All the Original Songs

All the Trad Folk

“True love can cure it, but it’s rarer than a blue moon…”

I think I was aware when I was writing this song that I might look back on it with something of a cringe. It seems more earnest and angry than it is. It was more an exasperated shrug, based on realising I was living in a society that only seemed interested in battling unhappiness with the use of chemicals. Since writing it I’ve come to appreciate that antidepressants save lives on a daily basis, but I still feel that they’re somewhat blunt tools. Perhaps I’ve always been obsessed with the idea that there might be a magic pill that could treat the less chemical and more existential angst of simply being alive. If you find it before I do, let me know, yeah?

I Wish There Was A Pill

“Well I can’t go back to Athens, too many memories…”

This is a piece of fluff from 2009, when I was arse-deep in the online trend for oversharing. I found myself flirting with my imaginary audience, cultivating an air of mystery by drip-feeding obscure facts about myself. Eventually I found this trait of mine ridiculous enough to put into this song, in which the constant need to find some new intimate (but not too intimate) secret to reveal became ‘the big striptease’. It’s a bit weird to come back to a lyric that you wrote, and find that you used the word ‘gadzooks’ in cold blood. Then again, in those days the top of my website was emblazoned with the proclamation: ‘James Bell Central: Any More Arch And I’d Be An Aqueduct’.

The Big Striptease

“But his own disciple shall wound him worst of all…”

I have a complicated relationship with Rudyard Kipling, which I might bore you with some other time. But I believe this poem, which accompanies Kipling’s story The Church that was at Antioch, from the 1932 book Limits And Renewals, perfectly and succinctly captures why it is that religions get corrupted. There’s an element of doom to it, as though it doesn’t matter how well intentioned the founder of a religion may be. And here is a life tip: if you want to brainwash billions of people, don’t start a religion. Find a religion where the founder has just died. And become the chief disciple.

The Disciple

“But the head got damaged, now it’s leather and red / And if you see what’s stuck on the body instead…”

The eminent Enlightenment philosopher Jeremy Bentham let it be known that he wanted to be mummified after he died. He wanted his body to be publicly dissected so he could still be of service to medical science (only criminals were dissected at that time). And then he wanted to be turned into a mummy, and put in a display case for posterity (which can now be seen at University College London). But something went wrong with the process, and his head didn’t mummify properly. And something about that head fascinated me. I thought “There’s a head with a story…”

Jeremy Bentham's Head

“Now’s as good a time as any, so here goes…”

The first song I ever wrote, recorded and released under my own name. It’s about those moments in life that leave you fundamentally altered. Specifically it’s about the time I got a phone call from the hospital in the middle of the night to say that my mother was expected to pass away within hours. And it’s about the strange melancholy libration of having all of your ambitions and aspirations taken away from you, and for once knowing that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, doing exactly what you’re supposed to do.

Something's Changed

“Tonight, I took a nagging ache / And made the ache much worse…”

In the early days of social media (this song was begun in 2006) I was struck, quite out of the blue, with an uncontrollable urge to find out what happened to a particular girl who I was in love with when I was a kid. Even though Facebook-stalking wasn’t really acknowledged thing at that stage, I still heard myself saying ‘no good will come of this’ again and again. You can imagine how badly it ended. Except that it didn’t: I found out that she was getting married in a few months, and suddenly I felt a deep sense of relief, as if I didn’t have to worry about this anymore. And the sheer surprise of that outcome inspired this song. Now, I’m not going to encourage you all to look up old flames on social media, but I will say that sometimes it’s a relief to know that a door that has felt like it’s frustratingly ajar is now comfortably closed.

Opening A Wound

“Why not email me dates that you’re in?”

This was a song inspired by an office flirtation. When I was just at the point where I was getting over my last breakup. My approach to office flirtations has always been strictly adhering to the “Don’t be that guy” school. You know, that guy. That said, I’m not against office romances, per se. I believe they can work. My last one did. (And reader, I married her.)

We Should Talk About Money

“And I may not possess their angelical powers …”

I wrote this song about someone (who shall remain nameless) whose life seemed to be going to shit at the time, but whom I felt powerless to help. The good news is that they managed to get it together and are now doing just fine. That happy ending was sadly not granted to the person I chose as the central metaphor for this song. Someone whom Mark Twain described as “by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.” Although, that said, I suppose it depends on whether you believe in an afterlife, and therefore what constitutes an ‘ending’.

Song For A Lost Cause

“And the larks, they sang melodious…”

The first verse (which is also the last) is well known from a song ‘Pleasant & Delightful’, often sung at folk sessions. Many years ago I had an idea for writing a new song based on it, just taking the first verse. Because that made it essentially a different song, I gave it a different title (although it is sometimes known and ‘Dawning Of The Day’). And a bit of context: when sung in folk sessions there’s always someone who sings ‘And the larks they played melodeons…’ (the melodeon being a button accordion frequently used in Morris bands).

