Overview
In 1984 Charley Yarwood recorded Hooks & Nets with Ian Woods. Discogs says that Yarwood was a member of the British folk group, Beggar’s Velvet with Anni Fentiman, Cathy Yarwood and Dave Webber. Information about Yarwood has been very difficult to come by. MMDI Germany editor Gunnar Wiegand discovered on Mudcat Café the following exchanges regarding the passing of Ian Woods and their working relationship together.
Mudcat Café
Subject: RE: 2017 Obit: Ian Woods (UK)
From: Charley_Yarwood
Date: 05 Mar 17 – 02:48 PM
Ian worked with me for some years until Spring 1986. We toured clubs and festivals and recorded Hooks and Nets in Brian Horsfall’s studio in Macclesfield where EVERYBODY recorded in those days and many of us also provided harmonies and instrumentals on each others albums. Incestuous but great times.
Sadly we went separate ways and I’ve only seen or spoken to him once in the intervening years.
What Alan Rawlinson says above is accurate. But both of us used to encourage fledgling singers as we travelled – many became established names.
Ian had a big personality and a voice to go with it. He never made his voice the USP, he always used it to tell the story, not to show off. He was always more lyrics centred than I was. Boy could he tell a story. And write one too.
Off stage as well. He had the gift of the Irish. We would walk into an awkward off-piste booking and he would have the establishment eating out of his hand in no time.
He talked us into many tricky bookings TBH, but he made them work.
I have so many stories of our time together, and we complimented each other well. We were both baritones, but it was easy for me to harmonise above and below. Generally he would take the main line.
Ian was a part of the Folk scene fabric. A part of its backbone, its core, from which much sprang. One of the encouragers and enablers, who stood firm by his principles about sources and the origins of the songs he sang.
I loved my years of association with my old estranged friend Ian. I pay him honest tribute and I wish him Rest and Peace.
Charley
And then about “One More Pull”:
“One More Pull” was written and composed by the late Ian Woods of Suffolk and Cheshire in approximately 1980, and recorded by Ian with Charley Yarwood on their album Hooks and Nets.
Of the song, Ian wrote:
Charley Yarwood and I recorded it in 1982 on “Hooks and Nets”. Twenty years later people still come up and request it, which is very satisfying. As I said then it’s just a love song – no special social significance.
In 2021, the Longest Johns collaborated with shanty supergroup The Wellermen to release the song as a single. In the Wellermen version, a different singer leads each verse, and in livestreams, several band members have taken the lead in different performances, but the most recent evidence has JD currently singing lead on this song.