shadows” / “Mirror of Life” (1969)

Original Albums:
Forest (1969)
Full Circle (1970)

Live:
BBC Concert (1989) (France only)

Compilation:
Forest/Full Circle (1996) (CD only)

Dr. Strangely Strange

Well, I’m for Donnybrook Fair
When I get the time I’ll see you there
Pick a golden apple from the heart of the sun
I can assure you that it is very easily done

Band Personnel:
Tim Booth: guitar, mandolin, idiophone (thumb piano), percussion, vocals
Ivan Pawle: guitar, bass, fiddle, whistle, percussion, vocals
Tim Goulding: organ, harmonium, piano, recorder, glockenspiel, violin, Stylophone, vocals
+ Caroline “Linus” Greville, vocals
+ Joe Thoma, fiddle, mandolin

Barely a whisper in their heyday, the “Strangelies” are a good example of British/Irish hippie-folk whimsy that followed a well-trodden path blazed by acoustic, Scottish mystics Incredible String Band (ISB). Not surprisingly, both groups were produced and managed by Harvard-educated expatriate and folk/blues/rock impresario, Joe Boyd (Witchseason Productions, Hannibal Records). 

Emerging from Trinity College, Dublin in 1967 were student bohemians Booth and Pawle. They jammed casually with a couple others before Goulding joined, all of them multi-instrumentalists associated with quasi-commune “The Orphanage” that also birthed Gary Moore and Phil Lynott (both Skid Row and Thin Lizzy). First signing interest came from Bernard Stollman of ESP-Disk (Fugs, Pearls Before Swine), but Boyd beat him to the contracts. First album, Kip of the Serenes (1969), has ISB stamp all over it, the band’s core threesome being joined by singer Carolyn “Linus” Greville. Opening track “Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal” is significant for cute title as well as inclusion on Island Records budget sampler, Nice Enough to Eat, alongside Traffic, Jethro Tull, and other rock heavyweights.

Popular on UK university circuit, Strangelies supported Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, and at one point had a young Elton John supporting them. Their music might best be described as “woodland hippie”: that which might be played at an annual harvest festival, accompanied by mime troupe, maybe after a day of gathering organic carrots and peas. (Substances doled out near the Kundalini yoga tent.)

Second album, Heavy Petting (1970), has gimmick sleeve design by Roger Dean. It dispenses with Linus’s vocals but adds drummer Dave Mattacks (Fairport Convention) and Moore’s electric guitar for a punchier sound (though not too punchy), with hints of American country. Standout track is eight-minute groove, “Sign On My Mind.” Goulding then left to get married and paint. Gay and Terry Woods (Steeleye Span) briefly joined for a tour, but band soon crumbled. However, interest amongst folk-psych cultists in the Strangelies’ gentle, pastoral sounds has encouraged periodic reunions and releases. Mostly strange was at a wake for Annie Christmas of The Orphanage…an “acoustic gig in a cabbage patch” (Halcyon Days notes). And as recently as this year, a new LP called Anti-Inflammatory.

***

Perceptive readers may be noticing a longitudes trend. Yes, this blog has become enamored with certain British Isle underground acts spawned by what it calls the “Big Three” of British folk-rock: Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and Incredible String Band. After all, I did launch my revamped (music-centric) blog with the mighty Dando Shaft nearly a year ago. I’ve had an affinity for British rock ever since “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” then joyfully discovered the Big Three a couple decades later, but only recently have begun mining the musical gold that certain short-lived underground acts represent.

Much of this music is, as they say, an acquired taste: sometimes limp or derivative, occasionally “precious.” But for me it also has a refreshing purity and casual indifference to commerce. It has a hippie organicism lived in real time, not feigned later for nostalgia. As Rose Simpson of ISB told me when I interviewed her in 2019, “it was natural for all of us, not a performance of someone else, but a projection of the people we would have liked to be all the time.”

Dr. Strangely Strange only made two albums in its original incarnation, and neither stands with ISB’s magical The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. But they are perfectly representative of music – like that of Bread, Love & Dreams, Trees, and others – that, although locked in a certain time and place, is also a very special and exotic time and place.

