One of my reviews for folking.com:
KEITH JAMES – Tenderness Claws (Hurdy Gurdy HGA2926)
Settings of poems by Lorca, Kerouac, William Blake, Allen Ginsburg, Dylan Thomas, and Keith James himself. Plus a nice cover of White Room (the words for which were written by the beat poet Pete Brown, so on topic…)
Folking.com has already reviewed his ‘Always…’ CD from 2015, but I got a copy along with ‘Tenderness Claws’, so I may review it for this site.
David Harley
A suddenly resurrected blues-y song. First time sung in about 30 years, so a bit rough, but I like the energy.
I woke up in the night thinking about this one for the first time in maybe 30 years. Fortunately, I could still find the words, though I’ve changed them slightly here (also the tempo is a bit more upbeat than when I originally wrote it). Unusually (for me) the slide is an open G. I’ve been using an open C again recently, too.
Dying of communication: Copyright David Harley 1976
Remastered:
Backup copy:
Backup copy
Sitting it out at the full moon
Reading my mail from the next room
Can’t you see we’re dying
Dying of communication?
Checking it out with the radio
Late late news is ‘no place to go’
Can’t you see we’re dying
Dying of communication?
Sitting it out in the bathroom
Freaked out on ego juice
Fighting it out in the bedroom
Wondering what’s the use
Everyone knows we’re dying
Dying of communication
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A Tommy Johnson classic that suddenly revisited my head after a decade or two.
I was actually noodling around with an arrangement for Castles and Kings, which I’ve started to think of as a sort of Shropshire train blues, when I suddenly found myself thinking of the Tommy Johnson classic ‘Big Road Blues’, which hasn’t crossed my mind in decades.
Now lightly remastered…
Backup:
Updated version of a setting by me of the Housman poem.
And backup:
Another Housman setting, this time from Last Poems. I’m seeing whether it will fit into a sequence of songs I’ve been working on. (See Soldier (You Come, You Go) and Soldier of Fortune.)
The 1917 poem refers to the British Expeditionary Force, which German propagandists referred to as ‘mercenaries’ because at the outbreak of war, Britain’s army consisted of professional soldiers rather than conscripts or the later volunteers of ‘Kitchener’s Army‘. The BEF was practically wiped out by 1916.
A poem by Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’ takes a very different view, regarding the BEF as ‘professional murderers’.
The setting by Geoffrey Burgon sung by Gillian McPherson on the soundtrack to the Dogs of War is much more dramatic, and very effective (even though some might doubt whether the poem is entirely appropriate in terms of this particular novel and movie). This is much simpler and fits the cycle I have in mind better. Still, I might rethink that. This is definitely a work in progress.
Here’s the Housman poem:
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
David Harley
I’ve recorded this several times before, including a ‘proper’ studio version, but have never been quite satisfied with it. This rough mix attempts a looser version with a jazzier guitar. Both guitars here are a Gibson jumbo with a P90 pickup, by the way, if these things are of interest to you. 🙂
David Harley
One I wrote in the early 70s. Trying out a different arrangement.
Backup copy:
David Harley
I wrote this song (properly called ‘Rain’) when I was still at school in the 1960s and had just discovered folk music. And on the rare occasions when I’ve sung it in public, it’s always been unaccompanied, though I have previously recorded a version with pseudo-acoustic guitar. This, though is a very rough draft for a different vocal interpretation, and a step towards a properly electric accompaniment. More of that later.
David Harley
Another (non-bottleneck) version of ‘Faintly Fahey’.
The instrumental I call ‘Faintly Fahey‘ started as a sort of fake Irish air, then got translated into a bottleneck version. This is a non-slide version closer to the original idea.. There may well be more to come on this, as I think it might go rather well with the song ‘Can’t Sleep‘, but that needs more work.
David Harley
Like Long Stand and Hands of the Craftsman, I wrote this for the revue “Nice…if you can get it”, directed by Maggie Ford sometime in the early 80s, but wasn’t used as it wasn’t really in keeping with the other material. I haven’t thought about it since, but when I found it lurking among my juvenilia a couple of years ago, found that not only could I more or less remember the tune, but that I actually quite like it. Minor changes to the lyric which no-one will notice but me…
Backup:
I’m through with the world and those city screams
I’ll take to the air with a cargo of dreams
All of my life I’ve been tied to the ground
Now I’m spreading my wings to take to the clouds
Flying away
Flying away
No more will I lay aching bones on cold earth
Reaching out for the sun now I know what I’m worth
No more shuffling around, feet nailed to the ground
My skysails are set and I’m outward bound
Flying away
Flying away
At one with the winds I’ll take to the sky
No longer afraid of the sun in my eyes
I’ll rise with the lark and see the world so clear
But it’s your world, not mine, and my world is here
Flying away
Flying away
Words and music by David Harley © 1983
Wheal Alice Music 