Are You Old Yet? Interview with Frankie Armstrong

Flloyd

Thunder's Mouth Theatre Presents am I old yet? Although this week I'm continuing with the occasional series of interviews that I'm calling "Are You Old Yet?" in which I engage in conversations and interviews with friends and colleagues of mine, all of whom have passed their 70th birthdays while still being as creatively active as they ever have been.

Frankie

[SINGING] Lady Margaret, Lady Margaret / sewing of her seam / and she's all dressed in black / When a thought comes to her head / she'd run into the woods / pick flowers to flower her hat, me boys. Pick flowers to flower her hat. 

So she's hoisted up her petticoats / a bit above her knee / and so nimbly she's run o'er the plain / and when...

Flloyd

My guest today is Frankie Armstrong. Singer, activist, teacher, workshop leader. Also known as the Godmother of the Natural Voice movement worldwide. The Natural Voice Movement encourages and supports community singing groups who allow people to join without auditioning. And they learn the songs by ear, so there's no need for any prior musical education or experience. If you look up Natural Voice Network online, you'll find a group somewhere near where you live.

Now, I've known Frankie since I first arrived in the U. K. In 1967 when she was a member of you and McColl's critics group in London. And she is the one who first encouraged me to sing folk songs. Frankie sings traditional and contemporary songs, writing some herself. The song you hear in the background is Tam Lin, one of the multi-verse traditional ballads that she is famous for.

Frankie

[SINGING] To ask her true love's name / but she's nothing...

Flloyd

Right, so, Frankie Armstrong, welcome to my little podcast show. And you know what the title is, but we'll save that question for a little bit down the track. So, first of all, Frankie, how do you describe yourself, what you do?

Frankie

I describe myself as someone passionate about voice and what voice can do. So I suppose as a singer of both traditional and contemporary songs and as a teacher helping people to gain confidence and discover what their voices can do. So I think that's me.

Flloyd

That pretty much covers you, yeah, [LAUGHS] certainly. In your professional life. Fantastic. Yeah. So you've been singing, Frankie. When did you start?

Frankie

Well, I always enjoyed singing at home as a kid and on outings or anything like that. But publicly, when I was 16, [LAUGHS] I was still at school and I actually sang with a skiffle group in a pub not far from my gell's grammar school. And I sang songs like "Freight Train" and "The House of the Rising Sun". It's quite intriguing to think there I was, 16 year old, I think I'd gone home and changed out of my school uniform by that's good. The skiffle group. We had a gig, we didn't get paid, but the lads got beer and I got orange juice and sandwiches.

Flloyd

Oh, excellent. Yeah.

Frankie

1957!

Flloyd

Wow. Yeah. So was that actually your first introduction to folk music as such? Did you think of it as folk music?

Frankie

Oh, yes. I mean, American Blues and folk music, but folk still at that stage, kind of had a bit of kind of Miss Pringle round the piano singing "Early One Morning".

Flloyd

Even in Australia, we had to do that.

Frankie

If you talk about rough folk music yes. That had to wait till I was 16.

Flloyd

Yeah. Skipping along here. But I first met you in London in early 1967 when you were with The Critics Group

Frankie

and you joined us.

Flloyd

Well, eventually I joined yes. I met this boy, as you know, a Scottish lad called Donnie, and he persuaded me to give up my ambitions of being a musical comedy theatre star and turn my attention to folk music and dragged me along to the Singers Club in London. And that's where I met you and Ewan (McColl) and Peggy Seeger. Interestingly enough, if we sort of flip right to the now: you're still singing, Peggy's still singing. I'm still singing.

Frankie

and Sandra (Kerr) is still singing.

Flloyd

Yes, exactly.

Frankie

It's the women of the Critics Group who are still active.

Flloyd

I hadn't thought of that. Yes, that's it.

Frankie

Oh, absolutely.

Flloyd

Yeah.

