songs – Wheal Alice Music

Call Yourself Apprentice?

Backup:

Around the start of the 80s I wrote some dialogue and monologues and most of the original music for the ‘Nice (if you can get it)’ revue, directed by Margaret Ford. At the time it was put together and (briefly) toured, I was working by day for a company that built staircases (mostly). This song is based on my personal experience of working in the woodworking industry, though I was a wood machinist, not a carpenter.

In a recent conversation, I expressed some regret that I never got to do something like the radio ballads put together by Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker et al, then realized that the revue was actually quite near to that concept.

Ian Campbell also wrote some songs in that idiom, including one called The Apprentice’s Song, but it’s about gas fitters. Mine is about an apprentice carpenter, and I’ve changed the title to avoid confusion with Ian’s song.

Originally a poem of sorts, but re-recorded as a song after a discussion about that harsh little joke in the third verse. I honestly can’t remember if it was used in the revue – it was written around that time, but maybe not soon enough to be included. Like ‘Long Stand‘, it touches on the uneasy relationship between the old hand and the apprentice – while hazing or snipe-hunting is a particularly unpleasant way of keeping the young ‘uns in their place, it’s not always considered the duty of the master to encourage the apprentice.

The tune is now mostly associated with ‘Tramps and Hawkers’, a song that seems to have been written by ‘Besom Jimmy’ in the late 19th century, though the tune is far older than that. (Ewan MacColl used the same tune for England’s Motorways, from the radio ballad ‘Song of a Road’, about the people who built the M1.)

Fetch the rolls: make the tea: then grab the end of that
And sand it till your fingers bleed, if you think you’ve planed it flat.
Call yourself apprentice? Lad, I’d be ashamed
If I knew so little, to be called by such a name

Never mind the splinters: In a year or two
You’ll have quite forgotten that they ever bothered you.
Hands as hard as English oak, muscle, skill and guile:
That’s what makes a craftsman; but not you, for a while

Cut yourself, you silly sod? Take care, if you please,
And don’t bleed on the timber: do you think it grows on trees?
Call yourself a craftsman? No, lad, never you.
Though if you try your hardest, one day you might scrape through

So you’ve got your piece of paper? I hope I’ve taught you well,
And I won’t deny you’re willing: no doubt time will tell.
Call yourself a craftsman? That’s as may well be…
Another year, or five, or ten, and then perhaps we’ll see…

David Harley

Long Cigarettes, Cheap Red Wine

This is a very old song (early 1970s) I keep revisiting. Old in years, but perhaps not in terms of maturity. This time I went back to it because Ian Semple played a version on his radio show on Coast FM (thanks, Ian!) that I’d not only forgotten I’d cut, but also couldn’t find on my laptop. This version has a slightly trimmed version of the lengthy instrumental (much more recent) with which it starts, and a different take on the actual song. It’s essentially the same track that I used on the Ten Percent Blues album, only I didn’t use the instrumental for that album.

Backup version:

Unusually for me, the guitar is in open G (which I did use a lot more in those days, but mostly for slide). I think I originally wrote it on banjo, which might explain a lot. The instrumental might reappear on a poetry/music project.

You sing your songs, the stage is bare
There isn’t anyone out there
Sometimes it almost seems that way
And I run out of songs to play

Forget the muzak and the beer
The open mouths, the grudging cheers
There isn’t any better way
To freeload your life away

Back in 1969
I lost someone I thought was mine
That’s the price I had to pay
When I ran out of songs to play

Goodbye, old friend, I have to leave
To prove to myself that I’m still free
I’ll see you in a year or so
And buy the round you say I owe

The long cigarettes, the cheap red wine
The melodies you say are mine
If you find somewhere to be
I hope you’ll save a place for me

David Harley

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

From the forthcoming album, an expanded version of the Tears of Morning album to go with the upcoming book. I’ve recorded it before, but this version is heavily edited and remixed with copious synth.

This 1917 poem by Housman 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. I find it hard to empathise with either Housman’s or Kipling’s imperialist sympathies, but the poem does have power. I hope my arrangement does it justice.

From ‘Last Poems’, by the way, not ‘A Shropshire Lad’.

More Tears of Morning – Rain

I’ve now started uploading some tracks for the enhanced (hopefully) version of the Tears of Morning album, to go with the book – almost finished. This is one of two versions of Rain that will be added to the new version. The song is (probably) the first song I wrote and kept, from the late-ish 1960s/

This is an a cappella version, the other version will be a video capture including guitar.

