Biography of Bernie Parry

Storyteller In Song, Singer, Writer And Musician

Bernie Parry was born in Wales UK in 1949 from Welsh, Irish and Romany stock. His family moved to the North East of England when he was 5 and that is where he grew up. At the age of 11 he began learning classical violin at Grammar school. He soon caused his tutor great alarm by composing his own tunes instead of learning the classical stuff. At the age of 15 he bought a guitart and almost immediately began writing and singing his own songs. They probably weren't very good but he was only 15. The violin took a back seat, where it remains to this day.

At the age of 18 he happened to walk into a folk club in Easington Village, County Durham and was immediately captured by the richness, diversity and general melodic strength of traditional and modern folk music. He embedded himself in the north eastern folkscene and over the next few years learned much about British folk music. He fused folk music to his early influences (The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, The Incredible String Band etc.) and his own songs began to appear.

He started appearing at local folk venues and, as his songs became more popular and were being snapped up and performed by many other singers (and songwriters) he was soon appearing at clubs and festivals all over Britain. The likes of Vin Garbutt, Jez Lowe and Bob Fox have sung and recorded Bernie's songs, plus many other artistes too numerous to mention here. Vin Garbutt of course made Bernie's 'Man Of The Earth' famous by singing it all over the world and has actually recorded it twice on 2 different albums! Later Bernie's songwriting reputation infiltrated parts of Europe and he began appearing in Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Norway and Spain.

His first album 'Sailing To The Moon' was recorded in 1978 on the Free Reed label. Sadly it wasn't released until 1981 at about the same time as Bernie was chosen as the first Singer/songwriter to be bursaried by the Arts Council of Great Britain. He was 'Singer/sonwriter In Residence At Darlington Arts And Radio Tees'. They gave him a bit of money to write songs for a year, he wrote lots of songs, many of which he still sings today.

In 1983 his second album 'Playing With Words' was released. One reviewer/critic wrote that "In their way Bernie's songs are comparable to Lennon and McCartney's". Bernie didn't believe this and, thankfully, nobody else did.

A couple of years later Bernie took some time off from singing and playing and looked into other ways of making a living, and it wasn't until 1996 that his third album 'Man Of The Earth' was released on the Mr Punch label. It contains 8 new songs and 6 re-recordings of Bernie's early classic compositions. A reviewer of the album said "Bernie Parry is a great musician and singer who tells great stories with great tunes". In the year 2000, Bernie's fourth album 'RandomFandangos' was released privately on his own label. It was well recived with great reviews.

In 2004 Bernie spent 6 months working on and recording his fifth album 'Songs From Stony Rock' which he released in 2005. He has included his version of Robin Williamson's 'October Song'. This was something of a landmark as Bernie did the whole thing himself; writing, recording, engineering, production, all the instrumentation, all vocals and vocal harmonies, all design, printing and CD reproduction. Bernie is now totally independent from recording companies, printers and pressing plants.

Nearly all of Bernie's songs tell an understandable story, even the ones that don't tell a straight tale have a strong narrative link, so nowadays Bernie likes to be known as a storyteller in song rather than a singer/songwriter.

Having said that, Bernie has just released in instrumental album 'There Are No Words' featuring Hurdy Gurdy, Guitar, Mandolin and Keyboards. 14 tunes, 10 of which were composed by Bernie plus 2 traditional, 1 O'Carolan and 1 Christmas carol.

Bernie is still playing and performing, though not on a full time basis nowadays. He's keen to do gigs in the UK again after playing abroad for so long. He tours in southern France, Spain and, lately, the USA. He recently performed to great acclaim at Dave Palmater's 'Folktracks Live' at the famous Passim Cultural Center in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He'll come and play at your venue if requested. (Contact Bernie by Email).