Frankie

Brian does little

Flloyd

yes. Brian Pearson

Frankie

It doesn't mean much to other people. And John Faulkner is still performing, but he's the only person who's still kind of touring and performing.

Flloyd

Right. Yes. Wonderful. Okay, Frankie, let's just dive into this. Now, tell me, are you old yet?

Frankie

[LAUGHS] It all depends on what you mean by old

Flloyd

doesn't it just?.

Frankie

Let's face it, 100 years ago, average age expectancy was in the late 40s, early 50s? I think so. It was very clear if you were 70 or 80, you were old. It's a lot more difficult to figure out now that we've stretched age expectancy into the 80s. But somehow there shouldn't be any sense of shame or approbrium, or a thing called ageism, because we're lucky if we get to be old, and we're even luckier if we get to be active and old and still engaged in the things that we have passion and excitement for, which I am.

Frankie

So, yes, I am old, but with a different definition of what that means because we all have to die, for heaven's sake, at some stage. We can't, you know, get to this age, we can't miss out. [LAUGHING]

Flloyd

[LAUGHS] Not really.

Frankie

I think the problem is we are in a culture that really is in denial of death.

Flloyd

Yes. It's not denial of getting older, but it is denial of death. I absolutely agree with you. And this whole sense that the word "old" carries this connotation of being so close to death that what's the point in bothering with you at all? And I think that's the whole ageist agenda. Because I was just having this conversation with somebody yesterday, which I can't remember who it was because I'm old and was talking about—he was saying he's not— won't get the pension until he's 68, but by the time he is 68, they'll probably have made it 70. And I was reminding him or informing him, whoever he was. That's annoying me. Now, I can't remember who it was, it's only yesterday, but when the pension was invented, you know, old age pension was invented in New Zealand, around about 1890, something like that, they hit on the age of 60 to be eligible for the pension because they seriously did not expect people to live much longer than 60.

Frankie

That's right. And I'm of an age that I got my pension age 60, and I was still traveling the world, working, touring, teaching. I put it all in a special pot for a year in order to fund me to come over to the Indigenous Australian Centenary Festival in the middle of Australia and Alice Springs, with the largest group of Aboriginal indigenous Australians ever experienced to be in one place. So that was my celebration of getting my pension at 60. I thought I wanted to go and do something to take me across the world and do something really unique and exciting. And it was.

Flloyd

Yes. How wonderful. What year was that, Frankie, when that happened?

Frankie

Well, of course, 91.

Flloyd

Oh, that was 91, right?

Frankie

No, 2001. The year of Federation. Oh, yes. From Australian Federation. Yes, of course, 201.

Flloyd

Yes.

Frankie

[LAUGHING] 2000.

Flloyd

I know. Yeah, I know. For me, I know my voice has aged, it has changed over the years, which you don't realize is going to happen when you're young. You think, oh, this is a voice I've got, and that's it. And it takes a while over the years to realize that it's changing. I mean, I know mine's deepened. I always had an alto, sort of vaguely contralto-ish kind of a voice, but I've become more comfortable with using it. How about you?

Frankie

I'm still kind of working that one out because actually, I discovered that an upper voice kind of—partly because I got vocal coaching at a time at which life was distressing, because my brother had terminal cancer and my mom had developed dementia. So I know I tightened up and things didn't feel as comfortable and so I virtually lost my upper register. So I then went and had wonderful—found a wonderful teacher and he kind of got me back—quite a large area of my upper register, which age is now robbing from me again. Comfortably being able to kind of weave up and down. So I'm being encouraged by another wonderful voice coach to get back into using the area that I did used to use largely, which, as you say, is the kind of middle to lower part of your voice. So I'm reworking that in and starting to feel more comfortable with it.

