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New book and album

[Update: Many thanks to Mike Wistow for his lovely (and exhaustive) review on Folking.com of the So Sound You Sleep album.]

For quite a while I’ve been threatening the world with a book based on my Tears of Morning album, on which nearly all the content has a Shropshire connection, including some settings of verse by Housman. The first version went onto the back-burner when I excised one of the appendices and gave it its own book (The Vanes Of Shrewsbury), which essentially provides historical and personal commentary on Shrewsbury as illustrated by my late uncle, Eddie Parker. I then veered into other projects, including a book on Nashville tuning for guitar and a new edition of my verse collection from the 1980s Suite in Four Flats (and a Maisonette).

Now, however, the Tears of Morning book (now renamed So Sound You Sleep) is available, like the other three, as a paperback and as an eBook for Kindle.

How Sound You Sleep tells the stories behind the songs on the album Tears Of Morning, which comprises songs and settings of poetry with a (sometimes tenuous) connection to Shropshire and the Welsh Marches. Several of the poetry settings are from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’.

The book contains copious commentary and information on the historical, traditional, musical and/or biographical background to the songs and poems on the original album, especially the settings of verse by Housman. However, it also includes a lot of additional material relating to other songs and settings, in many cases with a Shropshire connection that is even more tenuous. Not all the additional Housman settings, for example, are from A Shropshire Lad.

An updated version of the original album – called So Sound You Sleep – More Tears of Morning – features many more tracks in order to reflect the content of the book. There are links to each of the tracks in the book: while I’d be very happy if you bought the album, you don’t have to buy it to listen to the individual tracks. 🙂

(All of my books – well, those that are still available, including some ancient security books – can be found here, and all my current albums are on Bandcamp.)

Thanks to Kate Morley for the cover art and to Denise Lewis of the Memories of Shropshire Facebook group for permission to use a photograph of her great-grandmother, Ellen Hughes, who told a story to the writer Ida Gandy that was the starting point for one of my songs.

David Harley

Featured

Review of the Nashville Tuning book

Many thanks to Mike Wistow for a lovely review of Introduction to Nashville Tuning for Guitar for Folking.com.

(Yes, I do sometimes write reviews for the same site, but there is no underhand collusion involved!)

If reading the review makes you think maybe you would like to contribute to my retirement fund, there are currently four versions available:

  • The paperback version at £4.50,  at Amazon  (includes links to sound clips)
  • An eBook version with embedded audio clips (there’s also a review by Mike for this one): £3.50 at Amazon
  • An eBook version with links to audio, but no embedded clips: also £3.50 at Amazon
  • If you’re not a fan of Amazon, there’s also an eBook version on lulu.com at £3.55. No sound clips in that one, but the links are there, of course.

David Harley

Featured

The ‘Further Off The Record’ album

Not my most recent album, but you might call this my Greatest Hits album, if I’d ever had any hits. It does include the four tracks released so far as singles, though, and most of the tracks are remixed and/or remastered. In fact, these are all songs that have attracted airplay in the UK and/or US, been requested at live events, or had significant numbers of plays where streamed or available in various video and audio formats. And anyway, I like ’em!

Available from Apple Music, Spotify, iTunes etc.  (Link includes excerpts from all tracks.) PR and lyric sheets here: Further Off The Record. See also Strictly Off The Record, on Bandcamp, with an extra track!

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Who do you think you are?

Nothing to do with the Spice Girls or reality TV: I’ve had the basic idea for this kicking around for at least 30 years, but I finally put the words into something resembling a final version. This is a single take recording: I’ll hopefully come back to it when I’ve learned it properly, but this is Harley in country blues mode, so it’s never likely to be particularly polished… The guitar is a D’Angelico archtop, but it doesn’t sound particularly jazzy because, since it was done in one take, the acoustic sound is mixed in with the DI-d electric sound. I rather like it, but your mileage may vary.

Words and music, such as it is, by me.

Backup:

I came home last night, just about the break of day
She’s got her suitcase packed, just about to make her getaway

She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for

Five long years my baby walked the line
Now she’s gone, long gone, since she found out I was playing double time

She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for

Down at the courthouse, fell down on my knees
Said I love you babe, won’t you forgive me please?

She said, well now baby, who do you think you are
You stayed out all night, don’t know what you came back for

Wrote her a letter, wrote it on my knees
Babe I learned my lesson, won’t you come back please?

She wrote back,
Well now baby, who do you think you are
Got my eyes wide open, don’t know what I’d come back for

David Harley

Radio play

It’s always nice to get radio play (thank you again, Ian Semple, for playing ‘A Rainy Day Blues’ today on Coast FM!), but I’m particularly looking forward to being played on this one, just because of the name of the show.

I hope no one will expect me to go all punk…

David Harley

Yet another album: Brookland Voices

I know it’s hardly five minutes since the last album, but I’ve actually been working on this one since last year.

