Gay Woods
| Gay Woods | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Gabriel Corcoran |
| Born |
1 September 1948 Dublin, Ireland |
| Genres | Folk, Electric folk |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, Songwriter, Bandleader |
| Instruments | Vocals Autoharp dulcimer concertina bodhran |
| Years active | 1963–present |
| Associated acts |
Steeleye Span (1969-1970, 1994-2001) The Woods Band (1970-Mid 71) Dr. Strangely Strange (Late 1971) Gay & Terry Woods (1975-1980) Auto Da Fé (1980–1986) |
| Website | http://gaywoods.homestead.com/ |
| Notable instruments | |
| Autoharp Bodhran |
|
Gay Woods (1 September 1948) is an Irish singer. She was one of the original members of Steeleye Span.
Gabriel Corcoran was born in Dublin, a neighbour of her future husband Terry Woods (b 1947). Her elder brothers shared Woods' love of hillbilly music and blues. Corcoran and Woods 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 Woods 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 Woods was not in the band. The following summer, the couple went to Keele folk festival where Woods met up with Ashley Hutchings who was then still with Fairport Convention. Terry Woods and Hutchings had an instant rapport.
The first tentative rehearsal for the new band which was to become Steeleye Span took place in early November 1969. Johnny Moynihan, the Woods, Andy Irvine (back from his travels in the Balkans) and Hutchings met at the Prince of Wales pub in Highgate. The following day, Moynihan said he wouldn't be joining Steeleye because of his dislike of Terry Woods. Irvine also dropped out, resuming his solo career prior to meeting Dónal Lunny, with whom he would soon form a duo. To replace them, Hutchings then asked Bob and Carol Pegg, then the Dransfield brothers, and finally Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, who accepted. Hutchings' departure from Fairport Convention became public in the NME on 22 November 1969.
Gay Woods felt very neglected at this time, because Hart and Prior were still gigging as a duo, and she was the breadwinner after Sweeney's Men broke up in November. A friend of Terry Woods 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 Woods and Hart almost at daggers drawn. The Woods 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 Woods that he refused to appear in the grand reunion of Steeleye Span, The Journey in 1995.
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