A Walk Around Britain

Nancy, i'm off...

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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:

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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.

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coo

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

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

Here are lyrics:

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the drunken sailor/tibetan monk/festy decorator

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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:

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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:

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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…

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

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Curiosity got the best of my idle moments, and a list was made, of where we have so far sung on this particular journey.

If you want to know where, and how often, we are singing, read on reader…

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We met Susie Ro and Ayla in Falmouth, where they were sharing a bed in their chilly van, next to a cottage, above the international dock.

Ed had spotted them as they drove through town in their van, and had run after them, as he recognized them from Small World Festival. But they out-sped his best pace.

In Penzance, a few weeks later, we met a girl called Daisy, who sang a song about magpies, that was most excellent.  She knew the girls, got us their number, and we arranged to meet at a gig in Falmouth, a few days later.

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Lucy is a singer/songwriter from the Canterbury scene, evoking the sound of the great female american singer-songwriters of the 60′s and 70’s. Her music is a beautiful and ecclectic mix of folk rock and country blues and she has developed a growing fanbase through her self-penned acoustic songs.

Taking inspiration from the likes of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and PJ Harvey, her style is one some find difficult to pigeon hole. Recognition for her songwriting has seen her reach the semi finals of the BBC Radio 2 young folk award in 2006/2007.

Keep track of her here on www.myspace.com/lucykitt.

Listen to her track “Gone” here:

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After a great day singing on the streets of Penzance, we found ourselves invited to sing with some other bands, later in the evening. The venue was a room in which was made the first announcement of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. It was an incredibly velvet and chandeliered room, filled with the memory of triumph and celebration.

We sung before Thistletown, again ignoring the offered mics to try and fill the room with the sound of voices without translation. It was a good go, and people were happy to listen and bob along.

Then Thistletown played, a cloud-borne fairy castle of twisting medieval dreams.

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We expect every reviewer enjoys writing about this band, as they permit such flowery prose.

Beside this, they are exemplary musicians, instrumentalists of rare quality and playfulness. We had a great night, meeting the trad youth of Kernow.

Based in Falmouth, Ben and Lydia gave us their number, to call them when we walked back to Falmouth. We had avoided Falmouth on the way to Penzance, as we had engaged on a 46 mile day and night march to get to Penwith. We took it all a lot slower on our way out.

So in Falmouth we rung the number, and spent beautiful days with the band, on their boat and in their other haunts.

They are apparently now disbanded. They met success with the backing of a Guardian journalist, who was given money by the paper to set up a cottage record label. But the projection into the world of album sales and national reviews was perhaps uneasy. They were billed as every hippy’s dream, the bearded and ethereal answer to modern woes, and given high profile performances, and then there was the money issues to deal with.

The band has now branched into separate endeavours, which although sad to hear, will doubtless bring new and mighty fruit in the near future.

Their album, Rosemarie, is a beautiful disc of Cornish magic. Bag a copy, if you can.