Original Albums:
Kip of the Serenes (1969)
Heavy Petting (1970)

Reunion Albums:
Alternative Medicine (1997)
Anti-Inflammatory (2025)

Collections:
Halcyon Days (2007)
Radio Sessions (2022)

Bread, Love and Dreams

Band Personnel:
David McNiven: vocals, guitars, flute, clarinet, harmonica, “moothie,” shepherd’s pipe
Angie Rew: vocals, guitars, organ, African drums
Carolyn Davis: vocals, guitar, bass, buzz-horn, tambourine

Scottish folk-psych trio – fairly obscure despite recording for major label Decca – with one of the best band names in music (borrowed from English title of equally obscure 1953 Italian romantic-comedy, Pane, Amore e Fantasia, starring Gina Lollobrigida). They made only three albums between 1969 and ‘71, but all come highly recommended to those hip to trippy UK folk-rock.

Main mover was David McNiven. Though McNiven’s father had played bagpipes, McNiven himself took up banjo, and upon leaving school took up busking on either side of North Sea. In 1968 he appeared solo at a festival in Edinburgh, preceding singing duo of Angie Rew and Carolyn Davis. Both acts were spotted by a sharp-eyed Decca staffer named Ray Horricks. Horricks convinced the three to team up, then convinced a wary Decca label to sign them.

First eponymous album (1969), produced by Horricks, had trad folk leanings of Pentangle and slight mystical elements of Incredible String Band – both also Scottish – with McNiven composing all but one song. Sleeve photo shows him wearing tricorne hat and staring menacingly at camera, flanked by Rew and Davis, who convey looks of trepidation. Though not as fanciful as ISB or as purist as Pentangle, debut LP is fine acid folk, with tasteful strings, surprisingly bold lead vocals by McNiven, supportive harmony by Rew and Davis, and sprinklings of droll humor (notably on the rollicking “Main Street,” which recalls Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson’s zither-driven “I Wonder to Myself”). Other highlights are “Mirrors,” the drinking song “Switch Out the Sun,” and the bluesy “95 Octane Gravy.”

Band toured with Tyrannosaurus Rex (later called T Rex) and Thunderclap Newman (“Something in the Air”) while amassing material summer 1970 for double album, recorded in a mere five days. Decca, however, began having misgivings and insisted on a single LP, which became The Strange Tale of Captain Shannon and the Hunchback of Gigha. Davis similarly had misgivings (due either to lack of success or budding romance between McNiven and Rew) and quit during recordings, though she wrote and played on one song, “Purple Hazy Melancholy.” Captain Shannon, production and liner notes by Horricks, dropped some of the humour of debut, but music was bolstered by Pentangle’s Danny Thompson (bass) and Terry Cox (drums), plus Alan Trajan on swimmy keyboards. (Trajan later made a highly collectible solo LP.) “The Lobster Quadrille” had lyrics derived from Lewis Carroll, but strongest track is title cut, a six-minute story-song. Sleeve art by Yvonne Hughes also excellent.

Third and final album, Amaryllis (1971) featured remainder of songs from 1970 sessions. It actually improved on its predecessor, venturing farther from folk and closer to then-in-vogue progressive rock, and is today often name-dropped amongst in-the-know prog heads. The first side is ambitious title suite in three sections (performed much earlier for an Edinburgh theatre production), while second has shorter songs, with clever arrangements, warm acoustic picking, and sharp harmonies between McNiven and Rew. Highlight is McNiven’s catchy and intriguingly titled “My Stair Cupboard at 3 A.M.” Horricks, Thompson, Cox, and Trajan again assisted.

Regrettably, Decca never had much love for Bread, Love and Dreams (and saw little bread from them) and dropped the group after Amaryllis, using all three albums as a tax write-off. McNiven and Rew eventually married and got involved with Scottish theatre and television. After her departure, Davis went into media studies. McNiven died September 2015, age 70.

***

I first heard about this group while mail-order collecting albums in the 1980s. Some chap somewhere had asked if anyone else knew about them. I liked their name, and mysteries are human catnip, so I made a point of keeping my eyes peeled for their records. In ‘87 I saw their first album buried deep in the classified ads of Goldmine magazine and ordered it. “Weird, but interesting” was my initial reaction. I still feel that way, but my admiration has grown.

