Folk singer surprised by win

Press, 16 April 1986, Page 25

Folk singer surprised by win

By

JOAN BEGG

A Christchurch folk musician and songwriter has just scooped an annual Australian song writing contest ... without even entering.

Lynn Clark was astounded to hear that her anti-nuclear song "Send the Boats Away” was voted the winner in the song-writing contest at the annual Australian folk festival, held in Melbourne at Easter.

The first she knew of it was when details of the award and a SA3OO cheque arrived in the mail.

Unbeknown to her another Christchurch musician, Mike Harding, entered and sang her song in the contest — to an audience of 5000. The judges’ decision was unanimous.

Ms Clark, aged 34, has written scores of songs during the past 20 years. Although some of them reached the Top 20 during her early days, such as “Given Time” and “The Colour of Crimson”, this is her first entered in a contest.

She wrote the song just before the Rainbow Warrior incident last year, and thinks its topicality has a lot to do with its success.

The song has been picked up and sung in folk clubs around the country and will be recorded next month for an album of anti-nuclear songs pro-

duced by the Greenpeace Association. Topical issues are not the only inspiration for Ms Clark’s songs. A lot are about love. The creative process is similar for all.

Unable to read music, Ms Clark said that once she has an idea for a song, she “fools about on the guitar with different chord sequences.” The lyrics and music develop simultaneously taking from a day to eight weeks to complete.

The Australian award as well as being an appreciated accolade, has resulted in future musical engagements for Ms Clark.

She has been invited to perform at a major Melbourne festival next March and expects other club appearances in Australia.

This will be her first performance in Australia, although her reputation within folk music circles in New Zealand is well established.

Her full-time musical career began and finished relatively early, by her own choice. “Discovered” while still a high school student in Auckland, she went on to perform regularly on television music shows, the Top 20, cabarets and concerts.

Aged 20, she moved to Christchurch and decided to give up fulltime music and to opt for a more rounded life. Up until

then every Friday and Saturday night had been spent performing music, and she wanted a break, said Ms Clark. She kept songwriting, however and some five years ago launched into non-profes-sional music with a renewed and more mature interest. Since then things have got better and better, said Ms Clark. She has found a satisfying medium between her full-time managerial work and music. She has performed as the curtain raiser for

overseas musicians such as Don Me Lean, at folk festivals and in 1984 released her first album, “Gulls of Naxos.” “Thunderhead”, the group formed to produce that album, toured the country for six weeks last year. Although now defunct it still reforms for special musical performances.

She is now concentrating on developing a solo act for the various summer festival bookings in New Zealand and Australia. Ms Clark has remained consistently uncompromising about the type of

music she will perform. She is a folk musician who sings most of her own music, loves traditional folk music and has a desire to some day form a folk rock group — using traditional music and modern electronic instruments. She could perform fulltime but in a country where folk music has a limited market it would mean performing other types of music as well. And Ms Clark is not prepared to do that. Rather than treat it as a job, Ms Clark revels in folk music as “pure selfindulgence.”