This past weekend I was in the midst of working on a long overdue Window Inn post - now in the drafts folder - when the phone rang. It was Noah Tye at The Halifax Folklore Centre calling with sad news - Tom Dorward had passed away on January 8th.
Tom and his wife, Marla, started the Folklore Centre over 50 years ago.
(photo by Rose Murphy CBC)
Tom was a was a brilliant luthier. I’ve purchased a number of instruments from the Folklore Centre over the years and even the ones I’ve picked up elsewhere have ended up on Tom’s workbench for set ups, repairs and pickup installations.
My first acoustic was a used Hondo my folks bought for me at the Folklore in 1988 and I took lessons from Mike MacNeil when the they had teachers offering lessons above the shop. The next guitar I got there was a cheap electric - a black Les Paul copy. I played “House of the Rising Sun” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on it with our band, The Hoods, at the Clayton Park Junior High talent show in 1990.
My records wouldn’t be the same without the Halifax Folklore Centre and all the instruments Tom worked on.
The Kay Jumbo acoustic I got at the shop in ‘97 was used on Clayton Park, In Need of Medical Attention and Down at the Khyber. A huge, boxy sounding instrument with a plywood top, it was nothing precious but it sure made me feel cool.
(photo by Rebecca Kraatz)
I’ve still got the 1930s Regal B&J Serenader arch top Tom sold me in 2002. That one is like a great character actor - the Harry Dean Stanton of axes. You can hear it on songs like “Until You Came Along”, “Absentminded Melody” and “Illegitimate Blues”, to name a few.
In 2005, before the LaDeDa tour began, I walked into the Folklore and hanging on the wall was an instrument that will forever be my favourite: a late 1800s Bruno parlour guitar that Tom brought back to life. To this day, it remains the finest acoustic guitar I’ve ever played.
(photo by Ingram Barss)
As I understand it, this Bruno was originally a gut string guitar, likely made by Washburn. With Brazilian rosewood back and sides and hand-carved, bone tuning pegs, this was an amazing instrument in very rough shape when Clarence Deveau, who played for years with Rita MacNeil, brought it to Tom to restore it in the early 2000s. Tom cross braced it lightly to handle steel strings, built a new fret board and bridge, repaired the cracks and added a Martin pick guard. How Clarence could bring himself to part with this rare instrument remains a head scratcher, but I was told he was consigning the guitar to drum up some money for a vintage black Gibson L-00 Tom was fixing up for him.
That Bruno traveled everywhere with me for 15 years. One afternoon at at soundcheck in Dublin with my dad, I opened the case to discover the neck had been broken on the flight from London - they must have thrown it out of the plane because it was in a heavy duty, fiberglass Calton case. I borrowed guitars for the rest of the tour and brought it in to Tom when I got home to see what he could do. Amazing, he repaired it and it remains my most recorded studio guitar, although I travel with it less now. You can hear the Bruno all over my record Three on songs like “Shine On” and “Lazy Bones”, which also features the handsome 1965 Gibson B-45 12-string Tom restored. The afternoon I brought it home, I unwound it into open G tuning and wrote “Face on the Earth”.
Another great Folklore instrument was the early 1900’s Bruno 10 string tiple guitar Tom picked up somewhere along the way. I’d never heard anything like and it sparked “All the Way Down the Line” and “One Look”.
Then there were the tenors. In 2004, I saw an old Epiphone four string tenor guitar on the wall at the Folklore. Shy on cash, I convinced my Dad buy it and immediately borrowed it for a year. I tuned it to open and wrote the riff to “Happen Now” that afternoon, leaning against the staircase in the hallway. I headed off to Arizona with the guitar a few weeks later to record it. I eventually got my own small Harmony tenor at the Kingston Guitar Shop but eventually felt I needed something larger and more robust that I could lay into live. I went to the Folklore and asked Tom if he had anything. He said he didn’t, but Marla, overhearing the conversation, chimed in saying, “Tom, what about the old Gibson you have on the wall at home?”. Tom hummed and hawed. “Well, that wouldn’t be cheap,” he said. “How expensive is not cheap?” I asked.
