Sat In The Mill

Stack No Stones

‘Remember For Me” is a song inspired by people I’ve met while doing musical volunteer work in a memory care facility and expresses the frustrations and hopes for those impacted by all forms of memory loss. The song features me on 12-string guitar, vocals, bass and percussion. The song also features a beautiful string arrangement and realization from Steve Andricks.

Remember for Me
If I forget the thought of you, the sparkle in your eyes
If I forget the sight of you in the dying evening light

Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
When I’m no longer, no longer anywhere

If I forget the feeling of your hand as you touch me
If I forget the warmth in your soul when you smile at me

Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
When I’m no longer, no longer anywhere

Don’t think any less of me if I forget the sound of your voice as it calls to me
If I forget smell of your hair after we’ve been walking the rain

Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
When I’m no longer anywhere
I’m no longer anywhere
When I’m no longer anywhere
I’m no longer anywhere

Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
Just remember for me and I’ll be there with you
When I’m no longer, no longer anywhere

Copyright 2024 Dan Swanson

Remember For Me

There are different kinds of love but it is romantic love, in all its guises, that is most often represented in pop songs. 'Coolest Kind of Love' is a song about a sister's love.

Coolest Kind of Love

Poolside is a song about life's inequalities of class and gender based on a scene I witnessed around a hotel pool in Crete many years ago.

Poolside

'Trying' is a song about a troublesome love from a long time ago. Moral of the tale? Sometimes 'trying' isn't enough.

Trying

i’d call you back
but i’m drunk again
i smell like smoke
and i’ve never been so broke
i’d call you back
but i’m so drunk again

and i’m sorry
for waiting 
til it all came to an end
and i’m sorry
for letting you and me down this far
and i’m sorry
that i can’t call you again

’n i don’t know
just how far you’d go
to show me your trail’s gone cold
now im
just left to soak within
’til i forget the difference
how’m i so drunk again?

and i’m sorry
for waiting 
til it all came to an end
and i’m sorry
for letting you and me down this far
and i’m sorry
i can’t call you again

in my old age
in my old age
in my old ways
in my old ways
she’s miles away
she’s miles away
she’s miles away
she’s miles away

i’m sorry
for waiting
til it all came to an end
i’m sorry
’n oh im so sorry again

Boxtrod

Drunk Again

Evergreen - Alex Tilley

Song about everything and anything TikTok is @zelahmay

Never Trust A Jabberwock

Unchained Hurricane

Alex Tilley started playing music from a young age back in his home country of England, since then has been involved in numerous projects more recently playing the upright bass in a folk duo ‘Phil & Tilley’. 
        In 2020, Alex started a solo project, this time incorporating his fender telecaster electric guitar and delay pedals to create a sound that has taken him into a new direction musically. Taking influence from artists such as John Martyn, Ben Howard, John Mayer, Pink Floyd to name but a few

This site is a mix of some of my compositions and solo guitar performances.

A triple release from Paula Wolfe, sees her work as fresh and as relevant as ever.

This summer and autumn sees a triple release from Paula Wolfe, comprising of a complete reworking of her first self-produced EP Find (Sib Records 2000), her debut album Staring (Sib Records 2003) and a remaster of her highly acclaimed second album Lemon (Sib Records 2008). 

You might well ask, why would anyone re-work their early releases? Shortly following the release of her third album ‘White Dots’ (Sib Records 2019), hailed ‘exquisite’, ‘glorious’ and ‘addictive’ (* * * * MOJO), which saw ‘The multi-hyphenate in excellent form’ (Folking.com) and compared to many of our greats (Travellers Tunes), she had her early recordings remastered with the intention that the full catalogue be re-issued before the fourth album.
However, she couldn’t access the original files. Part of that first generation of female artists who, in the late 1990s, embraced the arrival of digital recording software to find their own voices and develop their own sound, she had recorded the first two records onto disc on a digital 8 track using an early version of the software Cakewalk. Attempts to remaster from the CDs were unsuccessful, so she decided to re-record all the songs.

What then started out as a ‘straightforward’ re-recording, soon morphed into a complete reworking. Although it took far longer than envisaged, it developed into an insightful, important period of work, with Paula publishing a paper about the very creative and technical processes that have come to define her work as a self-producing singer-songwriter.

