Howay The Lasses: A celebration of inspirational women of the North East
The stories of influential women from the North East - past and present - form a new collection of folk songs, spearheaded by a celebration of the Newcastle United ladies - and their historic win a St James Park last summer.
Last updated 28th Mar 2023
The stories of influential women from the North East - past and present - form a new collection of folk songs, spearheaded by a celebration of the Newcastle United ladies - and their historic win a St James Park last summer.
The new collection - Howay The Lasses - is the result of a collaboration between singer, accordionist/pianist Annie Ball, father and daughter singer-songwriter combination Gareth Davies-Jones and Bronwen Davies-Jones, and cellist Katie Tertell which began during the lockdown of 2021.
They explain that 'the North East of England is rich with the discoveries, achievements and successes of women across all strands of life - from writers, poets and painters, to engineers, champions of industry and social reformers.
'Some of these stories both contemporary and historical are known to a degree - others not so well. Not many at all have been determinedly celebrated in original songs within the musical story telling tradition.
'As musicians based in the North East, Annie, Bronwen, Katie and Gareth have joined forces to begin to remedy that through this new collaborative collection ‘Howay The Lasses’.'
Howay The Lasses tells the story of Newcastle United ladies taking on Alnwick Town in front of a crowd of 22 thousand fans - and it's creators are hoping to inspire the next generation.
Gareth tells us more:
"We wrote a song, particularly about that amazing day back at the start of May in 2022, when the Newcastle United Women had their first match at St James' Park,
"They were expecting a few thousand, but actually 22 thousand turned up!
"It was a terrific day for women's sport in the region, and it was an amazing occasion."
He tells us, the team have gone on to adopt the song Howay The Lasses as something of an anthem, with the group given the chance to perform it live at St James' Park ahead of a game.
"We love the atmosphere, the idea of young girls seeing their heroes in a stadium like that - and being able to identify and think 'I can do that one day'
"Or even be inspired to do anything else, but even that inspiration is marvellous and we're really proud to be associated with it
"So we're really glad they've picked up the song."
They've now released 10 original songs - each one focusing on a different person and their legacy - which cellist Katie Tertell tells us - can be interesting;
"It kind of gives you a lot of appreciation for portrait artists!
"Because we have written songs about women who are alive, so you kind of have this 'Oh will they like it?'
"Which is different from the public liking your song!"
Annie tells us what she hopes people will take from hearing the songs - including 'The Women's Engineering Society';
"There's a shocking statistic that in this country, over 85% of people would not be able to tell you the name of a female engineer.
"They just don't know any and so I would hope that then, through these songs, these women will become known and they will be remembered."
And Cellist Katie agrees;
"Yeah, I mean, I think if we want society to celebrate women's sport and celebrate women in STEM careers and stuff like that, we have to start with the stories that already exist and normalise, how extraordinary both sexes have been throughout history, but especially women, because it's been less highlighted."
While Bronwen says, though many of the songs focus on women in sport and STEM - there's also a focus on creativity and arts as well;
"It's inspiration as well for the creatives out there as well, that you can write songs about anything you want to as well.
"It's not just moods that maybe you find sometimes in popular culture, but you can write anything you want to and you can be creative about anything.
"It's like a combination of the arts giving to the STEM - STEM giving to the arts."
You can find out more about Howay The Lasses online, and on social media - on Facebook and Twitter.