A couple thousand bucks later I had one of the guitars that travels with me to virtually every gig. That 1930s tenor is the sound of “Rollin’”, “Deny”, “I’m Yours” and many more. Several years back, it was traveling in the the back of Dave Marsh’s pickup coming home from a gig in New Brunswick and rainwater somehow got into the Calton case via the riveted feet and I didn’t know it. When I finally opened the case a couple days later it was bad news - the wood had warped on the back corner and started to lift off the sides. I sheepishly took into to the Folklore Centre with my tail between my legs. Tom shook his head like a disappointed dad and repaired it expertly, like surgeon who’d never lost anybody on the operating table. The Folklore quite often has a tenor having on the wall and I’m happy to know that’s, in part, because people have seen me playing mine and ask about them occasionally.
In more recent years, I wrote “If There’s Another Road” on the sweet, old Ward mandolin Tom fixed up. Then there’s the 1950s Harmony Stampede (that I just found out used to belong to Weldon Rodenhiser from Tancook Island), a little Imperial banjo (with handwritten chords to songs on the underside of the calfskin head) and the cheap, fibreglass, Greek bouzouki - all of which have been go to instruments on the One Real Reveal tour.
Back in 2022, Mike Hall and I made a couple of “Guitar Rundown videos where I talked about some of the instruments in the studio collection, mentioning Tom and the Folklore Centre as the source of many of them. I’ve unlocked those videos in the archive so anyone can watch the them in the links below. I wish I’d had the foresight to go to the shop and record Tom taking about the work he’d done on these instruments. Hindsight is 2020 but, alas, it’s 2025 - and now we’ve lost him.
I started working on a song for Tom last Sunday and you can hear it in the video above. It has more than a few words because everyday when I’d go to record it, another verse would arrive. I’m still working on it but you’ll get the idea and I’ll record a proper version at some point down the road. I’m playing it on the Oscar Schmidt Sovereign I got from the Folklore back in 2020.
Noah Tye has been studying under Tom for the last 15 years and will take over behind the work bench. He, Devin Fox and Marla will keep the strings ringing at the legendary Halifax Folklore Centre, and I’ll keep singing songs on the guitars that Tom so masterfully restored. My sincere condolences to his family and friends. Tom will be sorely missed but his work lives on.
Joel
Folklore Tom, Folklore Tom
All your guitars we’re playing on
Who’s gonna fill this empty case?
Who’s gonna fix that ladder brace?
That gold Les Paul High upon your wall
It’s too much to touch , too hot to hold
It’s too old to fall
But that one there, is that Weldon’s old Stampede?
That’s ain’t exactly what I asked for
No, but that’s the axe I need
Strings are ringing
Strings are ringing downtown
From a corner down on Brunswick
Can’t you hear ‘em now?
I’ll be singing
I’ll be singing my songs
Playing all’ve ‘em on this Sovereign
That you sold me, Folklore Tom
When old Bruno, he broke his neck
You brought him back from certain death
And while he’s never, ever been the same
Tom, thanks to you, old broken Bruno keeps on playin’
Strings are ringing
Strings are ringing downtown
From that corner down on Brunswick
Can’t you hear ‘em now?
I’ll be singing
I’ll be singing my songs
Used to strum ‘em on a Seagull
’Til you sold me that old Regal, Folklore Tom
Now this song here, I’m playing it now
It owes a debt to my friend, Al
If I can’t pay him back, you know
I’ll have to let go of that sweet black Double O
Strings are ringing
Strings are ringing downtown
From a ‘cross the country I can hear em now
I’ll keep singing
I’ll keeping writing ‘em wrong
Making hit’s up on that Gibson
That you fixed up with a pick up, Folklore Tom
Folklore Tom, Folklore Tom
Hard to believe you’ve come & gone
If someone knows Brazilian Rose
Would you ask her where a master luthier goes?
Chasing that buzz?
Fixing that rattle?
Moving the the bridge
To get back in saddle?
Spacing the frets?
Replacing the pins?
Stringing a thousand mandolins?
Staying in tune
Playing your song
Saying so long
Folklore Tom
Share this post