Brookland Voices album cover

Brookland Voices started as another vaguely folky album, but somehow Messrs Yeats (subsequently moved to the ‘Swan Songs’ album) and Housman elbowed their way in. Then I found myself with all these improvised or semi-improvised guitar pieces, some of them played on electric rather than acoustic guitar, and they do seem to dominate the album. In fact, while I would never claim to be any sort of jazz guitarist, this is probably as near to a jazz album as I’ll ever get. To be fair, ‘South Wind’ and ‘The Water is Wide’ are instrumental versions of traditional songs/tunes.

‘Severn Years In The Sand’ is a version of a song that seems to have arisen during World War II among units that saw service in the Middle East. ‘The Knocker Up’ and ‘It Ain’t Gonna Rain are actual folk songs. ‘When I Was In Love With You’, ‘Far In A Western Brookland’, ‘When I Was One-And-Twenty’ and ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ are settings of verse by Housman. The song ‘A Rainy Day Blues’ and the other instrumentals are my own, including ‘Chivalry’, which is an instrumental based on my own ‘Song of Chivalry’.

A Rainy Day Blues

I’ve put this up before, but this is a version with electric guitar that I quite like. More jazz than blues, perhaps: I even played it on an archtop guitar.

Some days are like a melody
But I can’t seem to hold the key
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose

So I spend my day trying to keep  myself amused
Sitting here picking at a rainy day blues
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose

It seems the road to fortune never ends
You play God all week and golf at weekends
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose

And if we quit the rat-race we could have a ball
But you know those big wheels grind so small
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose

You say you love me but it seems sometimes
You stuff my mouth with kisses and my ears with lies
I don’t mind losing
I just wish I had a little more to lose

Backup:

Another Book – Pension Pensées

Does this man have nothing better to do with his time?

Pension Pensées book cover

Here’s the summary:

I make no claim at all to be a cartoonist (let alone any sort of real artist). However, some people seemed to like my cheesy little cartoons (mostly IT-related), idiotic photos, and cheap sarcastic commentary, so I thought that I should start putting some of these ramblings together in the same place.

That place was the Dataholics blog, and much of this book was originally based on that content. Ironically, though, many of the cartoons have now been abstracted for other projects.

I parted company with most of the security industry in 2019 (though the recent book Facebook: Sins & Insensitivities did place me back in that arena, though not as a professional). That is, I supppose, why the Dataholics site has seen less use since then, and why what content has been posted is less like to have been related to IT security. On the other hand, much of it still has a connection to internet ephemera. Some of the content here comes from other blogs such as Parodies Regained while some hasn’t previously been made public at all.

And here’s the link…

New album ‘Swan Songs’

Swan Songs

Album cover

1. Ten Percent Blues 03:42
2. The Road 03:34
3. Marking Time 01:38
4. This Guitar Just Plays The Blues 02:49
5. The Last Musketeer 02:31
6. Orpheus with his Loot 02:27
7. What Do I Do (About You) 02:05
8. Rain 03:43
9. Paper City 05:46
10. Snowbird 04:44
11. Swift Variations 02:11
12. The Wild Swans at Coole 06:17
13. Cornish Ghosts 03:49
14. Hilltop Snapshots 03:38
15. The Road to Frenchman’s Creek 02:52
16. Song of Chivalry 03:58

In early 2023 an awkward medical condition brought it home to me that perhaps it was time to draw a line under any pretensions I have to live performance, so my appearance at the Lafrowda festival in St. Just on the 15th July marked a semi-official farewell to the live stage, not that I’ve played publicly much in recent years anyway. This album is drawn from the set list for that appearance, so it takes the form (mostly) of reinterpretations of familiar (to me, anyway) material rather than new songs.

I can’t promise that I’ll never be inflicted upon a live audience again (sorry!), and I’m certainly not promising that I’ll never record or write anything else, but this is, I suppose, an end to any thoughts I had of resuming my career as a professional musician when I retired from the IT industry in 2019.

Lyrics to ‘Marking Time’ by Fiona Freeman. Lyric to ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ by W.B. Yeats. Other lyrics and all melodies by David Harley, as are all vocals and instruments.

The Road to Frenchman’s Creek

Experimenting with a little synthing… Not sure it fits the song… rough mix…

In spring a young man’s fancy is supposed to turn to love
An older man takes time to reminisce
He takes the path from Helford on a sunny afternoon
Searching once again for Frenchman’s Creek

Too soon for love-lies-bleeding, too late for love’s young dream
The sun plays peek-a-boo among the trees
By the gate at Kestle Barton, he stops to rest a while
Before following the signs to Frenchman’s Creek

Sometimes we lose our bearings, our love lost in a mist
We glimpse our Ithaca but doubt laps at our feet
Sweet 16 to 70, too many times been kissed
Was that the road to Manderley or Frenchman’s Creek?

