Welcome. The first Black Forest coffeehouse was held at St. Paul's College at the University of Waterloo in the Summer of 1972. The songs presented here are from tapes made in the early 1970s. I was just a child when I recorded them! The recordings have been digitized and cleaned up a bit but there is a limit to what technology (and my time) can do. I hope you enjoy them.

There are only a few songs from the first Black Forest because the recording quality isn't that good. If anyone is a whiz with audio software and would like to volunteer to fix up the equalization on these, let me know. For the rest, I've picked out songs that I liked and which had reasonably good recording quality. If there are others you'd like, drop me an  and I'll try to pull them off the tape for you.

Each song is listed below. If you click on the song links below, a copy of song will be downloaded to your computer. Depending upon how your browser is set up, it may start playing automatically or you may need to remember where you downloaded it and click on it to start playing. Again, depending upon your browser configuration, you may need to hold down the "shift" key when you click on the song to force a download instead of simply playing the song.

The file names have a roman numeral to represent the Blackforest session (i.e. I is Black Forest 1, II is 2 etc.) The number is just a sequence to keep songs from the same set together. That way after you download them you'll be left with a somewhat organized directory listing. There is far too much music here for one CD and even at that I didn't digitize every song.

I selected a few songs to give a flavour of the music and created an audio CD which is at St. Paul's. This is a self-extracting ZIP file containing MP3s of the 21 songs on the CD if you would like your own copy. It is 78MB in size so don't try downloading it if you are on a dial-up line! blackforest.jpg is a scanned image from one of the posters.  If you want to make your own fancy CD label, this is the starting point.

Enjoy!

"Liner Notes"  (Corrections and additional info are always appreciated!)

Black Forest I

I'm going from memory on this, but I think the artists are:
John Greenwood, Brad Sinclair, Bonnie Steel, Rein Selles.
Anyone else??
-Time oh Time (Get a load of John's introduction of Brad)
-Gonna Get Me
-Day is Done
-Harry Lewis
 

Black Forest II

Rob McGuffin, Noel Kendall, Mark Lukowski, Bill Freeman
-what the heck is the name of the song I've called simply "jazz piano"?
-Night Train

Brad Sinclair, Karen Hansen, Bonnie Steel
-Nous Vivons Ensembles

John, Brad, Karen, Bonnie and Rein
-Mr Bojangles

Ellen Boyce, Rein, Brad, Marilyn Hill(flute)
-Un Canadien Errant
-Lovin Sound

John, Brad, Mark
-Now that September has gone
-The Difference is Why
-Plastic Jesus
-Did you give Love?
-Chocolate Bar Blues (Arlo Guthrie, the rest are by Greenwood)
-Summer of '72 (based upon life at St Pauls in 1972.)

Brad, John, Karen, Bonnie, Mark, Rein
-Day by Day (Karen vocals)
-All Good Gifts (Brad vocals)
-By my side (Karen & Bonnie vocals)

Marg Elligson, John
-Song for a Winter's Night
-The Water is Wide
-Were you there? (acapella, incredibly beautiful)
-Wedding Song
-The way I feel 

Black Forest III

The Dixie band boys- Rob McGuffin (piano), John Capell (clarinet)
Richard Devitt (trombone), Bill Freeman (drums), Joe Beliveau (trumpet)
-Jada
-When the Saints go Marching In

Bob McRoberts, Jim Gardener (piano)
-Morning has Broken
-Hava Nagila
-Adila (an Italian love song)

Holly Hanson, Janet Clifford (piano)
-The Air (from Hair)
-Never Walk Alone (from Carousel)

Jo-Anne Willment, John Greenwood
-Your Song
-Don Quixote
-For Baby
-The World Is Mine (Jo wrote this one.)
-Me and Bobby McGee (take 1 is hilarious. They get it mostly right on take 2)
-Country Roads

Cole Howson (classical guitar, Marilyn Hill fute)
-The Way I Feel
-Day by Day
-Maleguena

John Greenwood, Brad Sinclair, D'Arcy Grant
-Plastic Jesus
-Flushed from the Bathroom of your Heart (quite funny)
-What Love is For
-Gospel Changes (John Denver, all rest are by Greenwood)

Dick Prince, Brad, Karen Hansen, Lis Ellwood
-The Canadian Railroad Trilogy
-Babylon
-Lesson Too Late For The Learning, with Paxton's poem "Something Very Special"
 

Black Forest IV

-You Bug Me Too, Jim Gardner
-Dear Abbey
-Motorcycle (the pickle song)

-Piano Man, Jo-Anne Willment
-Cat's in the cradle, Jo-Anne Willment, Brad Sinclair
-Prince and the panties
-Silent Sunlight
-Sixty Years
-You're my home
-Rhymes and Reason

-In the Mood, two of Jim Gardner, Rick Hall, JoAnne Willment but I'm not sure which two!

-Greensleeves, Jim Gardner
-Ballad of Suzie McClean, (a great parody)

The Barbershop quartet: Neil MacAlpine, Warren Christiani, Jim Hoffman, Jim Wagner
-Coney Island Baby
-I've been working on the rail road
-While strolling through the park
-Bicycle built for two

-April, come she will - Dorothy Jean Kitchen, Jim ??, ????
-Stick of Bamboo
-Un Canadien Errant

-Day is Done, Dave Almond, Brad Sinclair
-Everybody's talking at me
-Jeremiah was a bullfrog
-Christian Island
-Time oh Time
-Leaving the straight life behind (great intro!)
-The Water is Wide
-Mountain and Maryanne
-Passing Through