Archive for August, 2014

Doleful Dance of Death


2014
08.26

Jon picked this up from Tim Healy of The Oxford Waits and says, “Tim performs the original C17th version of this with a skull mask over his face: pretty scary stuff. I used to have to play the recorder solo which was also pretty scary…” You’ll find a version on Spiers & Bodens Songs CD, where the notes refer to Jon having “doctored the lyrics drastically,” and the source being the Oxford University Broadside Collection. The alternate title is Shaking Of The Sheets and Mudcat suggests it’s somewhat older being C16th and is referred to in a play of around 1560. There are quite a few additional verses and the lyrics are, as suggested above, very different from the version Jon gives us here. Mainly Norfolk also covers Steeleye’s version.

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Leave Her Johnny


2014
08.25

Jon again points to the Forest School camps and particularly to Daniel Jacks  for his source of this with the revelation, “I think this is the only song I have genuinely learnt ‘orally’ – Daniel and I were re-turfing a fire pit on a Welsh camp (I must have been 16 or so) and he taught me it verse by verse. Haven’t seen Daniel for a very long time but he’s a fantastically rich and laid back singer. Simon Emmerson (Afro Celts) made a few recordings of him for FSC – not sure if they’re available anywhere still.” This one is definitely a shanty and seems to have had any number of verses in varying order. I’m indebted to Reinhard at Mainly Norfolk for his research on this and the sleeve notes quoted suggest that verses could well have been improvised at the end of a voyage to suit the circumstances and air the particular grievances of the crew. I also like the suggestion that it was saved up as the last song, as singing it before the ship was all but home was tantamount to mutiny. It suggests many a salty version with no punches pulled and this link is also worthy, suggesting many unprintable verses. I couldn’t find anything more illuminating on Mudcat, so please add to this if you can.

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Bellowhead – Broadside, the new album


2014
08.24

Bellowhead - BroadsideBellowhead’s brand new album ‘Broadside’ is due for release on the 15th October via Navigator Records.

Broadside is a positive spectacular, taking some of the wildest, most joyous and iconic songs in the richly colourful canon of the folk song tradition… and turning them upside down and inside out with the unique sense of drama and theatre, instrumental virtuosity, verve, humour and blind cheek that has seen them spearhead the new folk boom. Their third album Hedonism was the highest-selling independently released traditional folk album of all time, yet the new one Broadside (a title that rather cunningly melds an early form of printed song sharing with an appropriate nautical reference to firepower) is surely set to eclipse it with its thrilling arrangements and non-stop party spirit.

Like Hedonism, Broadside is produced by the great John Leckie, who has previously done wonderful things with the Stone Roses and Radiohead; and he’s now effectively captured all the explosiveness that has established Bellowhead’s undisputed reputation as one of the planet’s most exciting live bands and replicated it in the studio. In this case that studio is Rockfield, where Freddie Mercury once held court. Indeed, at one point the massed vocals even evoke Bohemian Rhapsody and Freddie would surely have identified with the electrifying dynamism and sense of fun conjured up by this very special band. A couple of the tracks are based on songs that initially found common currency in the form of those printed broadsides – the gruesome romp Black Beetle Pies for one and the spooky ballad The Wife Of Usher’s Well – all death, ghosts and “earthly flesh and blood” – for another. Weirdness also abounds with Betsy Baker, a vigorous tale of unrequited love, while some of the most venerated songs of the folk revival – Northumbrian mining song Byker Hill, the Copper Family classic Thousands Or More, the rocking sea shanty Go My Way and The Old Dun Cow – the knockabout tale of being trapped inside a burning pub – are revived in startling ways. They may be familiar, but they’ve never sounded like this before. There’s even an irresistibly bonkers take on Lillibulero, a satirical song set to a tune attributed to Henry Purcell, on which the band flex their considerable muscles and gleefully explore their seemingly bottomless box of magic tricks, emerging with storming vocals, blitzing percussion, rampaging strings and mad, bad brass.

