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)