Somewhat ironically, the title track of the EP Find is actually about songwriting itself - or rather - the pull at the end of the summer to return ‘home’ to the craft. Many of the songs on those first two records, though, are stories based on her time living in Manchester in the north-west of England throughout the 1990s. An era of hardship for many, her characters often find themselves on the edges, living out their marginalisation. They also speak of her own troubled loves from that time, thus combining storytelling, a key feature of Wolfe’s later work, along with the confessional. What is striking is that these songs, based on particular events, from a particular time in a particular place, feel compellingly relevant.

An example from the EP is ‘Poolside’, a faithful account of a scene witnessed around a hotel swimming pool in Crete, where glaring inequalities are marked by two young women of a similar age, doing exactly the same thing - sunbathing - in exactly the same place but in drastically different circumstances. On one side of the pool a young female Russian sex worker is ‘selling her skin’ with a client sitting beside her ‘flicking through a porno magazine’. On the other, a young British woman is ‘reading The Times that Daddy somehow managed to find. Only 23 but she’s doing very well at the BBC’.

This sets the tone for the debut album that followed. The title track ‘Staring’ is a biting critique of the entitled sharp-elbows of the privileged, ensuring ‘a narrow-eyed determined stride past those who might be better than you’. In contrast, her depiction of the everyday lives of young people, on the other side of the track, details living out the tedium of underprivilege and poverty, drawing on her experiences at this time from her then-day job of teaching English in some of the most deprived areas of the North West.

‘Joy’ sees a disaffected joyrider trying to goad his friend into joining him on a spree, ‘what d’you mean you want something better, this is it for lads like you and me’. ‘Skinny’ presents a pale young girl ‘hanging round on the corner’, bored with her gossiping friends, living an inward life, avoiding the scary local gang and being hungry. ‘Leanne’ charts the challenges of a school day for a troubled little girl who ‘hides her head in her jumper when she’s sad’ and Oldham Street witnesses the streets, of late 1990s Manchester, turn dark and wild at chucking out time.

As dark as some of these stories are, Wolfe’s production, on the other hand is upbeat with the songs benefiting from her new string, brass and woodwind arrangements performed by a small team of local session players she recorded in her house, while she provides all the guitars, the bass (which she taught herself to play as part of the project), the synths and beats and, of course, her signature vocals.

There are songs also about love. Although romantic love, in all its guises, is most represented in pop songs, the EP includes the ‘Coolest Kind of Love’, a celebration of the love between sisters. A brighter note can be seen also on the album in ‘Wind’ where momentary blissful love is felt when watching, with her then-partner, a spectacular summer storm on a beach, feelings all the more urgent for their transitoriness, ‘you were never quite as beautiful as you are today’, she sings, ‘let me keep this feeling, just for a day.’

Having garnered widespread praise throughout her career for ‘hitting the mark on both sides of the desk’ (Fatea Magazine), this project sees Paula’s skills as composer, arranger, producer and mix engineer, in addition to those as a songwriter, musician and singer, ever evolving as a self-producing artist, demonstrating that the plaudits remain as well deserved as ever.

It’s worth noting that following those early recordings, Paula has also developed a significant side hustle as a leading academic with an international profile in music production and gender. Her award nominated book Women in the Studio (Routledge 2020), was published alongside the release of the third album and, since its publication, has become embedded in the curriculum in degree programmes worldwide, supported by guest lectures and talks from Paula at over 40 universities within the UK, Europe, Canada and the US.

This reworking project, therefore, has seen Paula developing a new area of practice research with her latest publication forming the blueprint of her new book on self-production, a practice, that she has long argued is an art form, distinct within music production, and which continues to offer creative empowerment for those artists marginalised by their gender, their colour and their class.

A singular artist and academic, Paula Wolfe continues to forge her own path, shaping the discourse that follows.

FIND (re-worked EP) out 26th July
STARING (re-worked album) out 4th October
LEMON (remaster) out 29th November

I’m Wes Bocci, or We|ai (way-lay). This is a lifelong solo project, and a diary of my musical journey. 

I grew up in the Portland area and started playing guitar in the 7th grade. After being exposed to a lot of 90s alternative music growing up, I soon discovered 1960s rock in high school. I started writing my own songs sometime around then.

I primarily write on guitar, banjo, ukulele, or piano. I also collect different types of instruments, all of which I try to incorporate into my work. 

This Soundcloud page will update periodically as I continue finishing my next album, Sunny One. Thanks for listening, and please follow me to hear more soon.

New tracks tagged #Alternativefolk