A Walk Around Britain

doon we sung

We sung this down a 350 ft well, in the Milburys pub, just before Winchester.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The reverb was superb, if a little much. It is pure analogue f/x.

It is a great Easter song, and was recorded by May Bradley in Shropshire, a Gypsy lady who sings in a unique and beautiful style.

A less echo-drenched version of the song appears on our album.

Here be lyrics:

(more…)

Nancy, i'm off...

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We recorded this on our little gizmo while on the edge of the highest hill in Hampshire. We could not find anywhere to camp on such a steep gradient, and were walking up and down a footpath trying to peer down the slope for flatlands.

And then we realized that the footpath on which we stood was flat, and wide enough, and a perfectly suitable place to kip. So we did.

We could smell the sea, and hear Skylarks when we woke. We were accompanied by Ayla and her mother Annette, for whom it was an intense pleasure to sing.

The fire you can hear in the background was not a forest confalgration, but a safe little cooking fire all lifted from the ground on damp logs. It’s ok.

Here are the lyrics:

(more…)

We recorded this selection of songs in the summer of 2008, the evening before Ed headed off overland to Mongolia. It was an all night, fairly inebriated affair, with our good friend Shlauff engineering.  Ed managed to leave in time the next morning, and we had a little CD to trumpet ourselves with.

To hear the recordings, please do click for more.

(more…)

coo

While near the Sustainability Centre, Ayla’s ma, Annette, taught us this classic little song:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We found it a beautiful and compellingly catchy one, which we’re trying to learn as a pair.

Here are lyrics:

(more…)

the drunken sailor/tibetan monk/festy decorator

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is the great classic folk song, the unifying corker that everyone can join to sing.

We tried to sing it here with unusual gentility and emotional resonance…but it kept slipping back it uproar.

Here is another more raucous version, recorded Christmas 2010:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is univerasl culture stuff. Try it. Open up the song in the pub one night, with guts and gusto, and you will find a heightened time is had by all.

Here are the lyrics:

(more…)

We have a track available from the forthcoming album of songs. Please look HERE to find it.

rage in the morning

A musical re-telling of that most famous of Dylan Thomas’ poems, we see great potential in this song. It is surely satisfying to sing Rage Rage Rage Rage…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This was sung by Annette, Ayla’s ma, and the full poem is as follows:

(more…)