Flloyd

Yes. And I think we can cheerily give a shout out to Mark Meylan, who you put me on to as well. A wonderful vocal coach, based in London, works with a lot of West End musical people, and, of course, the fabulous Joanna Cazden, who's based in California. And she's been very active in the VASTA, the Voice and Speech Trainers Association as well. And a good buddy to both of us. We've both done work with Joanna. She's the go-to girl. Yeah,

Frankie

Absolutely. It's never too late to go and see find somebody who can help.

Flloyd

Absolutely. It's never too late. One should never —it's like you should never be put off singing when you're small. I think there should be a special place in Hades for teachers who tell small children that they can't sing

Frankie

absolutely,

Flloyd

it's abuse. And then as you get older and your voice does start to lose tone of course our muscles lose tone as we age, it's going to happen but then to think as my mother did, she stopped singing when she was in her, I would say 50s just going "can't do it, no, you don't want to hear me".

And I did want to hear her and she simply would not sing and she was hypercritical if she heard older people singing with a bit of a quaver and she think "oh, they shouldn't be singing".

Frankie

Oh, that's so sad, because the interest I developed in the early 60s, in British folk song, a lot of the fine singers who'd learnt songs from their family and who were carrying songs that had been around for centuries and therefore were very much part of our history—particularly women's history, because women don't appear too much in history, the formal history books. So we got incredibly excited about what we could learn about —quote— "ordinary women" who weren't queens or duchesses, mistresses of kings. About songs—and of course a lot of those singers were relatively older. They were recorded in their 60s, 70s, sometimes even 80s. Some of them still had totally intact voices which meant you knew that you could still have an intact voice if you were lucky. But others were obviously getting on and were being recorded having maybe not sung in public for maybe a decade or something but they still carry a song. They could still tell a story. They could still move you. That's what's important—not whether you have the voice perfect or the voice ideal.

Flloyd

Yes, absolutely. Someone again, someone—I don't know if it was the same person I was talking to yesterday or if it was two days ago or two weeks ago, but they were saying to me they were listening to a younger singer who was singing with a kind of a quavery voice. And they said, "does that come from when they were collecting songs? And they were collecting them from older people. So they thought that was just how folk music was sung". And I think there is an element of that. Or there was, anyway. Not so much now. I think young singers coming through are doing it their way, which is fabulous. .

Frankie

Yeah I mean, the important thing is the song and the communicating of the song. It's still difficult if you felt you used to be able to do that with relative ease. To kind of feel—oh, you know, I need to be more discreet about where I pitch it and how I use my voice. And certain sounds can kind of challenge you, shall we say?

Flloyd

Yes.

Frankie

In a way, you have to maybe work at things a bit more than you did when you took your voice for granted and felt that it was there to do the song justice.

Flloyd

Absolutely, yes.

Frankie

But it's still communicating the importance of what it is that you want to communicate how you want to move people, whether it's to laughter or to tears.

Flloyd

Yeah. And as you and I both know, as being people who've studied the anatomy of the vocal instrument, which is, as we also both know, the whole body self. But muscle tone does evaporate as you get older. It's a fact of life, it's a fact of the nature. And if you don't use it, you lose it. So you just have to keep doing it, but you have to do it more. The older you get, the more work you actually have to do to keep that muscle tone. And you can get it back and you can build on it to a certain extent.

Yeah. Which is heartening. But you can't sit back and not sing for a fortnight and then get up and expect it to be there.

Frankie

And as you say, because it's your whole body. The first thing I do in the morning after cup of tea, feeding the cats, is to do exercises for best part of half an hour most mornings. That's because the muscles that you need are both the muscles in your throat, but largely the muscles in your trunk and your diaphragm go through the middle of your body and held up by your feet and your legs. So the more you can keep them all functioning.

Flloyd

Yes. Exactly. So the idea of being old and still being able to do the stuff that you love, to whatever degree, because you love doing it and because it has value and having that sense that you still have something to offer and if people don't want it, that's their choice.

Frankie

Flloyd, that was just so beautifully expressed.

