Rumour has it that discussions at The StagFolk Club, Shackleford led to the creation of The Southern Rag in ’79. Local folk musician (he performed at the first Glastonbury, filling in for Marc Bolan), Ian A. Anderson teamed up with Caroline Hurrell and Lawrence Heath and started producing this, originally, A5 black & white magazine from their base in Farnham, with help from Ian Davies.
The team developed regular columns and features such as the ‘Borfolk’ cartoon, reviews, the ‘RagBag’ with the latest news, ‘The Clubs Talk’ that focused on a different folk club each issue, and the ‘Check List’ that catalogued club information. Diving into all 425 issues would be redundant, but the first few issues definitely favoured the GU postcode area:
Issue #1 (July-September ’79) included an interview with the New Victory Band, and dance notations for The Muffin Man’s Jig. There were pieces on Aldershot based guitar maker and musician Nigel Thornbory and local singer/songwriter/musician Bill Boazman, better known to us as Sonny Black. Articles on playing the bouzouki by Bob Stewart, Curate’s Egg’s history and approach to folk club work, and dulcimer player Holly Tannen’s thoughts. Morris featured heavily with items on its origins and May Day in Guildford. Meanwhile, ‘Clubs Talk’ visited The Traditions Club, Newbury and there was coverage of Oak Apple Day in Great Wishford.
Issue #2 (October – December ’79) introduced ‘Dear Auntie Caroline’ a new regular letters page for readers’ mail. Solo folk artist, Nic Jones was interviewed and The Southern Rag profiled ragtime guitarist Richard Cox-Smith. There were also articles on Morris in Surrey, the fun of song writing and the 5-string banjo.
Issue #3 (January – March ’80) published an interview with June Tabor and carried articles on different dance types, and how to play the bass guitar in the folk style. Jo-Ann Kelly, who’d appeared at the Folk & Blues Festival, Farnham Park years prior, was profiled.
Issue #4 (April – June ’80) gave readers some advice on playing old-time fiddle from Pete Cooper and profiled Martyn Bradley and Warwick Downes. There were also pieces on ‘Evelling – A Custom of Old Dunsfold’ and ‘The Chaddleworth Mumming Play’.
The Southern Rag continued as a folk and roots focused quarterly “fanzine” for Central and Southern England and by ’84/’85 it was a monthly and being distributed nationally and renamed Folk Roots; coming with a compilation album twice-yearly.
In ’99 it was renamed fRoots, and by 2006 had reached a 12,000 worldwide circulation. There was a Kickstarter campaign in 2017 to help keep it going with a re-launch in April 2018 as a larger quarterly magazine, including a compilation album with each issue.
Then, after 40 years, Anderson announced on 2 July 2019, that the magazine was coming to a close due to lack of funding. The Summer 2019 issue (issue 425) was the last.
Anderson remained the editor for the magazine’s entire forty-year lifespan. You could have also caught Anderson, who also ran a folk club at The Star Inn, Guildford. and his wife Maggie as Hot Vultures. The Folklore Library and Archive in Crediton, Devon holds almost a complete run of The Southern Rag, with only a couple of issues missing, plus many issues of Folk Roots – Expect Our Soundscene to visit there in the future.
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