An early appearance as a floor singer at The Spinners’ Monday night folk club proved pivotal. Unbeknownst to him, someone had put Willy’s name forward to sing. Terrified, knees knocking, he borrowed a guitar and performed a comic song he had recently written about life in Kirkby.
Through the waves of terror he could hear gales of laughter from the audience. When the song ended, the applause seemed to go on and on as he stumbled back to his seat.
It was, he later reflected, the night he was changed forever; it was the night he became a writer.
Back with his group The Movers, Willy was now increasingly drawn toward the emerging folk club scene. But not everyone shared his enthusiasm. When he suggested the band visit a local folk club together, one member refused, declaring he wasn’t going anywhere that played “cow-shit music.” Not long afterwards, the band dissolved.
Willy and fellow musician Dave Bell decided to continue, recruiting guitarist Derek Edwards to form The Kirkby Town Three – a name chosen as a playful nod to the American folk group The Kingston Trio.
The trio’s repertoire combined traditional material with Willy’s own songs, which he was now writing almost daily.

The Green Moose years
In 1966 the Kirkby Town Three were invited by Mick Groves to appear at a Philharmonic Hall concert organised by The Spinners. Soon afterwards the owner of the Green Moose, Colin Brown, offered them a residency for a new Thursday folk night.
The fee was £2 – shared between the three of them.
The Moose itself was little larger than a front room, but it quickly became one of the liveliest meeting places on the Merseyside folk circuit. On busy nights seventy or eighty people packed into the café, singing, performing and forming friendships and partnerships that would last a lifetime. Moose regulars included poets, musicians, songwriters, students, comedians, philosophers, song-collectors, broadcasters – a rich and diverse gallery of characters many of them doubling as both audience and performer. Amongst the throng were two young “beat girls” each named Ann – one of whom would later become Ann Russell; while the other was to become Ann Rusby – mother of Kate.
During this period Willy also helped produce Wooden Spoon, a magazine documenting the local folk scene and organising tours for visiting performers.

Expanding horizons
By 1967 were tentative steps toward wider recognition with auditions for both the BBC (with Peter Pilbeam) and Granada Television (with Johnny Hamp).
Life on the circuit provided plenty of material. A hitchhiking trip with Mal Auton that left them stranded overnight in Irlam later inspired Willy’s song of the same name, which received its first public outing at a folk night in Birkenhead hosted by Gordon and Brian Jones. Visiting performers such as Davey Johnstone and Tich Frier also appeared at the Green Moose, with Wooden Spoon helping arrange a short Merseyside tour for them.
That same year The Kirkby Town Three came to an end when Derek Edwards left for university and Dave Bell moved away. Willy briefly formed a duo with Johnny Owen, but when Owen left for art school the partnership – and the Moose residency – gradually came to an end.
In 1968 a visit to Edinburgh to see Davey Johnstone led to nights at the famous musicians’ crash-pad at 121 Gilmore Place, where singers and players such as Chuck Fleming, Brian Melville, Tich Frier and Gordon Jones gathered. Inspired by Frier’s performance of Robert Burns’ Tam O’ Shanter, Willy wrote his own updated version, Sam O’ Shanker. During the same trip he saw The Dubliners at the Usher Hall and later watched Davey Johnstone play alongside his banjo hero Barney McKenna at an after-show gathering that also featured Bert Jansch.
In 1969 Willy first encountered Barbara Dickson when she appeared unannounced at a Calton Three session and sang a floor spot. The same year he married Annie and moved into the large, slightly crumbling house at 2 Victoria Avenue in Broadgreen, which soon became an informal stopping-off place for visiting musicians including Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson, Nic Jones, Christy Moore and many others.
Around this time Willy joined The Abbeyfolk, performing around the North West, while also returning to education at Childwall Hall County College to study for the qualifications needed for teacher training – even attempting to write a novel about a folk musician.

Steam Collection
In 1970 Willy teamed up with John Kaneen and Jim Peden to form the resident group at a new folk club in Runcorn’s Top Lock on the Bridgewater Canal. The group, sometimes known as Steam Collection, enjoyed two great years performing there.
Whether guest night or singers’ night, the club was always packed, and the communal chorus singing to songs like The Iron Road, Mad Tom of Bedlam and The Nutting Girl, could be spine-tingling.

A lasting influence
As the 1970s progressed Willy’s active involvement in the folk scene gradually faded as his career as a playwright and writer began to take shape.
But the influence of those years never disappeared.

The songs, the clubs, the friendships and the storytelling tradition of the folk world provided a powerful creative education. Its spirit can still be heard in Willy’s writing – in the voices, humour and humanity that would later reach audiences around the world.
Looking back, he remains deeply grateful to the music and community that helped shape the writer he became.