Box and Fiddle
Year 42 No 10
June 2019
Price £3.00
52 Page Magazine
12 month subscription £33.60 + p&p £15.85 (UK)
The Story of Roger Dobson & the Newcastleton Festival
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Fifty years of the Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival and Scottish dance bands have played a key part both in the hall and in various sessions around the village.
Eliza Mood had a conversation with Scottish dance band leader Roger Dobson about his life in music. Roger was very involved with the Newcastleton Festival in the heady days of the 80s and early 90s and has been a stalwart of the festival for many years.
But let’s not get ahead. Travel back to 1949 when someone – he isn’t quite sure who – gave Roger a little melodeon with 11 buttons. In those days, all of the farmhouses and cottages had a melodeon and a fiddle knocking about and it was only natural for the youngsters to pick them up and have a go. His mother had an old one with the stops on the top and the lad was determined to get a tune out of it. At the age of 11 he played a tune on Sir Jimmy Shand’s Hohner Morino and from that moment he was smitten.
When he left his father’s sheep farm at Kielder, he was hired to a farm in Bellingham and every penny of his wages went into the accordion fund until he had saved the £200 he needed. That was 61 years ago and he plays the Hohner Morino to this day. Since then, it has always been a family affair; Roger’s late brother played the fiddle in his band and after that from the age of 15 his daughter, Carol.
Let’s go back once more, this time to the period leading up to the first Newcastleton Festival. When Max Houliston of ‘The Hole in the Wa’’ in Dumfries instigated the first Accordion & Fiddle Club in 1965, it took off as a special social night for a tune, and Clubs mushroomed from Gretna to Langholm and beyond with smaller villages like Newcastleton joining them. Players would travel from one village to another from September to April. On the English side of the border, a couple of Clubs, Hexham and Carlisle, covered the summer months. The Clubs supported the players by putting on guest artistes and bringing new bands forward. Their popularity rocketed; if you wanted to get into the Crown Hotel in Langholm you’d need to buy your ticket at the previous meeting.
From the moment the Langholm Club started, Roger attended, listened and learned. The farm owner where he worked was interested too, so they traveled together to the Newcastleton, Bonchester Bridge, Dumfries and Newton St Boswells Clubs. These were the grand days and the musicians Roger got to hear provided an incentive to improve his technique during the 2 to 2½ hours’ practice he did each day.
It was Ray Milbourne who, in 1969, thought up the idea of a summer festival in Newcastleton as a way of continuing to give a platform to players and provide dances in traditional style for the dancers who followed them. In the mid-80s Roger’s band took off and he was traveling between 800 – 1,000 miles per week while still shepherding at Kelso and Langholm. During this time he also became Chairman of the Newcastleton Festival Committee.
In 1983 Roger introduced a new element to the Festival, running a special Scottish dance music event at the Doormouse Bar. He would invite 5 or 6 bands, each comprising 2 accordion, fiddle, drums and keyboard to play from Friday lunchtime to Sunday night. As soon as one band stepped down after a 20 – 30 minute spot, another would stand up and give it their all. These were top class players; there were no melodeons and just traditional Scottish dance band tunes. There were no seats going spare and the Doormouse had to let 5 or 10 people out before others could come in. People came to listen to top class music and Roger made sure they would hear it.
Every Festival during the 10 or so years he ran this part of the Festival holds special memories for Roger. It attracted all of the top boys of the day; Andrew Knight, Colin Brown, Alan Gardiner, Eric Goodfellow, Wattie Beattie, Alasdair MacLeod, Iain Cathcart, Helen Murray (who won the accordion competition at Newcastleton)….the long list continued much too fast for me to write down.
Though Roger has reached his 80th birthday the band is still playing at Accordion & Fiddle Clubs and other venues and we look forward to welcoming him once again to the 50th Anniversary Festival in 2019.
by
Fifty years of the Newcastleton Traditional Music Festival and Scottish dance bands have played a key part both in the hall and in various sessions around the village.
Eliza Mood had a conversation with Scottish dance band leader Roger Dobson about his life in music. Roger was very involved with the Newcastleton Festival in the heady days of the 80s and early 90s and has been a stalwart of the festival for many years.
But let’s not get ahead. Travel back to 1949 when someone – he isn’t quite sure who – gave Roger a little melodeon with 11 buttons. In those days, all of the farmhouses and cottages had a melodeon and a fiddle knocking about and it was only natural for the youngsters to pick them up and have a go. His mother had an old one with the stops on the top and the lad was determined to get a tune out of it. At the age of 11 he played a tune on Sir Jimmy Shand’s Hohner Morino and from that moment he was smitten.
When he left his father’s sheep farm at Kielder, he was hired to a farm in Bellingham and every penny of his wages went into the accordion fund until he had saved the £200 he needed. That was 61 years ago and he plays the Hohner Morino to this day. Since then, it has always been a family affair; Roger’s late brother played the fiddle in his band and after that from the age of 15 his daughter, Carol.
Let’s go back once more, this time to the period leading up to the first Newcastleton Festival. When Max Houliston of ‘The Hole in the Wa’’ in Dumfries instigated the first Accordion & Fiddle Club in 1965, it took off as a special social night for a tune, and Clubs mushroomed from Gretna to Langholm and beyond with smaller villages like Newcastleton joining them. Players would travel from one village to another from September to April. On the English side of the border, a couple of Clubs, Hexham and Carlisle, covered the summer months. The Clubs supported the players by putting on guest artistes and bringing new bands forward. Their popularity rocketed; if you wanted to get into the Crown Hotel in Langholm you’d need to buy your ticket at the previous meeting.
From the moment the Langholm Club started, Roger attended, listened and learned. The farm owner where he worked was interested too, so they traveled together to the Newcastleton, Bonchester Bridge, Dumfries and Newton St Boswells Clubs. These were the grand days and the musicians Roger got to hear provided an incentive to improve his technique during the 2 to 2½ hours’ practice he did each day.
It was Ray Milbourne who, in 1969, thought up the idea of a summer festival in Newcastleton as a way of continuing to give a platform to players and provide dances in traditional style for the dancers who followed them. In the mid-80s Roger’s band took off and he was traveling between 800 – 1,000 miles per week while still shepherding at Kelso and Langholm. During this time he also became Chairman of the Newcastleton Festival Committee.
In 1983 Roger introduced a new element to the Festival, running a special Scottish dance music event at the Doormouse Bar. He would invite 5 or 6 bands, each comprising 2 accordion, fiddle, drums and keyboard to play from Friday lunchtime to Sunday night. As soon as one band stepped down after a 20 – 30 minute spot, another would stand up and give it their all. These were top class players; there were no melodeons and just traditional Scottish dance band tunes. There were no seats going spare and the Doormouse had to let 5 or 10 people out before others could come in. People came to listen to top class music and Roger made sure they would hear it.
Every Festival during the 10 or so years he ran this part of the Festival holds special memories for Roger. It attracted all of the top boys of the day; Andrew Knight, Colin Brown, Alan Gardiner, Eric Goodfellow, Wattie Beattie, Alasdair MacLeod, Iain Cathcart, Helen Murray (who won the accordion competition at Newcastleton)….the long list continued much too fast for me to write down.
Though Roger has reached his 80th birthday the band is still playing at Accordion & Fiddle Clubs and other venues and we look forward to welcoming him once again to the 50th Anniversary Festival in 2019.