Broadside, their fourth album, writes another extraordinary chapter in the story of Bellowhead, which began in 2004 when a disparate group of characters who initially knew one another from informal pub sessions thought it might be a good wheeze to pool their widely varied backgrounds, influences and talents and form a big band… just to see what happened. Even they couldn’t have imagined the results as their funny little enterprise -incorporating top-notch jazz, world, folk and classical musicians in a swathe of brass, strings, squeezebox, percussion and anything else that seemed like a good idea at the time – swiftly expanded into a gung-ho 11-piece line-up. Four albums, a glut of awards, sell-out tours and a long trail of thunderous festival appearances down the line, they’ve transported folk music into hitherto unknown territory, introducing a whole new audience to it with them. “The greatest live act in Britain,” says BBC Radio 2’s Simon Mayo. “One of the best live bands in the UK…or anywhere,” says Jeremy Vine. And the hordes of dancing fans grinning and singing along and treating every gig as a party clearly agree. That party gains even more momentum with Broadside for, while some of the songs may appear graphic and brutal, this is above all, an album driven by a lust for life. And that’s a subject close to the heart of Bellowhead. The album will be accompanied by the band’s biggest ever UK tour (6th – 24th Nov), visit www.gigantic.com for tickets.

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Jordan Is A Hard Road


2014
08.24

Of course we’re in Bellowhead territory here and Jon says, “I heard this on a Frankie Armstrong Fellside CD and couldn’t quite believe my luck – surely everyone must have had ago at it? Steeleye? Jim Moray? Eliza? But no it’s just Frankie and Bellowhead (and now me I s’pose.) Roy Palmer put the verses together and he and Frankie were both tremendously gracious about Bellowhead having a crack at it.” You’ll find Frankie’s take on Lovely On The Water and her notes offer…

“This curious and rare song with its rollicking and defiant humour, was used to make political and social comment and a variety of jokes. This version seems to date from the 1850s or early 60s, because of its reference to the campaigns against slavery in America, which were going on at that time. The text comes from a broadside and the tune sung “by an old labourer now dead,” collected by Baring-Gould in Holcombe Burnell, North Devon.”

You can read more including Bellowhead’s notes on Mainly Norfolk. I’ll say no more except that I always enjoy this as part of Bellowhead’s live set and feel privileged for getting a bit more up close and personal with it.

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Rolling Down To Old Maui


2014
08.23

Jon says,“Dave Webber introduced me to the song via a cassette from Winchester library many years ago. I put the verses together from a few versions, but mainly from Songs The Whalemen Sang. It has one of the mightiest choruses around.”  I was going too call this a stirring shanty, but it’s more accurately described as a fo’c’s’le (forecastle) song as it was sung for pleasure rather than work. This Wiki link will give you the details and even mentions this song in the definition.  A.L. Lloyd recorded a version on the Leviathan album (CD currently unavailable) and you can read about that at Mainly Norfolk here. I’ve also turned up a version by Jolly Jack, a Lancastrian trio led by the late Dave Weatherall, available on the Rolling Down To Old Maui CD on Fellside. Interestingly the notes in the booklet collated and amended by Paul Adams are very specific.

“Our title track comes from Songs The Whalemen Sung by New Englander Gale Huntington. Many young men working on the American whaling ships kept personal journals in which the recorded the voyage, made sketches, notes and copied their favourite songs. The words of this song were taken from such a journal made aboard the Atkins Adams in 1858. The noble tune [pretty much as Jon sings it] is from Chantying Aboard American Ships by F.P. Harlow. Maui is one of the Hawaiian Islands and was a meeting place for whalers… something to look forward to between trips. A ‘homeward bound’ feeling prevails after the arctic hunting season but it was likely that they were merely calling at Maui for ‘fitting out’ for the further half year in the southern oceans.”

I’m grateful to Paul and whoever uncovered that gem. I’ll add there’s some rather good Mudcatage here and you’ll note lyrical variations, more recordings and some thoughts on the tune(s).

You can buy the August digital album now from all good download stores:

 

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