Jane Street Song/ Nova Scotia b/w Midnight Sunshine/ Mary Margaret Haggerty

Stone Hand were a folk duo from St. Thomas, Ontario, formed in 1970 by singer-songwriters and guitarists Mike Mulhern and Don Mathers. Mulhern had studied voice for eight years and taught himself guitar before going out as a solo performer in late 1969. Mathers played guitar, banjo and harmonica, had studied piano and trumpet, and had sung with high school trios and a college duo.

The duo's best-known record began during Mulhern's solo year. Playing the York Hotel in London, Ontario, he met the proprietor, Ed Assaf, a railway enthusiast whose hotel carried paintings and memorabilia of Canadian steam locomotives. Mulhern sang his own 'Song of Trains' at the audition, and Assaf suggested the two of them write something about Canadian National 6218, the 4-8-4 that CN had brought back under steam in 1964 for excursion service.

They worked on the song over the following months. An early version was cut at Track 4 in London, the studio run by Walter Crasser, and after revisions it was recorded again. Crasser took on Mulhern's management and promotion, and it was during this stretch that Mathers came in and Stone Hand began.

'6218' and 'Song of Trains' went into the act right away. On January 24, 1971, the duo rode an Upper Canada Railway Society excursion from Toronto to Orillia, where a CBC crew filmed them for This Land. Both songs went out nationally on February 24 and again on July 14, ten days after 6218 made its final excursion runs. Stone Hand also appeared on CFPL-TV in London and on CBC-TV's The Performers.

Club dates ran through southwestern Ontario across 1971, with television work in London, At Random in January, auditions at Steele's Tavern in Toronto and the Playboy Club in Montreal, Talent Scope on April 3 and After Noon on April 5. Bookings carried the duo into eastern Canada and later into the United States.

'6218' backed with 'Song of Trains' was issued by Track 4 as TR-003, produced by Paul Mills. The Upper Canada Railway Society put the single in front of railway enthusiasts and offered copies with a Stone Hand poster of locomotive 6218. Billboard reported the release in August 1971 and returned to it later to note that the record was getting good reaction.

For CBC Radio Canada transcription disc LM 135, with a broadcast expiry of November 15, 1972, Stone Hand recorded four songs: 'Jane Street Song' and 'Mary Margaret Haggerty', both Mulhern's, 'Midnight Sunshine' by Mike Hasek, and 'Nova Scotia' by Sim Rushton. Rushton had come to Ontario from Springhill, Nova Scotia, and got to know the duo there, and 'Nova Scotia' stayed in their repertoire.

Five years on they were still recording for the CBC. LM 428, from 1976, carried four more Stone Hand performances: 'Headin' for the Bay', 'Today', 'The Auctioneer' and 'Katie'. The notes describe two musicians from St. Thomas who had been playing together for five years, in clubs across southern Ontario, eastern Canada and the United States, with numerous television appearances behind them. Mathers was by then a full-time musician, writing songs and playing guitar, while Mulhern wrote and performed alongside work as a newspaper columnist. Paul Mills produced the four sides in Toronto, with L. Morey engineering. The first three were uptempo numbers and 'Katie' a ballad.

Mulhern also recorded under his own name. Autumn's Come, issued in 1975 on his own Mulhern label as MUL 5001, held ten songs, among them a new reading of 'The Jane Street Song', with Johnny Noubarian of Celsius on keyboards. Mulhern's newspaper work continued alongside the music, later as a reporter and editor with the London Free Press.

-Robert Williston