The Pitmen Poets talk ahead of Shrewsbury and Stafford shows - interview

Names include the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, the inspiration for the 1996 movie Brassed Off, and the Ashington Group, whose paintings offered an insight into everyday life in the mining community of north-east England in the 1930s.

Comprising ex-Lindisfarne and Jack The Lad singer Billy Mitchell, star of the West End musical hit Warhorse, Bob Fox, as well as leading north-east singer-songwriters Benny Graham and Jez Lowe, The Pitmen Poets was originally a short-term project.

"We started in 2011 and it was meant to be a one-off show," Mitchell said with a laugh over the phone from his home near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

"King's Place, the arts centre at King's Cross, London, had newly opened and Bob Fox got approached to put together some sort of a project about the north-east and this is what he came up with. He asked Jez, Benny and me if we were interested in doing it," he said.

And while Tyneside and Wearside are rightly proud of their shipbuilding history, it was the coal fields of Northumberland and Durham that provided a rich seam of material for the foursome, all of whom had grown up in mining communities without ever having to take the cage down to the coal face.

"The four of us are all the first generation of each of our families who didn't go to work down the pit, so it all fitted perfectly when we sat down and talked about it," Mitchell explained.

And once they got chatting, there was never any doubts about what the show was going to feature.

"We decided straight away we were going to feature songs about the Northumberland and Durham coal fields, that was the main subject. Whether it was about coal, or about the people who dug the coal, or the families of the coalminers or whatever, that was the initial thing.

"I'd recently done an album about West Wylam, the coal mining village where I was born and brought up, called The Devil's Ground, so there was new material there. Jez was forever writing about the industry in the north-east anyway, so we picked up two or three of Jez's songs, along with the Tommy Armstrong material, as he was the first pitman poet," he recalled.

Born in County Durham in 1848, by the time of his death in 1920 Armstrong's life spanned the heyday of the Great Northern Coalfield. However, it was as a songwriter and chronicler of life in the area that he earned his place in north-east folklore. As one of the show's main influences, Mitchell takes up the story.

"He is generally known as the first Pitman Poet. He wrote poetry and songs and stories about the times he lived in, the things he saw and the things he experienced. The songs he wrote were an accurate record of what was going on at the time, so Tommy wrote songs about the strikes, songs about the lockouts, songs about the starvation and about people being thrown out of their houses because they were on strike," he said.

And on the subject of industrial action, The Pitmen Poets are not afraid to tackle the miners' strike of 1984-85, when the National Union of Mineworkers faced up against the National Coal Board (NCB). Mitchell's opinion on the subject is unsurprisingly robust.

"We're not advocating the return of the coal miner as was, lying in an 18-inch seam, hacking the coal out with a pick, not at all, because the four of us were certainly happy enough not to have to do that when we were younger, but our elder brothers, fathers and grandfathers all did that.

"It was a long, thought-out plan to get rid of the unions, and the coal mining union was one of the strongest at the time. That had to be smashed and that's what they did," he said.

Having said that, Mitchell was anxious to stress the show is full of lighter moments to counterbalance some of the realities of life in the coal fields.

"There's all sorts of hilarious stuff. There are some very funny songs - Benny, in particular, is a master of the tongue-twisting type songs, and he delivers them so beautifully.

"I do a song called Shifting To The Toon, about when I had to move out of the village that I was born and brought up in, 'cos the coal mine closed, and it's written in the Geordie vernacular. Anywhere else in the country, it has to be titled Relocating To The City, but in our words it's called Shifting To The Toon, 'cos that's what we had to do," Mitchell adds with a laugh.

While Shropshire has a history of digging coal, the last of the county's pits shut down in the late 70s. So, what is the appeal for an audience that might find it difficult to relate to a show based on the mining industry?

"Although the songs are, in the main, about mining, you don't have to be interested in coal, or interested in folk music, to come and have a good time at the show. It's an entertaining night out, and you might learn something, not just about the mining, but about the whole idea of working men and working families.

"It's not a lecture on coal mining or the hardships that people went through, it's an all-round experience," he said.

The Pitmen Poets are at Walker Theatre, Shrewsbury on Thursday before entertaining Stafford Gatehouse on Saturday, January 28. See www.theatresevern.co.uk and www.staffordgatehousetheatre.co.uk for tickets.

By Stephen Taylor