Did You Know? - Tony Barrand and Nowell Sing we Clear
The Vermont Folklife Archive is full of amazing first-person accounts of everyday life in Vermont and New England—past and present. In “Did You Know?” we share these stories with you. With the winter holiday season upon us, we turn our attention to Tony Barrand, a Vermont musician and educator who, for decades, actively performed during this special season. Tony passed away in January 2022, and his daughter generously donated a collection of his papers to the VT Folklife Archive.
Nowell Sing We Clear in the late 70s. Left to Right: Fred Breunig, Tony Barrand, John Roberts, Steve Woodruff.
Tony was born and raised in England, but lived the majority of his adult life in the US. He came to the States as a graduate student in the 1960s and built a career here as an academic, teaching at both Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont and at Boston University. He was an avid folk dancer and musician, and an active professional folksinger. In the late 1960s, Tony formed what would turn into a 50+ year partnership with fellow singer John Roberts. Among their many projects together, Tony and John established the seasonal performance troupe, Nowell Sing We Clear (NSWC). Over the course of 40 years NWSC became a staple of the holiday season, performing renditions of lesser-known, seasonal traditional music and mummers plays in venues around New England and across the country.
This month, we bring you excerpts of interviews with Tony's fellow NSWC members along with some excerpts from this group's much-loved annual winter holiday repertoire.
First, we hear from his long-time singing partner John Roberts. John was also born and raised in England, although he and Tony did not meet until they were in graduate school together in the US. Ever since that time, the pair worked together both musically and professionally. Here, John talks about how the idea of Nowell Sing We Clear was born.
Again, Tony and I had been—when we were in England, we'd gone to Cecil Sharp house, which is the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and they had a program that was being put on by Pat Shuldham Shaw, who was a very influential folk song collector and folk-dance collector. He was interested in the old stuff. He collected some wonderful, wonderful stuff on the Shetland Islands in the late 1950s. So, he was putting on a Christmas program and had the idea of traditional carols and songs about the Christmas story and other traditional customs not necessarily associated with basic Christianity, wassailing and things like that. And so, we worked on developing a Christmas program and with a couple of friends—and Fred Breunig was one, Steve Woodruff originally, then Steve moved to California after we'd been doing this for a few years, and Andy Davis joined us. So, put together this slightly different Christmas concept of a concert. And we put—again, Tony did most of the work on that and kept us rehearsing it all the time. And it changed every year, but we did that for 40 years while Tony could still tour.
Brattleboro resident Andy Davis joined the group in the 1980s to replace former member Steve Woodruff, who had moved to the west coast. Andy was already familiar with NSWC as an audience member, and was invited to fill in for several concerts. He went on to join the group and has been with them ever since. Andy has had a long career as a music educator in Vermont public schools, folk dance camps, and events across the U.S. He also served as a VT Folklife board member in 2019 and 2020.
Here, he talks about how Tony often began each concert:
...the show used to begin with Tony striding onto stage and we're going way back before he contracted MS [Multiple Sclerosis] and he just strode on to stage, the dancer that he was, step up to the microphone and start singing "This is the truth sent from above, the truth of God, the God of Love." And that was–I was just stunned by his presence from the first time that happened. And one thing I learned later–it is so Tony–it said the Oxford Book of Carols arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams in four parts. But Tony, it was a ballad, so he sang it by himself, the melody. It's a ballad tune and he sang it, but he left, always left out one verse. So that one verse ended "the next thing, which to you I'll tell; woman was made with man to dwell." And then he left out a verse, maybe for brevity, but the next verse began, "Thus we were heirs to endless woes." Now in the original, that inference was not there, but the audience would either giggle or hiss, or–because of this inference that he was commenting on how women had made our lives difficult, these four guys on stage, and that was Tony. It wasn't historically accurate, but it was entertaining, that he would put this humorous edge by–and I don't know if he, you know, too many verses, but I think he actually enjoyed that moment. "Thus, we were heirs to endless woes till God, the Lord did interpose and sent his son...", you know, to redeem us. So that was Tony, always wanting a reaction from the audience. And we would laugh over the years that sometimes he would abandon a sensible boundary of–or just reaching for that reaction. And then maybe later in the van going, "Tony, that might have been that might have been a reaction too far!" (laughs) But, you know, he always, he liked that. He liked that something coming back from the audience. Sometimes it was a gasp and sometimes it was just loving laughter.
Next, we hear from fellow founding member of NSWC, Fred Breunig. Fred and Tony first met in the early 1970s and started dancing and playing music together. Both based in the Brattleboro / Marlboro / Putney area, it was important to them to create opportunities for music, dance and song that were rooted in the local area. Together, they founded an ongoing folk dance event–the Marlboro Morris “Ale”--that continues to this day in Marlboro, VT each May. In the 1970s, they also led a seasonal series of weekend courses for traditional dance and song, also in Marlboro. Fred is an original member of NSWC and continues his participation with the current annual Sing Nowell performances.