Left high and dry so often by the tides of desire
Yet in autumn days a heart may rise from sleep
And still recall with thanks the times love wasn’t such a liar
And the tide may turn again in Frenchman’s Creek

Review: KEITH JAMES – Word Paintings

KEITH JAMES – Word Paintings (Hurdy Gurdy HGA2930)

It’s been a while since I heard and reviewed a Keith James album, so I was intrigued to find out what he’d been during the (very stressful, for all of us) interim. His album Word Paintings (due for release early in 2024) builds on his songwriting partnership with artist, ceramicist and writer Jenny Finch, previously heard on the 2021 album Can You Imagine? And what a very rewarding collaboration it is too. I understand from the review by Dai Jeffries for Folking.com that the final release may be different to the collection Keith sent to me last year as regards choice and order of tracks. I don’t have an up-to-date release date, but when I have a date and link I’ll post the information on this site.

The version of the album that I received featured  11 songs by Keith and Jenny as well as a song each from John Martyn and Nick Drake.

  1. Given Keith’s mastery of the nylon-strung guitar, it’s no surprise that ‘Postcard From Havana’ tells its absorbing story against a a musical background strongly suggestive of both Spanish and Afro-Cuban music.
  2. ‘Solid Air’ is the John Martyn jazz-flavoured classic first recorded in 1973: it’s remarkable how Keith gets under Martyn’s skin here, vocally and instrumentally, yet somehow makes the song his own, fitting entirely appropriately with the rest of the material here.
  3. ‘Nocturne’ is a dramatic, piano-driven song, with a suggestion of atonality here and there that adds to the overtones of desperation in the lyric.
  4. ‘Winter In Poitiers’ is more conventional in form and production: if the lyric wasn’t so very Keith James, you could almost imagine it sung by a Cliff Richard or Paul Young (and it might well have been a hit).
  5. ‘Currency Of Nations’ is a series of oblique, downbeat observations of ‘digital humanity’. Very effective.
  6. ‘The Lizard And The Butterfly’, with its electric guitar and solid percussion, is closer to rock than most of the tracks here, in a 60s sort of way. In fact it reminded me a little of Richard Fariña’s ‘Reno Nevada’, but in a good way.
  7. ‘Northern Sky’ is the other cover on this record, being one of Nick Drake’s songs. It’s a particularly fitting choice for the other cover on this album, in that ‘Solid Air’ was written for Nick. In fact, ‘Northern Sky’ seems to have been written while Nick was (briefly) living with John and Beverley Martin. Keith’s delivery here isn’t really that much like Nick’s, but has a fragility that seems fitting, given what we know now of that tragic talent.
  8. The enigmatic lyric to ‘The Photograph’ supplies its own series of snapshots, like a slide show or a video using stills “frozen in time”to support music. Fine music it is, too.
  9. The title of ‘Pram Wheels And Broken Lampshades’ sounds like something Tom Waits might have written, but the lyric subverts the premise of ‘Broken Bicycles’ and sets it into a livelier arrangement that is yet somehow more dangerous.
  10. Slide guitar and harmonica overlays give ‘Smoking Dog Café’ a blues-y vibe set against a lyric that somehow recalls the Beat Generation, or perhaps the generation of songsmiths (the Doors, the Grateful Dead et al) that absorbed those influences. I wouldn’t hate hearing some more like this.
  11. ‘Moment To Shine’ – the lyric echoes Keith’s stance as a climate change activist (as demonstrated in his Paradise Lost album), in a fittingly synth-heavy setting.
  12. ‘Sideways Smile’ is a bit of a surprise, given the seriousness and sophistication of so much of Keith’s output: a positive, poppy earworm. I love it!
  13. ‘She Bathes In Light’ reminded me a little, thematically of ‘She’s A Rainbow’, but has an richness of colour, imagery and humanity that evaded the Jagger-Richard song.

I already knew Keith as a fine poet and lyricist as well as a super-competent musician, but this collaboration is clearly working beautifully: while the arrangements and production (jointly executed by Branwen Munn and Keith himself) are as accomplished as ever. Some of the tracks here seem a little more accessible than some of his work, while retaining a poetic sensibility and musical scope that puts him closer to the Nouvelle Chanson heirs of Brel and Brassens than to mainstream rock.

If you know and love Keith’s work, you’ll certainly want to add this to your collection. If you’re not sure, I recommend that you give it a try!

David Harley

 Artist’s website

Videos:

Singing Grannies

Having an article in the next ‘Folklife Traditions Journal‘ (out in March) and sporadically working on a(nother) folk-ish album which may have to be mostly unaccompanied, I’m starting to worry that people will start accusing me of being a folkie again. Though I picked up a guitar just now and my left hand appeared to be almost back to normal, so there may yet be quite a lot of guitar after all.

The article is based on a longer article on this blog, by the way. There is an article in the next issue Folk In Cornwall which is also based on that article.

Now I’ve looked more closely, I see that Rosie Upton and I both wrote about songs sung by our grandmothers. Editor Sam Simmons gets at least two bonus points for tagging the articles The Granny Awards.

David Harley