Vin Garbutt on music and Teesside

In 1968 he was just another Teesside lad, serving his apprenticeship at ICI, then a spell travelling General Franco's Spain in an old BBC broadcast van, driven by an American Vietnam deserter set him on the path to world renown.

People who say they don't like folk music have never really heard it. They've just got this idea from comics on the telly Vin Garbutt

On top of the cliffs of Cleveland, where the tarmac ends, lives a hairy man who plays the guitar.

The hairy man lopes around his garden with a mug in his hand in such a way you would never guess that he was BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards' "Best Live Act" of 2001 and can sell out venues like the Sage Gateshead without really even trying any more.

It is a peculiarity of English folk music, though, that Vin Garbutt is better known and attracts his biggest audiences outside the UK.

"I've had to accept my lot. It's a brilliant lot. Forty years on and I've had the best job in the world, it's just fantastic, but it's a strange anomaly; folk music in Ireland and Scotland has a much higher profile. You just have to switch Radio Eireann on and you get some folk music on the radio, or the television within the hour, but not in England, and in fact the BBC is more likely to import a bit of Scottish or Irish music."

'Horrible feet' - The early years

As an apprentice I was sent out on strike without being told what we were striking about. I wasn't too happy about that Vin Garbutt

Vin's voyage to international stardom in the folk music world (it seems a sin to call it a 'business', despite the millions it turns over every year) began while he was serving his apprenticeship at ICI.

A trip to a folk club in 1963 inspired the skinny, young Teesside lad to pick up a guitar and learn the songs he was hearing, many from his Irish mother.

After completing his apprenticeship, in 1969, Vin Garbutt hit the road and spent six months playing for free drinks and tips in bars along the Mediterranean.

"It was us seeing the world, just young lads between 21 and 25, we were in this old caravette and we were like sardines, 'cos there were, I think, six of us, slept in the caravette, and there were some horrible feet, I tell you. I should have written a song about it. Somebody must've done."

'Don't call me a geordie' - A Teesside ambassador

Every time we start getting our own identity, they change the name of the airport Vin Garbutt

Vin decided early in his career that he was going to sing in his native Teesside accent. In fact, the first song he wrote was called 'In me dirty, purple working shirt', a study of the Teesside vernacular, 'Me derty, perple, werkin', shert'.

Vin Garbutt has been an ambassador for the area and its cultural identity ever since; an identity, he says, that is under threat. "Every time we start getting our own identity, they change the name of the airport." He jokes.

"There's no respect for what the people of this area are about. The Tees Valley concept is a business. There's a signpost just near Stiathes, where the boundary of the old County Cleveland was. It says ... 'Staithes. Welcome to Redcar and Cleveland in the Tees Valley, part of the historic North Riding of Yorkshire, twinned with Triosdorf, Germany.'

"It's a huge joke. People around here want to know who they are, they want to know where they come from and our powers that be won't let us have an identity. We'll always be generic Geordies."