Month: October 2025

The Road — my last single revisited

Probably my last ever single… And as unsuccessful as all the others!

https://davidaharley576.substack.com/p/the-road

I bade farewell to the life of the wandering professional musician in the 1970s, so my song The Road [link to the .WAV on Bandcamp, in case you feel like buying it!] is definitely not autobiographical, so I think of it as a story that also happens to be a song. Still, it might have described my life had I not gone in a very different direction. Released as a single, but the recording of this particular version originally came about because I was working up a solo set for the Lafrowda festival in 2023. You don’t have to buy it to listen to it. Of course, you don’t have to listen to it either, but it is one of my better efforts.

The guitar was a Taylor T5Z, which generally works well for fingerstyle because of its unusual pickup configuration. I’m not sure I could play it this well, now.

lyric

It’s late and the driver has nothing to say
One more stop ahead
On an endless highway
One more place to be, and nowhere to stay
For the road was the ruin of me
The tour bus, the tranny,
The fluffed chords of fame
The days in the airport, the runaway train
You don’t care for my songs
And you don’t know my name
For the road was the ruin of me

I was never a drifter, I’d no urge to roam
But somehow the tour bus
Became my home
The scenery fades
And the scene is long gone
And the road was the ruin of me
The smoke and the pipe dream,
The whisky, the beer
There’s nothing to treasure
And nothing to fear
There’s no one here now
To send out for some gear
And the road was the ruin of me

The call of the wild,
And the song of the road
The end of the game
And the call of the void
There’s no one to meet
And there’s nowhere to hide
The road was the ruin of me
The heroes and villains,
The bait and the switch
The hole in my sock
And the travelling itch
I’ll never be famous,
I’ll never be rich
For the road was the ruin of me

I drank much too deep at the wishing well
I knew what I wanted but never could tell
Now I’ve only these dreams
And these few words to sell
For the road was the ruin of me
All that I’ve learned is how little I know
All I’ve come home to is a new place to go
And it’s never a place that I wanted to be
For the road was the ruin of me

released August 28, 2023
Words and music, Guitar and vocal, by David A. Harley.

Notes

Here are some additional notes originally published in my book Hands of the Craftsman (slightly edited here).

I strongly suspect that if I’d persisted in trying to play music for a living, the road might well have been the ruin of me. And while my own biographical timeline is very different, I’m not unfamiliar with the psychology of a thwarted career in music.

In a way, this is my American Pie – I’m not saying it’s as good as Don MacLean’s song! – in its bizarre (and possibly pretentious) range of cultural references, from Jack London to director John Baxter, from Brian Wilson to Freud and Poe, from Cormac McCarthy to Kerouac, from Vernon Dalhart to Megan Henwood, from the long con to dermatology. Not that anyone is going to care about that, and why should they? Tracking the references should probably be left as an exercise for the reader, but here are a few footnotes anyway. Anyone would think this was a conference paper… (No, I don’t plan on doing any more of those.)

  • “…send out for some gear…” I hasten to point out that my own career in music was drug-free, apart from too many cigarettes early on (I gave them up several decades ago), and an unhealthy reliance on beer as an antidote to stage fright. Alas, that hasn’t changed except that I can’t really drink beer any more.
  • Jack London wrote The Call of the Wild, of course, but his autobiographical John Barleycorn and the concept of ‘White Logic’ certainly have a bearing on the culture of the road, as musicians often know it.
  • One of John Baxter’s films was The Song of the Road, which casts its own light on work and technology. I probably wasn’t thinking of Whitman’s rather more optimistic Song of the Open Road!
  • ‘The fluffed chords of fame’ is an oblique reference to a song by Phil Ochs, a superb songwriter who met a tragic end at his own hand after several very difficult years. (I might include my song For Phil Ochs here shortly.)
  • There are a number of songs called Endless Highway (notably one by Robbie Robertson, and another by Alison Krauss), as well as at least one album and a gospel group. I didn’t have any of them specifically in mind: the words just fitted the song.
  • There are several songs about runaway trains: I was thinking of the old Vernon Dalhart hit, but I’m not sure I can explain why or if it’s relevant.
  • ‘The call of the void’ or ‘L’appel du vide’ (incidentally the title of a rather fine song by Megan Henwood) is rather similar to what Poe called ‘the Imp of the Perverse’, a self-destructive impulse.
  • Heroes and Villains is a Beach Boys song, of course: a suitable reference in a song that could be said to contrast fact and mythology.
  • Bait and switch is a fraudulent sales technique, but it has other applications in the context of conning.
  • A travelling itch might refer to the itchy feet of the obsessive traveller, but also describes a particularly irritating condition where scratching at the site of an itch simply seems to result in its resurfacing, hydra-like, at another site. Even more irritatingly, I once wrote a half-decent story about this that I’ve somehow lost completely!

Some Housman settings on Substack

1. Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries (remix)

A demo track — originally from an album of demo tracks that I may never be in a fit state to record properly. The raw guitar/vocal version was previously posted on Inspiration Point. However, this is a remix with some guitar and synth overdubbing that I quite like.

This 1917 poem by A.E. Housman takes longer to explain than it does to read.

It 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’. I’m staying out of that debate. For now, anyway. This setting was originally intended for a suite of settings (including some Kipling) that was intended to lessen any residual jingoism. I’m still thinking about that one.

Words by A.E. Housman. Music, acoustic guitars, synth and vocal by me.

These, in the days 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 the earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

2. Severn Shore

A setting of Housman’s cheerful story of fratricide

I dreamed last night I was working on my ‘Tears of Morning’ album. Listening to it again, I probably should… Still, here’s my setting of A Shropshire Lad VIII from that album, which I’m fairly happy with. I thought Severn Shore was a slightly more attractive title.

‘FAREWELL to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.

‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side.

‘My mother thinks us long away;
’Tis time the field were mown.
She had two sons at rising day,
To-night she ’ll be alone.

‘And here ’s a bloody hand to shake,
And oh, man, here ’s good-bye;
We ’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,
My bloody hands and I.

‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,
And a love to keep you clean,
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
At racing on the green.

‘Long for me the rick will wait,
And long will wait the fold,
And long will stand the empty plate,
And dinner will be cold.’

3. On Bredon Hill (Summertime on Bredon)

A rerecording of my setting of the poem from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’. Still needs work, but I think the vocal has more character than the version previously recorded and released.

XXI – BREDON HILL

In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.

Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away:
“Come all to church, good people;
Good people, come and pray.”
But here my love would stay.

And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
“Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time.”

But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.

They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.

The bells they sound on Bredon
And still the steeples hum.
“Come all to church, good people,”–
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.

Music by A.E. Housman. Melody, guitar and vocal by David Harley.

Probably more of these to come.