On the second hottest day of the year, Mark Underwood sat down for a chat with Bonnie Dobson, “the comeback queen”, to discuss her new album Dreams with The Hanging Stars (reviewed here). She also revealed how she came to play at summer camps with Pete Seeger and ended up touring with Ken Dodd, and why her love of singing and satumas is the secret to her longevity.
The most obvious question is how the collaboration with The Hanging Stars came about.
Well, I’ve sort of been a fan of theirs for years. And then we became friends. I’d written a number of songs – there are eight on the album, six of which I’d never recorded before. And I wanted to get them down, so we just went into the recording studio to see how it would work. Honestly, we didn’t have a view of an album or anything. And the whole thing was just so much fun. We recorded with Sean Read, and if you’ve Sean on your side, everything is OK. I recorded my last album there as well (at the Famous Times Recording Studio), and Sean and Maddy are really good friends. The whole experience was a happy one.
And how did The Hanging Stars first come onto your radar?
It was through the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon, London—my shrine. I love The Betsey. There’s such a collegial atmosphere there.
I understand that, where the Dreams album is concerned, you didn’t go into the Famous Times studio with any preconceived ideas about what would happen and that the origin of many of these songs was a natural evolution. That sounds like it must have been a really enjoyable experience.
It was lovely. What’s interesting is that last May we did the Wood Festival, which is arranged by the Bennett brothers – it’s a wonderful festival. It reminded me of the early days in Mariposa and Philadelphia. All those festivals were like that, with lots of families, really open, great atmosphere, no tension – and that was the first time I’d sung on stage with The Hanging Stars. We’d rehearsed – and it worked. It was lovely.
It’s been 12 years since the release of the Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew compilation album, and that itself came about after an even longer hiatus.
I’m constantly having comebacks (laughs). I’m Queen of the comebacks.
Six of the new songs on Dreams are more recent compositions. Are you always writing songs, or have you found more inspiration recently?
I’m not that prolific, to be honest. And usually what happens is that I’ll sit down and I’ll get an idea for a melody, and then it’ll come very quickly. But it doesn’t come quickly that often! I don’t consciously sit down and say I’m going to write some songs today. It just doesn’t happen that way.
For instance, on the song, Don’t Look Down, my best friend, Annie Graham, who lives in the States, used to sing with a group called Telephone Bill before she moved back to the States – and my son died 14 years ago – and I remember she called me and she said to me, “you’re on a tightrope now, Bonnie – don’t look down”. And that’s ultimately where the idea for that song came from. And songs like Trouble – OK, it’s a bit saucy (laughs), but I can still be saucy.
Richard Olson of The Hanging Stars described Dreams as a bit like a “little letter written to herself”. Do you think that’s an accurate description?
That’s not bad, actually (laughs). I mean, all my songs are autobiographical.
You’ve reunited with some of ‘Her Boys’ for this record. The likes of Ben Phillipson for his parts on Get Together and the title track, Dreams. Also, Sean Read, for keys, horns, percussion, and production. Did your relationship with those two, along with the rest of Her Boys, date back to 2013, to Hornbeam Recordings, and the release of the compilation album, Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew?
What happened was Ski Williams and Hornbeam had put out an album by Tom Paley (one of the pioneers of the American folk revival of the 1950s, who played with Woody Guthrie) in 2012, and Robin Denselow of The Guardian had reviewed it, and Ski was talking to Robin one day, and he said there’s one person I’d really like to record, but I don’t know where she is – and it’s Bonnie Dobson. And Robin said, “Well, she lives about three blocks from you”, and so Robin popped the Tom Paley album through my letterbox, because I knew Tom from the 1960s. I met him on my first tour, and we went for a walk, and he said, “We’d love to record you”. And it all happened, and it was a lovely experience. But probably the timing was unfortunate because we were just about to go on a big tour, we had all sorts of things lined up, and then my husband was diagnosed with cancer (he tragically died of mesothelioma in 1974). And I had to cancel everything, so that was that.
The arrangements on the new album are really impressive. Were you happy just to put yourself in the hands of Sean Read and the musicians in the studio?
The whole thing just came naturally. And working with The Hanging Stars – what’s to fear? And what was so wonderful was that back in the 1960s, recording in these massive studios for RCA, it was always so impersonal. You had great musicians, although you didn’t know any of them, whereas this was more like – if not family exactly – these were people who I not only liked to make music with, but I actually wanted to spend time with too, because they’re friends.
One of the things I really like about The Hanging Stars is the diversity of their sound and the range of musical influences they draw from. While you’re grounded in something of a folk ballad tradition, it strikes me that throughout your musical career, you’ve never been afraid to span a variety of genres, from gospel-inspired songs to country, R&B, or blues-tinged driving rhythms.