Flloyd

Thank you. Yeah, one of my rants I get on my rants quite often.

Frankie

[SINGING] A mute bird sat by her / was maintained by her moan /Sing Willow, willow, willow/ The true tears fell from her, / Would have melted a stone / oh, willow, willow, willow, willow / oh willow, willow, willow, willow..—

Flloyd

Okay, so, Frankie, I understand you've got gigs coming up.

Frankie

Well, yeah, I'm singing down at the Cardiff—the Wales Millenium Centre—on Friday evening with a woman called Rebecca Morden who set up with other team, a thing called Greenham Women Everywhere. So it's websites, photos, events, connections, Zooms of women who were involved in the Greenham Peace Camp back 41 -2 years ago now. And the march to Greenham Common to demand that we don't have Cruise and nuclear missiles there started from Cardiff, in fact, which is where I am. So Rebecca is going to talk about that read from the book that they called Out of the Darkness after a song that I wrote for the Greenham Peace Women.

So she then asked me to go and sing the song and a couple more songs while she's introducing and talking about the book, before a play that is opening on Friday, which is—I haven't seen it yet, but it's obviously about women who get involved in the peace camp. All right. And then on Tuesday, which is the press night for the play, which is called Ess and Flow, the press night, I'm singing with the trio I sing with, who also run singing groups and community choirs and belong to our Natural Voice Network. So Pauline, Laura and myself are singing for half an hour before the play on the press night.

Flloyd

Yes. Right. So that reminds me two things that I wanted to ask you about. One was your activism using your voice and your creative writing expression as an activist. Do you remember when you first sort of got the bug?

Frankie

Well, in a sense, it depends what you call activism. But I know that when I was working as a receptionist in a factory, when I was about 19, 20, before I went into social work and singing, I used to go around the offices in the factory and collect for Oxfam and I put on concerts, back where I lived in Hartfordshire for money for Oxfam. So being concerned about poverty, famine, inequality was something that was just built into me from my parents. So when I started singing and singing with professional singers, it just made sense to keep doing things like that kind of benefit.

Then when we joined the Critics Group, we did things. I did things. My first big solo gig was in Trafalgar Square in 1966 at the biggest first anti-Vietnam War project.

Flloyd

Yes.

Frankie

And in the Critics Group, we did things for medical aid for Vietnam. And then it morphed into anti apartheid and CND and Chile Solidarity Campaign after the coup, horrible, right wing, murderous coup in Chile. So I just kind of got swept into all these to sing and to do. I'm not a songwriter, I'm an occasional songwriter. But some of the songs I have written were precisely for those kinds of big demonstrations and marches and events. And in fact, last weekend at the Big One, on Sunday, I was up there and I got roped into singing A Message from Mother Earth because it was largely focused on climate, the climate emergency and climate catastrophe that is imminent if we don't do something about it.

Flloyd

Right.

Frankie

So even three was is that three, four days ago? I was still at it.

Flloyd

[LAUGHING] And she's not going to stop anytime soon.

Frankie

Not on Friday or Tuesday, for sure.

Flloyd

Yeah. So just having a little bit of think of the range of the music that you sing over the years, you're kind of famous for singing very long ballads. Tam Lin comes to mind. Have you ever counted how many verses there are in your version of Tam Lin?

Frankie

33.

Flloyd

How many?

Frankie

33.

Flloyd

33. Yes. What a feat of memory. I wouldn't even dare to attempt that without having the screen in front of me, giving me the words. Funny.

Frankie

I still use things like doctor's and dentist's waiting rooms to go back through ballads that I haven't abandoned, that I may not—haven't sung for a while, but I want to keep them alive. The wordings alive in my head.

Flloyd

and you're such a fantastic storyteller, as you say. And then, of course, there are the more politically oriented. I mean, "Bread and Roses" is one of my favorites, which you've got out on your CD, Cats of Coven Lawn with your trio. Who are the other ones in the trio again?

