'Words and Music' Category
Jack O’ Diamonds
Here’s a song I was reminded of, in a roundabout way, by performing “On Ilkley Moor ‘Baht ‘At” to the tune of The House Of The Rising Sun last weekend at the Wolverley Summer Of Love festival.
And, just like The House Of The Rising Sun, it’s a song in which a gambler laments his ruined [...]If You Could Read My Mind
The two singers who inspire me most are Johnny Cash and Scott Walker, and ever since hearing Cash’s version of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind on his posthumously-released “American V: A Hundred Highways” album, it’s been simmering away at the back of my mind. It’s a gorgeous song of regret.
I took [...]The Cruel Mother - version 2
And so to another version of The Cruel Mother, this time collected from Elizabeth Wharton, a gypsy, in Shropshire, by C.S. Burne, on the 13th of July, 1885. This is again taken from the “Songs of the Midlands” book edited by Roy Palmer.
Palmer offers the following notes:
The clerk in the ballad was no doubt a [...]The Cruel Mother - version 1
I thought it might be an interesting exercise to record several completely disparate versions of the same song, and as I played a version of “The Cruel Mother” at the Traditional Song Session at the Midland Arts Centre last Thursday, May 3rd, I decided to go for that one.
It’s an unpleasant little tale, that’s for [...]Download - Head For The Country
Who said folk songs had to be quiet, anyway?
This is a song I wrote a couple of years ago, which, now that the Telecaster has been dusted off, I thought I’d revisit with guitars turned up to 11. I normally play this song on concertina, but this version is just electric guitars, a drum loop, [...]Download - Cuckoo’s Nest
I’ve fallen in love with my Telecaster all over again - the tele has a crunch to its sound that no other electric guitar possesses, especially when the action is set up for really heavy gauge strings.
And then there’s my equally-lapsed love of drum machines. I used to use electronics quite a lot but [...]Download - Mercedes Benz
Here’s another song I’ve recorded just for the fun of it.
It occurred to me that I seldom, if ever, bother to record songs that I sing without any instrumental accompaniment.
So I thought it was about time I did.
I never really understood why “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” was [...]Dulcimer tune - notation, tab and recording
Close The Windows, Lock The DoorsHere’s a tune I’ve written on my recently-acquired 1950s Jethro Amburgey dulcimer. I’m very grateful to the folks on EverythingDulcimer.com for giving me lots of historical information about the instrument.
The instrument only has half-frets - and therefore can only be played in the traditional melody-plus-drone style - and as a result I began [...]Tune: Will Beckett’s March
Here is the notation for a simple little tune that I wrote on March the 3rd in memory of Wild Willi Beckett, a good friend from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party who recently passed away after losing a battle against cancer.
It got written very quickly, so it’ll undoubtedly change shape as time goes [...]Recording and dulcimer tab - Arglwydd Dyma Fi
In recognition of St David’s day 2007, I had a go at recording a Welsh hymn tune on the dulcimer.
I learned a couple of things from doing this - namely that even really thick double-glazing is no defence against boy-racers with noisy exhausts (clearly audible about two minutes in!) and also that when close-miking [...]