There’s a chap, John Einarson, I don’t know if you know him, a Canadian writer, and he’s doing my biography. And he contacted me way back in 2010, and long story short, he came over and I told him that I had in my archive from the 1970s masses of sessions for the BBC, and I did some with a full orchestra, with Neil Richardson doing the standards. And John said to me, “Listen Bonnie, you should put these out”. And I’ve talked to Catherine Steinman, my publisher, and she’s getting in touch with the BBC to see if we can get permission to release these recordings.
Looking back over your musical career now, I know you’ve described it as being something of an accident. There’s been a bit of happenstance, hasn’t there?
I never planned it. You probably know this story. But I was going to university and I had to get a scholarship because my parents didn’t have the money, and it was never free. And when I started my course, I didn’t like it. And I had an aunt who was a Roman Catholic nun in a teaching order, and I used to go and sing for the nuns. My aunt was wonderful and she never tried to get me into the church either; she was just a solid, wonderful friend. And she said, “Bonnie, you’re exhausted and you need a break. Go and talk to your tutors”, and I did, and I got a year out. And I happened to babysit for Marty Bochner and his wife, and Marty would occasionally promote a concert, like Pete Seeger and various other people, and he rang me up one night in March 1960, and said “what are you doing tonight?” and I said “I’ve got a date”. He said, “no, there’s someone I want you to meet”, so I went out for dinner with him and Paul Endicott and his wife. And at that time, Paul Endicott from Detroit, was managing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and a whole host of people, and afterwards we went back to Marty’s apartment and I sang a few songs, and a week later I received a letter. It wasn’t like it was an audition because I was always singing. And I hadn’t planned any of it.
So it would be fair to say that a career in music was never really a vocation for you?
My background in Canada was really poor actually. I know what real poverty is like. After the war, because of my Dad’s politics – he was a union organiser – he was basically blacklisted, and we lived in an emergency housing project outside of Toronto, which was actually a converted army barracks. There were 41 buildings and nine families, a toilet for the men, a toilet for the women, cardboard walls, bedbugs, cockroaches – and I’ll tell you what saved me was that in Grade Six, we moved out of there when I turned 11 thankfully, and I had a teacher and he walked into the classroom one day with an album by The Weavers, and he played this record, and that had a huge influence on me going to these summer camps. And by the time I reached Grade Nine, my first year of high school, we had to write a letter of application, so I’d been told about this summer camp in Quebec by a friend of my sister’s, so I wrote a letter to the Director of the camp saying I was applying for a job as a Junior Counsellor, but I fibbed as you had to be 15 years old, and I was only 13. But I got the job. At the summer camp I attended in Quebec, Pete Seeger was playing. And because it was the McCarthy era, he also couldn’t work in the States because he’d been blacklised, so he came up to Canada to our gently lefty camps, and that’s how I really got into it.
So, perhaps people shouldn’t really be surprised at all by the fact that in the 1980s you went back to pursue the degree you’d put on hold some 30 years previously, or that you’ve only intermittently been persuaded out of musical retirement ever since?
What happened was that I moved to England in 1969 and fell in love, and in 1985, my marriage fell apart. I had two kids, and there was no way I could go on the road. And I didn’t want to do it either. So I paused, and then I thought, “well, I’ll go back and finish that degree I never did”. A year after the end of my first marriage, I met my second husband, Andrew, and that was unbelievable because we lived around the corner from each other for such a long time; we had mutual friends, but didn’t meet for a long time – and I ended up having the happiest 30 years of my life with him.
Subsequently, you went on a tour of military bases, sometimes in remote locations, in Europe and further-flung places such as Belize, with The McCalmans and Mike Harding?
That was during the 1970s – with Combined Services Entertainment. They put together a folk show with Wally Whyton, Mike Harding, The McCalmans and various people. We went to Germany, Cyprus, Malta, Sicily, Belize – which was scary – and it was extraordinary for me too because I remember that in a big NATO base in either Sicily or Sardinia thinking, “God, what would my Dad think of me now?”
There must be some fairly hair-raising stories from those times?
One of the tours I did that wasn’t a folk tour, I was the only folky person on it, was actually with Ken Dodd – believe it or not. And I always remember they took us out – this was in Oman – and the soldiers had a massive machine gun. And there were two female dancers, and one guy said to me, “do you want to have a go?” I said, I don’t think so! But these women did. They shot off into the mountains and I thought, “you may have killed somebody!”
Ian McCalman still runs a recording studio. Is he someone you still keep in touch with?
No, I’d love to get in touch with him again, as The McCalmans were so brilliant. And funnily enough, I’ve just ordered Mike Harding’s book, and I haven’t seen Mike in decades either. When we were on tour together, I used to stand by the stage every night, and he was so funny – absolutely brilliant.
I was fortunate enough to co-host an event recently where P.P. Arnold talked about her extraordinary career in music, as well performing songs for us. I was struck by how little deterioration in her vocals there’d been, even after singing professionally for 60 years. The same could be said of you. And you’re even older than Pat.
I’m older than everybody!
Would you attribute that mainly to good fortune, or have you had to work at maintaining your voice in some way?
