Oldham Tinkers

The Oldham Tinkers are:

John Howarth, Gerry Kearns and Dave Howard

When asked to describe their own music, the Oldham Tinkers are uncertain. Some people call it simply “folk”, but does that word sum it up? It involves a wealth of children’s material, gleaned mainly from their own childhoods, a host of airs and lilts bequeathed by their family backgrounds, narrative songs, music hall songs, dialect songs and poetry, pub songs, daft songs, and deeply sincere songs, often sad. Mostly they sing of Oldham, past and present, with more of a hint of history and industry. They were once guests on the late John Peel Show. They were shocked to be asked, amused too, but flattered. They did the job and enjoyed it.

The town in which they live, and their family upbringings contribute most to the Oldham Tinkers’ music but they owe no mean debt to the influences of the great Northern dialect poets like the late Edwin Waugh and Sammy Laycock, and more recently, but again the late Cliff Gerrard from St Helens and Rochdales’ Harvey Kershaw, both of whom were good friends of the lads. They have been affected too by both George Formby senior and his son, and by Charles Chiltern and Harry Boardman who gave them more than the spark to delve into history for their more serious material, by many close friends, and by thousands of Northern people.