Sylvia Barnes and Sandy Stanage
Nitten Folk Club, 3/9/2026
Sylvia Barnes, Sandy Stanage (guitar)
A great night at the Nitten- if it weren’t for the football next door!
The Nitten Folk Club at the Dean in Newtongrange had a very good turnout last night to hear special guests Sylvia Barnes accompanied by guitarist Sandy Stanage. Unfortunately, last night was also the night of a big local derby with Hibs v Hearts, and the Dean Tavern was packed and very noisy with a big crowd watching it on 5 different TV’s through an open door! Even worse Hibs lost 3-1 and as a long-time Hibbie that didn’t make me happy! The folk club is in a separate function room at the back of the Dean; normally it’s quiet but the big crowds next door and the roar when the goals were scored filtered through.
Sylvia Barnes is an acclaimed Scottish traditional singer who has sung with the Battlefield Band and Brian McNeill and was named Scots Singer of the Year in 2006 at the Hands Up for Trad Awards. She was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2024. Strangely, despite a lifetime of folk music in England and Scotland, I had never heard Sylvia sing live although I knew her recordings. I was delighted to hear her live for the first time and she didn’t disappoint. She has a powerful and melodic voice which did justice to the fine collection of songs she performed. She began with ‘Glasgow Lassie’, because as she said that’s what she is! Sylvia has also recorded this on her fine CD ‘The Colour of Amber’ (2007) and listening to it as I write this review I can say her voice is as good now as it was 20 years ago! She also recorded ‘Baltic Street’ on the same CD and sang it again last night. This is based on a great poem by Violet Jacob, set to music by the great Scots singer Carole Prior, and having heard Carole sing it I can say that Sylvia did it justice tonight. She was accompanied by a very fine guitar player, Sandy Stanage. They have been performing together for more than 20 years and have a fine partnership with Sandy often giving strong musical interpretation of Sylvia’s songs. One song really impacted me; this was a Rab Noakes song, ‘Gently Does It’, for the great Scottish folk icon that was Alex Campbell. Rab wrote this song for Alex in 1985 when Alex was dying of cancer in Denmark and it includes the lines, “And a few years ago you’d been on this road so long, Now they are building a highway to take you home.” This of course is a reference to Alex’s signature song, ‘Been on the road so long’. I knew Rab Noakes well; we used to meet up at STUC conferences where we would usually find some cultural event to attend instead of the boring dinners! I used to tease Rab that he was really a folk singer, but he was of course a much wider musician and composer. I also knew Alex Campbell back in the 1960’s when he used to come and play at our folk club in Harlow and we would put him up and spend entertaining evenings after the folk club. When I first began to review music I went the Skagen Folk Festival in Denmark and seeking a press ticket told them I was an old friend of Alex Campbell. They said, “Well Alex Campbell is a god in Denmark so of course you must have a press ticket!” Scots traditional folk music is a key part of Scottish cultural life and I’m always telling the Edinburgh International Festival they should have more of it in their programme. With singers like Sylvia Barnes we also have the interpreters who can present it to the world and we were lucky to have her last night at the Nitten club.
Sylvia’s sets were preceded in both halves by members of the Nitten club’s musicians, singers and poets amongst a very good audience which shows the strengths of the club. Sadly, there were very few young people amongst us, but then that’s true of folk clubs universally. Apparently young people prefer big concerts or festivals not folk clubs. That raises the question of whether folk clubs will survive. They have already declined since their peak in the 1960’s from 1500 to around 150 today, so we are lucky that the Nitten Club is very healthy. Last night was very good - despite the football next door!