I think what helped is that I never did drugs, and while I like a glass of wine, I never booze, and I’ve never smoked, except passively in the days when everybody smoked – I was probably on about 30 a day. But I don’t know; I guess I’m just lucky. But also, I have this theory, because they’ve done all these studies recently, about how good singing is for you, you know health-wise, and I believe that. And satsumas! The secret is singing – and satumas.
Why choose to reprise You Don’t Know and Get Together again? Was the decision inspired (if that’s the right word) by the state of the planet right now?
I think ‘Get Together‘ is still so timely. And we just started doing it, and it sounded really good, so we thought, “why not?”
Morning Dew feels just as sadly apposite as Get Together for 2025. You wrote Morning Dew in 1961, a year before I was born. I remember my parents telling me in the aftermath of 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis what a worrying time for everyone it was. If the Doomsday clock stood at seven minutes to midnight, then it’s now standing at 89 seconds to midnight, its closest point ever. It’s depressing to think, isn’t it, how little has changed for the better since the time of your first composition. Do you see any cause to be optimistic?
I’m dismayed that Morning Dew is still relevant today. And I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis very well because I was singing in Montreal; I was living in Chicago at the time, and I remember thinking, “Jesus, should I get on the plane, and go back?” It was really scary. Now I don’t sign petitions any more, and the last time I marched was against the Iraq War. You might get some satisfaction from it, but it doesn’t help. Now I just sort of think, look after your loved ones, your family, your friends, and try to be a decent person. And learn how to do things. It’s interesting; I was just reading the paper today, and they were talking about how many cyber attacks there have been recently on firms and businesses, and I always say to younger people, “learn how to do things”. I know in England it’s déclassé nowadays to be a plumber or a carpenter, but they’re both real skills. As for myself, I make jam!
Turning to somewhat happier subject matter, the next couple of months look busy for you. You’ve got some exciting tour dates coming up: the album launch at The Betsey Trotwood, The Piper in St Leonard’s, The Theatreship on Millwall Cutting, two tour dates in Sweden, The Long Road festival in Leicestershire, and The Moth Club in Hackney in September as well. Have you time to rehearse much in preparation?
We’re rehearsing tomorrow. I’m dreading it actually, because of the heat. We’re rehearsing way down in South London at Pulse Studios.
Can we expect any surprises at these shows?
I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow (laughs). I don’t think Jarvis will be coming.
Peggy Seeger is currently on her final farewell and 90th birthday tour. Do you have any further plans beyond this tour, or are you prepared to just take every day as it comes?
As long as I can sing, I’m going to keep doing it. It’s fun. If my voice goes, then that’s it.
I spoke to Richard Olson of The Hanging Stars the following day, and he echoed many of the sentiments expressed by Bonnie. He said their first meeting took place through “the organic, natural scene that is the folk and grassroots scene in London, in particular Come Down and Meet The Folks, which is regularly held on the last Sunday at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon, and What’s Cookin’, a weekly country, folk and rock ‘n’ roll night in Walthamstow” – neither of which, he said, get their proper dues. “And then she actively started turning up at our Hanging Stars shows, and has been for a few years now”.
In the recording studio, Richard said he was struck by how open Bonnie was to any ideas and suggestions, while in terms of her own abilities, he expressed his admiration by saying: “First of all she’s an incredibly bright woman, incredibly clever and incredible funny. In terms of her guitar playing, it’s so intricate; she’s very gifted – and the way she performs – her sense of theatricality, it’s the tradition she comes from. And she also has a real simplicity with words and language”.
As for his own role in the recording process, Richard said his aim was to avoid going for the “shiny side of things”, because he felt that Bonnie had never really got to do her own equivalent of a Highway 61 Revisited previously, mainly because of the tendency towards overproduction on her earlier recordings. The objective, he said, on Dreams was to capture something more “real and offbeat sounding”. He described the whole experience as being “absolutely wonderful. Singing really takes it out of you. To play the acoustic and sit in with the band, and not have all eyes on you, felt really good”. It involved a different degree of responsibility to his usual role, “but it was so lovely to play the acoustic, and sit in with the band. You learn so much”. Richard also wanted to give particular credit to Herman Ringer for his contribution to songs like You Don’t Know, along with Sean Read for his excellent production skills.
When I asked Richard about plans at the end of this forthcoming run of dates, he said they had some pretty big things in the offing: “Towards the end of September, and from the start of October ,we’ll be out on tour supporting our dear friend and hero, Edwyn Collins. That’s really exciting. We’ve then got our biggest ever London headlining show at The Bush Hall on the 5th of November, and then we aim to finish off our next album back in Scotland with Gerry Love, which I’m really excited about. He’s been so supportive of us for a very long time, and always comes to all our shows in Scotland”.
Dreams (July 11th, 2025) Loose Music
Bandcamp:https://thehangingstars.bandcamp.com/album/dreams
The Hanging Stars tour dates: https://www.thehangingstars.com/shows