Frankie

Pauline Down and Laura Bradshaw.

Flloyd

Yes. Great

Frankie

They run groups. Laura runs a big and in incredible busy-ness, the Oasis Choir, which is for refugees and asylum seekers. And Pauline runs a group, or starting it up again for veterans who were injured out of all the various horrible things that Britain got itself involved in, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And she periodically runs wonderful women's groups and improvisation groups. So we're all still very active. But I am the oldest, I'm quite proud to say.

Flloyd

Wonderful. And the other one, which is actually my favorite CD of all of yours is— I can't remember the name of it. It's the one you did with Dave what's his name? The Brecht-Weil one—

Frankie

guitarist and blues singer. "Let no one deceive you".

Flloyd

There you go. Yes.

Frankie

Title of the CD of songs of Bertholt Brecht with Eissler and Kurt Weil.

Flloyd

Yes. I'm going to play a little couple of verses of Alabama Story, which, again, is my favorite of all of those. I just love it. I just love it. Yeah. Great. Okay. Now, Frankie, I think we have probably run out of time, which doesn't mean it's the end of our conversation because we talk at least once a fortnight and I see you roundabout once a fortnight because you run those wonderful little sessions on Zoom with your mates from all around the world. The music shares, which is what keeps me going as far as singing is concerned.

Frankie

Well, and me over COVID and yeah— it's just been so important, hasn't it?

Flloyd

Absolutely.

Frankie

People who share not maybe the same kind of music all the time as you, as I say, Terry comes and plays Bach and other people. Well, like, you sing your own songs and Shanee sings wonderful songs of Joni Mitchell and Jake Thackery. Brian sings ballads and his own songs. It's wonderful to have that sense of a music family.

Flloyd

Exactly. Yes. Wonderful. Well, Frankie, thank you so much for coming along to my little chat show here and telling us all about your attitude to oldness [LAUGHS] and talking about singing. It's always great to talk with you about singing, Frankie.

Frankie

Well, it's one of our favorite subjects, let's face it.

Flloyd

Isn't it just? Yes. Okay. All right. Until next time. Tuesday, in fact. Next Tuesday. I'll see you then. Bye.

Frankie

Okay, bye.

Frankie

[SINGING]Oh, show us the waiter the next whisky bar / oh, don't ask why / oh, don't ask why for we must find the next whisky bar / for if we don't find the next whisky bar / I'll tell you we must die I tell you, we must die./ I tell you, I tell you, I Tell you we must die./ Oh moon of Alabama...

Flloyd

Well now and that's it for our time spent with Frankie Armstrong. The songs that you heard, the first one was Tam Lin, traditional song, traditional ballad. The one in the middle was the Willow song from Frankie's album (Frankie with friends) "The Cats of Coven Lawn". And the last one there was the Alabama Song by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil from the album "Let No One Deceive You", which is Frankie Armstrong and Dave Von Ronk.

Now, I'm not going to make any promises about what's going to be up on this podcast next week, because I'm finding that I'm not the only person who's busy at this time of the year. A lot of the actors are as well. So we're still working on getting Season 8 recorded and ready to go. Whatever it is, I'll have something up there. So in the meantime, the theme music that's played on this podcast is from John T. La Barbera. Thanks, John.

If you're enjoying these talks and rants and conversations and songs and silly stories, please share it with your mates. Spread the word. And if you'd like to support the making of the podcast, you can do that over at the website, www.amIoldyet.com/donate.

Thanks for listening. Stay safe.

The Songs

Tam Lin – Traditional. Album Ballads (a Fellside compilation of singers performing traditional ballads

Willow Song – traditional.  Album Cats of Coven Lawn

Alabamy Song – Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil – from the album Let No one Deceive You

Frankie Armstrong and Dave Van Ronk perform the songs of Bertolt Brecht, with composers Kurt Weil and Hanns Eisler. 

www.frankiearmstrong.com