The Dawning Of The Day

“She cries forsooth let go…”

This song is usually better known as ‘I Care Not For These Ladies’, and was written by the composer Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620). There was a brief period, around the time of Shakespeare, when English composers like John Dowland, Philip Rosseter and Thomas Campion produced these brilliant lute songs, usually about love and frequently melancholy, that remind me so much of the modern singer / songwriters. And this song particularly sounded to me like it would really fit a much more modern arrangement. (Incidentally, I changed the line ‘we must give golden showers’ to ‘we must give gifts in showers’ because, to me at least, ‘golden showers’ are associated with urolagnia, and I didn’t want to giggle every time I sang it.)

--A note on Thomas Campion and consent--

When I adapted this song in 2012/13 I was aware it was potentially problematic. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt, for a number of reasons. The chorus is ‘When we court and kiss she cries “forsooth let go”, but when we go where comfort sits she never will say no’. I gave that the benefit of the doubt because the song seemed to me to be clearly fictional, and in the style of romantic pastoralism that was popular at the time. And I assumed that this guy wouldn’t make up a scenario where his romantic interest didn’t actually want his advances. And therefore this surely was a celebration of a down-to-earth country girl who was genuinely in love with the singer of the song, but wanted to put on a show of ‘propriety’ in public. Right? I was also distracted by the fact that I thought it had a great melody, and finding traditional music to adapt can be a tedious task. For every moderately good tune I find, there are at least 20 that don’t make the grade.

But since adapting this song, I’ve listened to quite a bit more from its composer, Thomas Campion. And I think I called it wrong. This was a guy who clearly enjoyed the idea of romantic scenarios where consent is ambiguous at best, and it’s a theme that recurs in a lot of his songs. (It Fell On A Soomer’s Day being just one example.) Does this matter, in a song whose author died centuries ago? Well, if you’re performing it as ‘traditional music’ and thus bringing it into a sense of cultural tradition, then yes, it does. This is some nasty shit right here. This kind of deliberate ambiguity is what makes sexual predators powerful: they use it to confuse and disorientate, and that’s part of what gets them off. And that’s something that as a society we’re currently trying to stamp out, rather than celebrate.

Will I keep performing this song? Yes. I don’t believe in censoring every song with objectionable content. But I do believe in making it clear that I find it objectionable. And I’m working on another version, which captures in the music this sinister predator aspect that I should have picked up on the first time around.

JB (November 2017)

Amarillis

“We can buy up the world, so I’m told, sir / Yet still there’s an increase of crime.”

As far as I can tell this is a Victorian music hall song. I found the words in a broadside library, and tracked down the tune from an American version – but it was in a major key (perhaps a song this angry needed jolly music to make it palatable to a music hall audience, I don’t know) so I shifted it into the minor, because that seemed more in keeping with the words; although I admit that it’s perhaps less authentic to the spirt of music hall. Now, maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place, but I spent a long time looking for old English protest songs in the vein of the American twentieth century folk singers, and I simply can’t find them anywhere. There are songs of protest, but they’re not these general calls to arms; they’re nearly always specific, about a specific political issue. Here the song’s author lets rip with both barrels at the greed and hypocrisy of ‘John Bull’, the caricature of the typical English gent that proved so popular in Victorian magazines like Punch. I personally think that there would be much better ways of helping those in need than simply ‘scattering gold’ (which, in a crime-ridden society, would probably go straight to the ‘rogues on the stool’), but then, as now, I think the basic diagnosis is fairly accurate.

Can You Wonder At Crime

I am indebted to Tim Howes and Helen Rose for their contributions to this set of two my favourite trad English tunes. Helen plays the fiddle parts, and Tim plays the accordion. And although they’re both great technical players, I was really keen that on this track they roughed it up a bit. I have many fantastic records by many fantastically gifted trad instrumentalists, and… well, I didn’t feel the need to add to their number, put it that way. On this I was hoping to capture something closer to the spirit of the Bastard English Session. That sense that, at any moment, someone might bust out Living On A Prayer.

Ironlegs & The High Caul Cap

“Ah! why escaped I from the murdering shot?”

I’m not one of those trad singers that revels in songs about everyone being miserable and then dying a horrific death. I found this fairly sentimental broadside about a soldier returning from the war and finding that his wife doesn’t welcome him. Has she stopped caring? Has she found someone else? No. She still loves him. She just didn’t recognise him under his gigantic beard. They hug. They kiss. It’s a happy ending. And I just thought it was rather sweet. Nothing more complicated than that, really. 

The tune is ‘Burton Ale’. Which is a lovely tune (that took a little bit of bending in places, but it fitted in the end) that I can’t find any reference to, except on a gloriously bonkers album of traditional English tunes by James Last called ‘Last of Old England’, which I highly recommend to anyone who is as unhinged as I am.

