Gay Woods

Gay Woods
Gay Woods in 2000 Gay Woods in 2000
Background information
Birth name	Gabriel Corcoran
Born	(1948-09-01) 1 September 1948 Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Folk, Electric folk
Occupation(s)	Musician, Songwriter, Bandleader
Instrument(s)	Vocals Autoharp dulcimer concertina bodhran
Years active	1963–present
Website	http://gaywoods.homestead.com/

Gay Woods (b September 1948) is an Irish singer. She was one of the original members of Steeleye Span.

Early years

Gabriel Corcoran was born in Dublin, a neighbour of her future husband Terry Woods (b 1947). Gay's elder brothers shared Terry's love of hillbilly music and blues. Gay and Terry performed together in 1963 at Dublin's Neptune Rowing club and got married in May 1968. Performing as a duo, they sang Carter Family songs and occasionally Irish songs. Terry became a member of Sweeney's Men, who played English and American folk music, plus their own compositions. That summer the band performed at Cambridge Folk Festival. Gay was not in the band. The following summer Gay and Terry Woods went to Keele folk festival where Terry met up with Ashley Hutchings who was then still with Fairport Convention. Terry and Ashley had an instant rapport.

Steeleye Span, 1969-1970

The first tentative rehearsal for the new band which was to become Steeleye Span took place in early November 1969. Johnny Moynihan, Terry and Gay Woods, Andy Irvine and Ashley Hutchings met at the Prince of Wales pub in Highgate. The following day Johnny said he wouldn't be joining Steeleye because of his dislike of Terry Woods. Irvine also dropped out, deciding to tour around the Balkans instead. To replace them Ashley then asked Bob and Carol Pegg, then the Dransfield brothers, and finally Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, who accepted. Ashley's departure from Fairport Convention became public in the NME on 22 November 1969.

Gay felt very neglected at this time, because Tim and Maddy were still gigging as a duo, and she was the breadwinner after Sweeney's Men broke up in November. A friend of Terry offered the new band a house in Winterbourne Stoke as a rehearsal place. Photographs taken that winter in the Wiltshire village appear on some editions of the liner notes of the album "Hark! The Village Wait". In March 1970 there was a BBC radio session of the material, and they recorded it in April. The studio time was very fraught, with Terry and Tim almost at daggers drawn. Gay and Terry went to Nottingham immediately after the recording, and received a phone call a week later to say that they had been replaced by Martin Carthy. This rankled so much with Terry that he refused to appear in the grand reunion of Steeleye Span, "The Journey" in 1995.

1970-1988

In the summer of 1970 Gay and Terry joined "Dr. Strangely Strange", Ireland's version of the Incredible String Band. They gigged in Holland and Germany. The band fell apart shortly afterwards. Terry returned to Ireland to recruit Ed Deane and Pat Nash to his new project, The Woods Band. They recorded their only album in 1971. It was issued with a luxury gatefold embossed with gold Celtic designs. It sounds more like a successor to "Hark! The Village Wait" than an album by four people from Ireland. The record label, Greenwich, collapsed after the band had toured with the group Greenslade. The album received good reviews but poor sales. Collectors have valued the original album at 70 pounds, and the 1977 reissue at 15 pounds.

Reduced to a duo, they recorded four albums 1975 - 1978 and a single. The songs are mostly their own compositions, with accompaniment on dulcimer, banjo and acoustic and electric guitars. Gay had one stillbirth, then in 1979 she had a miscarriage. It was her darkest hour. In despair she stopped wanting children and returned to being a typist. Then in 1980 Terry and Gay (on Mulligan Records) approached Garvan Gallagher and Trevor Knight (then of "Metropolis") about contributing to a new Woods Band demo. After recording theses demo tapes, Gay suddenly ceased to be passive. She broke up with Terry Woods and formed a group, Auto Da Fe, with Trevor Knight and three Dutch musicians. Theo Wanders, Carel van Rijn and Wout Pennings. Their sound was New Romantic, similar to Marc Almond or Annie Lennox. Their singles were very much of their time and received strong airplay in Ireland, which guaranteed that their live concerts were profitable. There were eight singles, a compilation and an album "Tatitum". Phil Lynott and Midge Ure did some session work with them. These throwaway releases brought more money than anything she had done previously.

In 1988 Gay withdrew from music to give birth to a child by Trevor Knight.

Steeleye Span, 1995-2001

In 1994 she received an invitation to rejoin Steeleye Span. After recording three albums (plus a concert) with Steeleye she broke with them over money. The last song she recorded with them, "I See the Blood Upon The Rose" (on Bedlam Born), is the one she is most proud of. The most recent news is that she was studying for a degree in psychology at the University of Essex.

Discography

Steeleye Span

• - Hark! The Village Wait (1970)

The Woods Band

• - The Woods Band (1971)

Gay and Terry Woods

• - Backwoods (1975)
• - The Time Is Right (1976)
• - Renowned (1976)
• - Tenderhooks (1978)
• - Gay and Terry Woods In Concert (1995)

Gay and Terry Woods

• - Lake Songs From Red Water: The Best of Gay & Terry Woods (20-track compilation from their first three albums) (2003)

Auto Da Fe

• - Tatitum (1985)

Steeleye Span (With Gay Woods)

• - Time (1996)
• - Horkstow Grange (1998)
• - The Journey (live) (1999)
• - Bedlam Born (2000)

External links

• http://www.homestead.com/gaywoods/biography.html
• http://music.yahoo.com/ar-22356940-bio--Gay-Woods
• http://www.huxrecords.com/bio8.htm

References

Hinton, B., & Wall, G. (2002). Ashley Hutchings: The Authorised Biography. London: Helter Skelter. ISBN 1-900924-32-3