A Walk Around Britain

This is all the music on the website, put in an easy to find place.

We hope to make things easier for people interested mainly in the music we make.

For us, the songs we sing are crucially aligned to our movement through landscape. The old songs, in their simplest conception, are creative responses of people to life in place.

As such, an old song lives best in its place of birth, to be released spontaneously within the echoes of its original expression, to turn from history to breath, and meet ears.

That means live, unamplified, on the land, and to people…

But since this is only a website, and can only reproduce digitalized recordings, that’s all we can share with you, until we meet in person.

So if you want to hear everything the website has available, without having to trudge through writing and photographs, this page is for you.

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Hello.

These are a couple of the songs we have been learning.

Because they are not polished, there are mis-takes, but they are energetic and exciting, we think.

not always neat and pretty

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Not everything that we recorded for our album came out as we had hoped. Pressure to leave, the thousand leaves of sundry preparation turning, the late nights…it was not the most wholesome event.

But we got there. And then, just before we brought the thing out properly, the wind called us, and out the door we went.

fal dee raddle o

Well, the whole walk passed with its many adventures, and still we did not release the CD. But that is fine, it will come out when it is best suited. Soon we hope, for we’re broke, and need shiny pennies to re-sole boots, to buy girls red wine, to keep ourselves in bread and cheese.

But we trust that all will come as it is needed.

For now, we’re bandying about scraps of old recordings. It’s a strange job we have here, working flat out for YOU…whosoever you may be. A paycheque is not part of the bargain. But, we both agree, that makes the work more integral and fulfilling, and provides the proper motivation for furtherance (viz. honesty and education, not reward).

Still, if you like all this work, and you appreciate how we are doing it all in the middle of wherever we find ourselves around Britain, with nothing but busking money to sweeten our labours…and if you know sponsors, good folk with spare pound coins, or boots…consider putting our cause their way, please do.

Right then. Have these snippets:

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(from: My husband’s got no courage in him)

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(from: Country Life)

Please enjoy, and sing…

Action photo with Bakery boys

Back in July, Richard Dadd and Dan Fryer from The Bakery came to visit us. They came to take an interview, to form part of a mini series they were producing for BBC Radio Kent. This series was all about strange and exciting things, in and originating from Canterbury, the capital of East Kent. Our sing[-song wanderings apparently qualified.

So up to the woods, just above Monmouth, did Rich and Dan pop. We had been here a few days already, as many visitors were coming out all in rapid succession at that time. We had made a little camp, and an office, with a fern roof, ash poles, and pine rootlet and nettle binding. We had busked in the town, and met some lovely people. Details will come, soon we promise, just as soon as we’ve finished building our winter home (whose walls are being stuffed with straw right now).

So with Rich and Dan, a fine day and evening were spent wandering through the woods, finding springs and gathering food. Although strangers until now, the pair are friends of friends from our home town, Canterbury, so it was a little like going home to meet them.

Rich and Dan are also deft audio editors, and canny interviewers. After editing a radio-friendly 5 minute episode, culled from the hours of cherry-chatter with which we filled their audio recording device, Rich and Dan found themselves with a lump of excess material. Believing there were sufficient good-sounds to produce another 30 minute podcast, they set to.

Our great thanks to them, for this is what they made:

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doon we sung

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

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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:

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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.