Here, Fred talks about Tony's love of research and the group's subsequent process of coming up with material for their concerts:
So, he would dive into these old books and go to old libraries and get books and find things that had never been published, you know, in the last 300 years or whatever, and or that had been in, you know, people had forgotten about. And he'd photocopy the whole book and then he'd bring, you know, he'd bring notebooks of photocopies to us at rehearsals. And we would go through, you know, and look at things and say, you know, "well, this is this might be worthwhile looking at." And there actually, there was, I remember, particularly one song that we discarded early on that we ended up sort of rediscovering a number of years later, which was O Bethlehem. And we recorded that on our very last album, and I played pipe and tabor on it, and we wanted to make it sort of a....it was a Basque tune, maybe? I'd have to look in our book to see what the origins of it, I don’t keep that. But O Bethlehem was one that we didn't particularly like when we first looked at it. But then 20 years later, we thought, "Oh, this might be good. We should take another look at this. I remember we discarded it!"
Lyrics:
1 O Bethlehem, heaven's fair rose its bud embowering, o Bethlehem.
O Bethlehem, had in thy heart it's time for flowering, o Bethlehem.
Was there no room for God's own son, sheltered within a lowly manger?
Now we have room, oh royal stranger, but he was gone, o Bethlehem.
2 O Bethlehem, o'er you a brilliant star is shining, o Bethlehem.
O Bethlehem, o'er you it stands with no declining, o Bethlehem.
Heavenly choirs of angels sing, bringing the world glad news of a king.
Round you the hills and valleys rejoice, o Bethlehem, o Bethlehem.
3 O Bethlehem, ancient of days, within thy story, heaven was laid.
O Bethlehem, anguish must be the price of glory, for us he paid.
God's greatest gift to man was made, so to himself our gift is given,
Given ourselves from earth to heaven, o Bethlehem, o Bethlehem.
Tony was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in the mid-1980s, yet continued performing and singing for many years after that. As Tony's abilities evolved, the group's performances evolved as well. Here, Andy talks about one way their repertoire shifted over time, perhaps influenced in part by Tony's own experiences.
I think Fred and John would back me up that one year, maybe as Tony's life was becoming more difficult for him, he started thinking about what he would say, what the gypsies called this midwinter time. It wasn't just holiday partying, "the Terror Time." And it was a time when the phrase "seasonal affective disorder" had sort of hit the conversation that midwinter was not all just party and, but people were really getting depressed. You know, and people that maybe had lost a family member or a spouse or partner or were struggling in life, these holidays can really be a troubling time of year. So, we always then–I remember we started doing songs like Welladay, places where Christmas revels did keep, now have become habitations for sheep." There's a song complaining about the Highland clearances and how it had wiped Christmas away. And these songs that were more about the sorrow that can come at this time of year. And we did songs like Time to Remember the Poor, which is just an incredible 19th-century song about Midwinter. We did Ian Robb's Homeless Wassail for a couple of years. Which is just–it's not really an upper holiday favorite. It's not Frosty the Snowman, you know, it's–times can be difficult. And I think, Tony, that meant a lot to him. That portion of the program.
Lyrics:
The cold air and snow will in plenty descend, and whiten the prospect around
The keen cutting wind from the north will attend, and cover it over the ground
When the hills and the dales are all candied with white, and the rivers are froze on the shore,
When the bright twinkling stars, they proclaim a cold night, that's the time to remember the poor.
Finally, Andy talks about Tony's skill as a performer and his deep-rooted sense of the interconnection between the performer and his time, place and context:
So, you know, I think when I first saw Tony in public–I think I'm not alone in this–he was a bigger-than-life kind of character. He was confident, highly skilled. He never sang a song without being all in. I never saw Tony just throw off a song, get it over with. Didn't matter if it was a children's song, a funny song, or some really, you know, supernatural ballad or something. He was always in the middle of the story. Telling it like it was the most important thing that needed to be conveyed at that moment of time. In that Country Dance and Song Society article that came out a couple of years ago, he talked about four words: power and grace, time and place. And I really have found that very helpful for thinking and sort of communing even now as–I commune often with Tony (laughs)–it's hard to get Tony out of your mind if you're a musician or were moved by him because–and I think of that power and grace. He did sing with power, but with grace and he had this sense of time and place. And I think that interview ended with the line "In the end, we can only sing these songs for who we are." We can't–and that's just that was the last line in that published interview, is that we have to sing them as ourselves. We can't recreate other people who maybe created the songs, but we have to sing them for who WE are and for where WE, the community that WE'RE in and the people we're singing with and for. And I think that is just very profound.
In 2014 Vermont governor Peter Shumlin officially declared Nowell Sing We Clear a "Vermont Treasure" (we have the proclamation in our archival collection!). Tony Barrand played a large part in that legacy, though he could not have done it without the talents of his fellow bandmates. The tradition continues each December in Brattleboro, VT with the next iteration of NSWC's annual performances–currently as Sing Nowell–with several NSWC members joined by younger generations (including children of two of the performers) who are now an integral part of the performance.
We end here with a final song from NSWC as a holiday wish from all of us at Vermont Folklife to you.
Lyrics:
Sing Nowell
Holly and bells in the darkest days of the year
Nowell, Nowell, we wish you well
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell