Name: Bonaparte’s retreat by trad lads aughrim
Duration: 3 min 3 s
Description: Concertina,mandolin and guitar,live matched pair stereo mic sample .

This is why god made the re-post! So good to hear you all, and I hope you are well, Mart! Music like this makes me know that at some root place, our cultures and not very separated, at least long ago. I fear we here have drifted somesince then.

those countermelodies on the mandolin work great!

Y'all can come over to my living room any time.

Beauty Mart n Mando Bud ...class action! Lovely tune! 

Just for fun. 

I shared a rehearsal space in the basement of Westbeth Artist Housing (please see the photo) in the late 70’s. This music has to do with my dream-memory of the place.

The basement was labyrinthine. Until a few years ago, I still had recurring dreams of that environment. It was constructed of grey painted cinder block or some such stony material. There were many bands in many rooms down there, and as you walked the halls you’d hear all the musics leaking out from under steel doors in cacophony. Often you’d hear the band in the next cell right through your own stone wall as you were playing. That made it hard to record in there. We did it anyway. 

The sonic qualities of this recording remind me of those hallways as do some of the somewhat antiquated guitar moves. And by the way, I love antiquated guitar moves!

Westbeth Catacombs

rotten weather   rollin’ in

we’ll go walkin’ anyway

‘gainst the wind


get your go-bag ready
load the car up


did you hear it?  distant roar

keep your ear down to the ground

check the score


get your hard hat ready
fill those bottles up


i can’t remember
were you there?
your fingers running
through my hair


let them come now  let them try

beating down the beautiful

of our tribe


purple mountains raging
blackened skies 
constitution’s aging
battle cry 

high angels  hiding

my country  dying

(not too late)   (late)

let’s listen  let’s breathe 

(not too late)   (late)

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Thanks to Janine Levinson, Cheesemont Paisely-Paisely, and Wheelwright for early listening and feedback.

Rotten Weather

The Shortest Day

Hey… Hope all is well wherever you are. Happy Winter Solstice, Holidays, or whatever you may be up to. Thanks to all those who listened to the song I briefly posted then deleted yesterday. It had to go.  So I did this jam for my friend Joe, who died 8 years ago. Never got to say goodbye. He was always down on his luck, but somehow found something to laugh about. He knew I was a musician, so he'd leave phone messages with him banging on a chair like it was a drum as he laughed his ass off. He called me Wild Man. I basically just played some loud distorted slide on this, doing my own thing… with a ton of feedback. My music often gets loud and angsty when I am working through tough stuff in my life. So this is mostly cathartic noise. I really didn’t want to sing anything as I was pretty grumpy at the time. Feel like I should redo this with more lyrics and less distortion, when I am in a better mood. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

Joe.......

This is an old song that was orginally called 'Flowers in Your Head'  begun in the late 70s by my dad and his friend. He completed it in the 90s and recorded it with a local band (we can't fully remember it). Having not come up with much myself lately,  I was inspired again when remembering how much I liked this, so I re-wrote it again with some different words,  and probably ruined it. 
Melody by Rob Benson (Verse, Chorus) and The Cobbled Moth (Middle 8, or whatever its called). Lyrics by The Cobbled Moth, and Hoppo (who wrote the first verse and part of second).

Cooler is slang for jail. The Song of Songs is worth a study. Beno of LCR FM is in there and the Azerbaijan link. 

Phone recording 24.12.24. 

When I'm feeling lonely and my life is dead and I feel so useless that my face is red 
And I know I can't get away 
The cooler's in my head 
The coolers in my head, the cooler's in my head no no no no oh
Well I turn the radio way down low DJ D says not to go
Back to Stockholm yeah I'm alone just like they said 
The coolers in my head, cooler in my head no no no no oh
You're locked up in a teacup
Diagnoses all wrong 
Bad domain, rage in vain
For lost Song of Songs
Even though you fled
The coolers in your head cooler in your head wo oh oh oh
Where we met was Persia but the north turned red, later left turned right
The same families led 
And I know I can't get away the coolers in my head 
The coolers in my head, cooler in my head No no no no oh 
Cooler in my head, Cooler in my head oh oh oh 




The Cooler's in my Head (collaboration)

Recent acoustic ballad with added brushes, bass and electric guitars.

The Waterfall

Dean Town (Vulfpeck Cover)

A song written on hearing about the death of a friend of my brother, some years ago. Davey Adams was county Librarian for Angus until 1990's. A keen cartographer.

Concerning Davey Adams

This marks the third collaboration between myself and my good friend across the Atlantic, the talented US-based guitarist @jonathan_beckenstein. For this track, we decided to strip things back and focus purely on the guitar — no vocals, no production tricks, just two instruments speaking to one another across time zones and continents.

It’s a transatlantic dialogue in sound: layered, responsive, and full of nuance. We’ve aimed to capture something raw and intimate — moments of quiet tension, moments of lift — built from the simple joy of playing.

We hope you enjoy what we’ve crafted together. It’s always a pleasure to create with Jonathan, and this one feels especially close to the heart.

Bonaparte’s retreat

trad lads aughrim

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