“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

“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

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

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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