Allen & Sally

“From a view to a kill in the morning…”

A traditional song that was historically very popular, about a real life figure: a famous huntsman who lived in Cumberland (now Cumbria) around 1800. The song gave its name both to the BBC Radio 1 DJ (whose real name was John Ravenscroft) and to a James Bond short story by Ian Fleming called ‘From A View To A Kill’. Written in the Cumberland dialect, it’s usually sung as ‘D’ye ken John Peel…’, but that dialect didn’t feel right for me to sing in, so I artistic-licensed it. This also features a tune called ‘Alexandra Park’ (which I got from Nick Barber’s bumper book of English tunes) and another called ‘Red House’, which seems to think it’s ‘Greensleeves’ but clearly isn’t.

John Peel

“I have a medicine will quickly cure that disease…”

I wanted to do one song, just one song, that demonstrated just how doggone long those old English Broadside ballads could be. This one is 39 – count them, thirty nine – verses, and I’m glad I did it and I’m never ever going to do it again. The story is completely insane, but I’ll do my best to summarise it. A young steward falls for the daughter of a lord, and writes her a love letter, which she scornfully rejects. But he then bumps into a doctor, who offers him an ingenious plan, involving the four key devices that any young buck in that era must employ in order to win lady fair – namely: deception, cross-dressing, stalking and faking your own death. Please do not, under any circumstances, try this at home.

The New Way To Make Love

“And for my offence I shall die…”

I stumbled on this one almost by accident. I was looking at another broadside song which said it was to the tune of ‘And for my offence I shall die’, and I thought that sounded pretty cool, and wondered if there were any words for it. After a bit of hunting, I found ‘William Grismond’s Downfall’. I suspect this is also based on a real event, judging by the song’s brief preface: “A Lamentable Murther by him committed at Lainterdine, in the country of Hereford, the 12 of March 1650. with his woeful Lamentation.”

William Grismond's Downfall

“Oh but weirdos I fear they will be…”

A very well-known song with many variants. In Popular Music of the Olden Time by W. Chappell it’s described as a “fragment of an old sea song, contributed by Mr. Charles Sloman in 1840.” The song seems to suggest that mermaids were believed to have a sort of ‘Flying Dutchman’ effect: that simply to set eyes on them meant certain death. How the composer then managed to write the song after their own death is a bit of a mystery, but quite a common one in traditional songs. Chappell also specified this one should be performed “Right jovially, and moderately fast.” I did my best.

The Mermaid

Three tunes from the Morris dancing world, in a tuneset loosely inspired by May Day in Oxford that I had taken to call “First of May, Up at Four and off to Old Molly Oxford”. I first heard ‘The First of May’ performed by Oxford folk band Magpie Lane. It features on their album ‘The Oxford Ramble’ – one of my favourite albums. As does ‘Old Molly Oxford’ come to think of it, although I think that one I had heard before, as it often crops up in folk sessions and Morris dance-outs. The middle tune, ‘Four Up’, I had assumed was traditional because the Morris side that I play for often do it, but it turns out it was written by Barry Goodman (of the Outside Capering Crew, amongst many other things), and you can hear his version on the ‘Grandson of Morris On’ album.

The First Of May, Four Up & Old Molly Oxford

“It’s of a young lady both valiant and gay / Who went out a robbing upon the highway…”

I found this in the Bodleian Library archives, under the title ‘The Female Robber’. This seemed a little unspecific, and so I retitled it ‘Robbing On The Highway’. It has a preface which says “Written on Miss Hughes, a Gentlewoman of Bath, who robbed Mr Witcomb of the Boar’s head in Bristol, of Two hundred Guinea Bills, Notes, and a Twenty-pound Bank of England.” It’s almost certainly a contemporary account of a true story. I cut the verse at the end in which she married the judge in her court case, which is a shame, but dammit it’s already 10 verses long.

Joy & Jealousy

Robbing On The Highway

Recorded live at the Half Moon pub in St Clements, Oxford on Saturday, 29 March 2014.

Jack The Reanimator - Jessica Law

A tale of religious devotion, maternal love and eaten offspring.  Far away on a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks.  I understand it’s based on a true story.

This song has that unmistakeable feel to me of Music Hall song.

Jamie Huddlestone, who plays melodeon on this track, used to entertain us in rehearsals with tales of how he’d heard people sing this at sessions by dragging out the line “oh for the life on the roooooooooooooooooo…lling sea” for as long as they possibly could.  After which he would politely applaud.  And then punch them in the face.

Don’t make fun of mermaids, kids.

The Keeper of the Eddystone Light

Before there was The Half Moon All Stars, there was The Reverenzas (named after a particularly fancy dance step): a three-piece with myself on guitar, Henry Webster on fiddle and first Jamie Huddlestone and later Sandy Shallis on melodeon.

‘How We Roll’ wasn’t quite a professional album - more a polished demo. I’m still rather proud of it. The Spiers & Boden influence is pretty apparent, of course (which was probably more my doing than anybody’s).

The rather strange title comes from my habit of making sentences out of the various tunes that appear in the track: first Bear Dance, and then Bonny Kate.

Photo by 8 Kome (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Bear Dance with Bonny Kate

Folk singer, songwriter, producer & aspiring Tim Burton character. Never looked for a record deal, and never will. (They're right for plenty of musicians – just not me.)

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