08/07/2026
Yesterday, a sultry summer evening provided the setting for Bath Acoustic Club to be entertained by one of our favourite regular performers, Mr Terry Helyar. Terry is well known to many as an accomplished musician, who managed to impress an audience of talented people with his prowess on two guitars, a melodeon, and a harmonica, as well as singing a number of songs, including his own.
He gave us a varied selection: A Love as True as Mine, I Wandered by a Brookside, Follow the Heron Home, Our China is Broken, I Hope that I Don’t Fall in Love with You, and Mike Scott’s deep and moving The Saviour’s Messenger, which I had not heard before. Later, Terry returned to send us off appropriately with Home Lads Home. There was great depth as well as breadth in these songs, which seemed to me to be conjured up from a life of experience and feeling. Terry is a modest man, but he opened up a wide world last evening. Thank you, sir!
We started the evening with Alan Bell’s Windmills (the old romantic ones, not the modern turbines). Then the wonderful Jon Asprey gave us two of his very best: Closer, which is my all-time favourite of his, and The Life Class. There is great poetry as well as music in his compositions. He was followed by another John, who played a blues, The Key to the Highway, which seemed to fit the hot, lazy weather, and That Look in Your Eye. No one can tell it like John.
Then Paul Crocker, who had just purchased another dulcimer, albeit a small one, treated us to Van Morrison’s Moondance, and another blues, his own St James’s W**e Vaults Blues, which fitted the occasion perfectly. Garth gave us two songs from his encyclopaedic repertoire: Duran Duran’s Say a Prayer, followed by Patti Page’s Changing Partners from the 1950s. How does he manage to remember them all (and play them so well)?
Hitching a ride with Terry, Steve Goodfield paid us a welcome visit and gave us two excellent songs: Bob Dylan’s You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go, and Leonard Cohen’s Fine for a While, both beautifully delivered. Then Rosie Upton, who will be headlining in September, gave us her late husband’s song Sunflower in her rich, resonant voice, followed by Careless Love. Rosie was followed by Mandy Woods, who will also be returning for a set later in the year. Mandy gave us Just Once More, followed by her deeply moving tribute to a former canine friend of long standing, My Silent Soulmate. Lovely.
After Terry’s set and a short refreshment break (hydration?), our own Jan restarted the evening with Fakenham Fair. It was enough to make me want to give the wheel of fortune a whirl myself! She followed this by the (I hope) less than serious Red Eyes (Formation Drinking Team) from Peter Skellern and Richard Stilgoe. Then Fred Sanders gave us (predictably) a Beatles’ song, She’s Leaving Home, followed by his own Distracted, both sung and played in his gentle, polished manner.
Catherine sang us one of her summer songs, La Luna, composed after a holiday in Spain, and played with a Spanish guitar flourish, followed by Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Don’t Need Much to be Happy, to remind us how fortunate we really are.
Nigel amused us with Stanley Accrington’s Circles in the corn (I always wondered how they did those), followed by All Things Are Quite Equal, which is hard to disagree with. Andy Popplestone then pinned our ears back with the powerful Good Morning Mr Colston, followed by Jeremy Taylor’s satirical Closing Time. He was followed by his lady wife, Pat, who was making her first visit in a while with her observational poem Driving in the Country, which touched on the unusual antics of cattle, but was apparently a true story.
The songs and the singing certainly caught the mood of the evening. It also helped that we started, and finished, about half an hour earlier than before, and we agreed to stick to this revised timetable in future. Many thanks to all for another memorable evening.