Researching this article, I noticed a lot of reviewers comparing the band (usually unfavourably) to Donovan, Incredible String Band, Pentangle, and even Fairport Convention. But those comparisons are unfair. B, L & D were more boutique, closer to Trader Horne and Sallyangie (Mike and Sally Oldield), though not as fey as the latter, and more enterprising than the former. A single LP of their best songs would have enshrined them as legends in the acid folk realm. But we should be grateful for three weird and wonderful records, representative of the kind of music that will never be heard again.

R.I.P. Danny Thompson

Single:
Virgin Kiss / Switch Out the Sun (1969)

Albums:
Bread, Love and Dreams (1969)
The Strange Tale of Captain Shannon and the Hunchback of Gigha (1970)
Amaryllis (1971)

Trees

Pinnacles of psychedelic folk rock…sublime music creations – Shindig

Band Personnel:
Bias Boshell: bass, piano, acoustic guitar, vocals
Barry Clarke: lead guitar, dulcimer
Celia Humphris: lead vocals
David Costa: guitar, mandolin
Stanley Unwin Brown: drums, tambourine

Trees are one of those bands whose name has blipped on my radar a few times over the years (decades?), but until recently I knew nothing about. Thanks to Earth Records, which reissued their only two studio albums, I’m kicking myself for not being a Trees hugger long ago.

Trees coalesced in haphazard friend-of-a-friend fashion in London in 1969. Like Fairport Convention (the group they’re most often compared to), Trees initially emulated 1960s West Coast bands. This soon changed. Guitarist and group archivist Costa claims they strove for merger of English folk and West Coast rock, “a marriage between the arcane and the lotus eaters.”

First album The Garden of Jane Delawney, produced by Tony Cox, released April 1970 on CBS. It featured heady mix of reinvigorated folk songs from England’s pagan past with originals written by bassist Tobias (Bias) Boshell, educated at Royal College of Music. Fairport comparisons were inevitable, since Clarke’s lead guitar tones bore marked resemblance to those of Richard Thompson, and “She Moved Thro’ the Fair” was reverently covered by both bands. But Trees were unabashedly more psychedelic…with Trees, the lotus eating took precedence over the arcane.

Indeed, album might best be experienced after gnawing some choice leaves. Boshell’s songs, Clarke’s melted-butter guitar, and Humphris’s woodland-witch singing have ability to pull one deep into one’s head. Song highlights include “Fair,” “Nothing Special,” and “Snail’s Lament,” where Humphris and Boshell engage in a luscious, vocal pas-de-deux. Title track is also exceptional, a hypnotic, Gothic mini-drama conjuring Poe or du Maurier.

Debut album seemed hard to equal. But On the Shore maintained high standard, featuring even more invigorated trad folk, with Record Collector and Mojo magazines awarding the Earth reissue five stars, and Mojo making it their “Reissue of the Year.” Hipgnosis cover art was as dark and mysterious as music, showing hollow-eyed, ghostly urchin in Victorian dress flinging liquid toward viewer. (Model was Katherin Meehan, daughter of influential Shadows drummer Tony.)

Despite two powerful and praised LPs that (much later) ignited “acid-folk” genre, and also sharing bills with incipient A-listers like Bowie, Genesis, and Fleetwood Mac, Trees splintered in 1972. Clarke and Humphris kept magic alive another year with new lineup, but disbanded without recording. Humphris married English deejay Pete Drummond and guested on others’ albums (such as Judy Dyble’s Talking With Strangers; see Dyble profile here), then went into commercial voice work. (She passed away in 2021; Brown passed in 2008.) Boshell joined Kiki Dee Band, writing her hit “I’ve Got the Music in Me,” then guested with Barclay James Harvest, then replaced Patrick Moraz on keyboards in Moody Blues and toured with them ten years.

L to R: Costa, Boshell, Clarke, Humphris, Brown, relaxing while musing on the natural world

A major reason why I resurrected longitudes after a long recess was to sing the praises of lesser-known “older” music. And there exists a not-so-small cadre of British bands now variously labeled as psychedelic-folk, acid-folk, baroque folk, or progressive folk, some of whom were merely ephemeral breezes over the landscape of rock. These groups whisked the dust off the often-stodgy ballads of earlier times and introduced energy, excitement, clever arrangements, and (in many cases) electricity to create something new and vital. (And, to be fair, hallucinogens may have been part of the mix.) Though I’ve still only touched the surface of this fabulous music, I’m convinced bands like Trees and Dando Shaft represent the crest of this forgotten wave.

Stick with me, as I continue to explore this garden of earthly delights. Lotus eating is permitted.

Albums:
The Garden of Jane Delawney (1970)
On the Shore (1971)
Live! (1989 reunion live)

Compilations:
Trees (50th Anniversary Edition) (2020)

Dando Shaft

(Note: this blog was previously known as longitudes: Thoughts in Woods on Snowy Evening and was devoted to general interest. The revamped longitudes: Navigating the Sea of Music is now a music discussion forum.)

Band Personnel:
Dave Cooper: acoustic guitar, vocals
Kevin Dempsey: acoustic guitar, vocals
Martin Jenkins: mandolin, violin, flute, acoustic guitar, vocals
Ted Kay: tabla, hand percussion
Roger Bullen: acoustic bass
Polly Bolton: vocals

Formed in Coventry, England in 1968 (without Bolton) around talents of Dempsey and Cooper. Their odd name was from title and character of a minor 1965 novel. Slowly built a reputation playing folk clubs when that music was still popular and exciting. First album An Evening With Dando Shaft (1970) received warm reviews and showcased three strong songwriters (Dempsey, Cooper, Jenkins, with two-thirds material written by Cooper); clean and precise acoustic playing; and confident vocals. Initially compared to more illustrious The Pentangle, although Dando was less esoteric and featured more original compositions, plus flurried Bulgarian rhythms, with slight psychedelic edge assisted by the tablas, flute, etc. Also notable for considerable talents of multi-instrumentalist Jenkins.

Second eponymous album (1971) built on the first and added fairly unknown vocalist Bolton, who’d worked with June Tabor, and gifted with one of clearest, most expressive voices in British folk (tone and style reminiscent of a less husky Sandy Denny). Venerable BBC presenter John Peel was an early fan, and Dando Shaft (aka “Carousel”) made top 50 of U.S. magazine “Cashbox,” significant for an English folk-rock group.

Standing: Bolton, Bullen, Dempsey, Kay. Seated: Cooper, Jenkins

Lantaloon continued the flawless playing, though on arrangements slightly less imaginative, and was marked by band tensions, group splitting up soon after release and concentrating on side projects (notably Whippersnapper, with Jenkins and Dempsey, the former also teaming with Bert Jansch in his three-piece, Conundrum). A well-received reunion release, Kingdom, saw bassist Danny Thompson (Pentangle) and Rod Clements (Lindisfarne) guesting. Shadows Across the Moon is a live reunion affair from 1993. As of this writing, all but Dempsey, Cooper, and Bolton have passed on.

***

I chose Dando Shaft for my first essay of “longitudes II” because it’s been awhile since I’ve flipped out such over an artist…and I’ve still heard only their first three albums. I’m a huge Pentangle fan, but I consider the Dandos a better band (the genius of Bert Jansch notwithstanding). They were graced with not one, or two, but three excellent songwriters, with mesmerizing guitar interplay between Cooper and Dempsey. They played their acoustic instruments cleanly and with dexterity. All the main members were fine vocalists. Martin Jenkins was a virtuoso and wood instrument polymath, and in my view Bolton ranks right up with Tabor, Denny, McShee, Prior, Collins, Briggs and other Brit folk chanteuses. (Check out her shimmering vocalizations on “Riverboat,” from the second LP.) And the rhythm section of Kay and Bullen was ever-supportive, with Kay’s tablas and hand percussion providing a tasty Eastern element.

I’m flabbergasted that this group isn’t better known. Even sites normally sympathetic to underground acts have scant information on Dando. (I had to start a thread for them on the almost-always-reliable Steve Hoffman Music Forums.) Fortunately, their songs and records are now getting a second chance with at least two anthology albums, and with small but hip reissue labels like Trading Places and Sommor.

An example of their impressive music is their last performance together, from 1993, with link below.

Original Albums:
An Evening With Dando Shaft (1970)
Dando Shaft (“Carousel”) (1971)
Lantaloon (1972)
Kingdom (1977)
Shadows Across the Moon (live) (1993)

Compilations:
Reaping the Harvest (1990)
Anthology (2002)

Whitefriars ‘The Last Note’