Ian Woods

Ian Woods co-wrote the maritime music genre standard, “One More Pull” with Ken Stephens.

The fan website for The Longest Johns, The Longest Song, attributes the song only to “the late Ian Woods of Suffolk and Cheshire in approximately 1980.”  It goes on to quote Woods,

“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.”

Christie Dalby from Bounding Main cites a Mudcat Café thread that covered several different origin stories for the song.

There are two versions of the song, “One More Pull”. Each version shares the same lyrics in the chorus and the same melody while having different lyrics in the verses. Both versions of the song are lovely and where the Ian Woods version is more of a love song, the Ken Stephens version focuses more on the demise of the fishing industry.

The version with lyrics written by Ken Stephens is the one performed by Bounding Main and appears on our CD, Fish Out of Water.

You may be asking yourselves, how did these two versions come about? According to a discussion thread on the folk music site, Mudcat Café, there are two different theories.

One theory is that Ian Woods wrote his version first and then Ken Stephens wrote his version after that.

The second theory is that Ian Woods and Ken Stephens wrote the chorus and tune together at a festival, then went off and produced two completely different sets of verses. Christie, Bounding Main’s soloist for the piece, prefers this theory!