Vin Garbutt: Teesside Troubadour (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Vin Garbutt: Teesside Troubadour

11:17am Friday 26th November 2010 in Arts

Cineworld, Middlesbrough THE audience emerged with a warm glow after seeing a film about folk singer Vin Garbutt’s life story.

This might sound twee, but it’s true. You felt better for “meeting” the man who travels the world with a guitar, an unusual singing voice, daft patter and serious messages.

The Loftus-based singer may be virtually unknown outside the international folk circuit, but his personality and sincerity overcome any problems with his Teesside accent and phrases.

Songs featured in the 82- minute film include ones about “pink salmon” once swimming in the Tees – Garbutt explained he thought in 1970 when he wrote the song that all salmon were pink like those in tins – and a dark Punjabi girl, who fell in love with a Teessider.

The film shows his early years in gritty South Bank, Middlesbrough – “I was born in a bucket,” he told giggling 2010 schoolgirls – giving up a secure engineering turner’s job at ICI Wilton to launch an uncertain singing career, and performing to audiences all over the world.

For non-folkies like me, the concert clips are only a minute or two long (enough), and there is plenty of human interest. It’s obvious his wife Pat and four children adore him.

Five years ago, he suffered two major heart attacks and could not resist joking with a doctor who wanted to check his name – “if you don’t get a move on, I won’t be here.”

Garbutt, refusing to reveal who his hair stylist was, called his job the best in the world. He said he loved solitude, like the coastline near his farmhouse in rolling North Yorkshire. At 63, he had “no yearnings” for his career, which now includes making CDs at home. Wife Pat said he would continue “until he drops”.

One of the youngest in the invited audience at the premiere, student Joe Wicks, 18, of Loftus, said he hoped the DVD, Vin Garbutt: Teesside Troubadour, would give a boost to the area’s people and tell those outside the North- East how beautiful our countryside was.

It was made over a three-year period by Saltburn filmmaker Craig Hornby, who travelled with him to countries including Canada and Australia and Europe. Garbutt called him a slave-driver, who made him climb Eston Nab, overlooking the Wilton chemical complex, eight times to perfect a photograph of him playing a tin whistle, as he was photographed doing 40 years ago.

Both went to St Peter’s School, South Bank, though 20 years separated their time there.

The DVD will be released soon by Pancrack Films and Home Roots Music.

Michael Morrissey