Epitaph for an Army of Mercenaries revisited

I’ve taken a couple of passes at this setting of a Housman poem (from Last Poems). After I posted a version on one of my blogs, I came across an alternative version I’d forgotten. I didn’t like the vocal much (I never do, but I particularly didn’t like this one), but I did like the synth and guitars, so I did a little splicing and remixing (or is that slicing and dicing?). Coming back to it for a book and album project, I did some more radical slicing and dicing, and I like it much better now.

To be honest, I’m not altogether sure I feel positively about the poem, still less the ‘war to end all wars’, but the poem does have a certain power, without the naked imperialism of Kipling at his worst.

This 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”. I’m not sure how I feel about that one, either. Armies may commit atrocities, but its governments that set the context.

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

Wadebridge Folk Club – new venue

I’ve never been to the Wadebridge Folk Club, as I wouldn’t be able to get back from Wadebridge by public transport afterwards. However, I know lots of people will be glad to know that the club, having been unable to run during lockdown and subsequently without a venue, is now due to reopen at a new venue: specifically, the Barn at Pentireglaze Cafe, which is down a right turn (Brown signposted) off the New Polzeath Road @ PL27 6QY.

The first meeting will be on Thursday 19th Jan at 7pm. Neal Jolly tells us that there will be hot drinks available. I’m not sure if there’ll be alcohol: Neal will be checking on that. He says that “The barn also has a log burner, chairs, tables etc and a sofa (First come first settled!)”

There will be a cost (£5) to cover the hire of the building and to build a fund to be able to pay for the occasional guest performer.

While the slide player on the poster looks to be playing something like a Telecaster, the event will be purely acoustic “to encourage a listening audience, and yet offering a sort of stagey area, rather than a sing around. ”

“Spoken word performance will be very much welcome as well as singing and playing.”

More details when I have them.

In the meantime, I believe the club’s Tuesday Zoom session is continuing: details at https://www.folkincornwall.co.uk/clubdetail.php?clubname=WADEBRIDGE%20ZOOM

David Harley

Jack in the Box (alternative tune)

…again with added music. (I suddenly noticed that it fitted another traditional tune perfectly!)

Backup:

Down in the workhouse when I was a lad
No tongue can relate all the pleasures we had
Dry bread, and Bastille soup by the bowl
And a flogging or two for the good of our souls x2

A tale I recall of those happy times
And an orphan lad always to mischief inclined
He was ever in line for a kick, at the best
And the poor workhouse master could scarcely find rest

Till came the day one of the other lads died
“Aha!” says the master, “I’ll settle your pride!”
He shut up the lad in the dead-house to stay
Alone with the coffin until the next day

But what should Jack do but open the box
He takes out the corpse, and with it swaps clothes
Props it up on the rail at the top of the stairs
Then he hops in the box and the winding-sheet wears

And when it grew dark, the master came up
With a plate for Jack, some victuals to sup
Holds it out to the corpse on the rail
Who says not a word, but stands stiff, cold and pale

“Well, take it!” the master says in surprise
“I should think you’d be starving by now, damn your eyes!”
Then up leaps Jack, who was lying so still
And says “If he wunna eat it, I will!”

When the master heard this he got such a fright
He let go of the plate, and turned whiter than white
Gave a terrible shriek, such a fright did he get
Fell back down the stairs and near broke his neck

Wasn’t that a sad fall for a man such as he
So kind to his charges, with his boot so free?
So pity the poor who must live on the Roll
And think on the guardians and pray for their souls

A song of mine based on a story of Knighton workhouse from ‘An idler on the Shropshire borders’, by Ida Gandy. Told to her by Ellen Hughes (nee Jordan) 1864-1940 also known as Granny Hughes. Many thanks to her great-granddaughter Denise Lewis of the Memories of Shropshire FB group for the information and photograph. Written in the 70s, but I figured it was about time I put a tune to it, since it features in a book I’m writing.

In the previous post, the tune used was one associated with many songs, often sea-songs, with a ‘down-derry-down’ chorus.

For this version, I’ve switched to the tune called The Limerick Rake, also used by Tom Paxton for The High Sheriff of Hazard and by Ewan MacColl for Champion at Keeping Them Rolling. I expect there are a good few others too: it’s an excellent tune.

(c) David Harley

Jack in the Box

…now with added music. (I suddenly noticed that it fitted a traditional tune perfectly!)

It also fits the subject matter of a book I’m working on: more on that in due course…

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