Tam Kearney:
March 17th 1940 – March 6th 2013

Tam Kearney, co-founder of Toronto’s influential and lamented folk club Fiddler’s Green, irreverent on-stage mouthpiece of The Friends of Fiddler’s Green and the man directly or indirectly responsible for so much of Toronto’s burgeoning folk scene in the 1970s and 80s, died early this morning from complications of diabetes. He was a couple of weeks short of his 73rd birthday. Tam was a big hearted, funny, politically incorrect and often combative man who as we — his Friends of Fiddler’s Green bandmates — often remarked, called a spade “a fucking shovel,” Whether it was his incomprehensible Glasgow accent, or just plain charm, he could get away with saying almost anything without giving offense. Many a plain truth came from his lips, and people loved him for that.

Born in Leicester, England on St Patrick’s Day, Tam grew up in Glasgow and never lost the gift of the gab and quick sense of humor of so many of that city’s sons and daughters. He worked in the Clydeside shipyards as a young man, played clubs in the evening and weekends and organized many concerts and folk club gigs for visiting musicians. Bob Dylan once played for him for the princely fee of £5; the skinny kid later known as Sting was a regular, and Tam’s old pal and shipyard workmate Billy Connolly recently credited him with the encouragement he needed to make the stage a career.

He moved to Canada in the late 1960s, and in 1970 co-founded the Fiddler’s Green club in Toronto, where he held court over — and provided a stage for — a community that included many of the later luminaries of the Canadian folk music scene. But Tam’s contribution was not just that of a concert presenter and hilarious front man. He was a natural community builder, and the broad Fiddler’s Green family eventually spawned shape note groups, morris dance teams, song circles, social dances, folk music camps and other folk clubs, in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario. Since then, thousands of people have probably discovered their music and dance passions ultimately because of Tam Kearney.

In 2003, Tam and the rest of the Friends of Fiddler’s Green were honored by the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals with the Estelle Klein award, for services to folk music in Ontario. In February of this year, he received a “Spirit of Folk” award from Folk Alliance International.

Tam Kearney was a mostly unsung hero of the Canadian folk scene who didn’t take compliments gracefully. Were he able to read this he would probably tell me, “It’s a bunch of shite.” For once, he’d be wrong.

— Ian Robb