Roger G. Possley

How many people do you know who can truly say that they are living their dreams? Not many, if you're like most people, but on a rainy Friday night last month, I spoke to two of them.
Roger Possley, late of Old #7, held a CD release concert at Borders Arborland that night for his collection of traditional British/Scottish/Irish songs, As It Was Now. Accompanying himself on guitar, mandolin and cittern (a transitional instrument between the lute and guitar with either six courses -12 strings or five courses- 10 strings and a sharp sound that is more distinct the a guitar). Possley sang ballads of love, hate, murder redemption... and some that were not so serious.
He has a truly extensive repertoire of bawdy songs- from the night-visiting songs that document how lovers cajoled their loves into letting them in(and the consequences nine months later!) to the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge"style of "A Bird In The Bush" and "The Mower" He explained that he had learned most of these songs from old books, and that he has an ever expanding repertoire of over 120 tunes.
Interestingly, the lyrics he uses are often quite different from the ones normally heard, including his version of ''The Twa Corbies"-in his version, which he calls the "nice English one", the ravens finding the newly slain night do not get to eat him, nor to "pluck out his bonnie bright eyes". Instead his hounds, hawks and lady fair protect him ensuring his Christian burial.
He spoke of his attraction to this very old form of music, and how it became a siren call, enticing him to leave Old #7 for a solo career "taking what you hear and making it your own- having it become a part of you". He warned that it's not an easy life, but "the music pays for the music" and he feels an obligation to follow it. During the spring, summer and fall he lives on a sailboat in the Great Lakes.... Possley's voice reminds me of the traditional singers in England such as the Copper Family or the Watersons.
Twila Oxley-Price - Ann Arbor Current

Roger Possley As It Was , Now (C&M)
Wandering minstrels, who once walked through the Middle Ages imparting a good tale via song, have long donated their skeletal snouts as card tables for worms to play pinochle. But on As It Was, Now, you can hear the ghost of one using Roger Possley as a medium to resurrect English folk songs of yore.
Lyrics like "in lasses sure/ he does adore/ one who's plump and round" from "Get Up Jack" recall fond days when a grog-sodden man could grab a buxom beer maid and bury his gruff face in her bosom with no more repercussion than the back of her hand.
"Handsome Cabin Boy" tells of a pretty girl, "her mind being bent on rambling unto some foreign land," who disguises herself as a boy and hires on with a sailing ship.
There are no detectable effects on Possley's soothing voice, only a wistful sadness. It's as if he sits in a bleak boarding-house tavern far from home with only his guitar as solace, rendering haunted song-tales like "The Widow of Westmoreland's Daughter" and "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter."
Possley offers this observation in the liner notes: "It is uncanny how human nature remains relatively static while our technological conceits make us believe we are somehow better than our ancestors."
As if in protest of the digital age, there are no technological frills on As It Was, Now. The only evidence that Possley resides in modern times at all is the fact these charm-channeled songs exist on something called a CD.
-Christopher Bahnsen - Ann Arbor Current