When I Get The Blues I Get Me A Rocking Chair...

Canned Heat really caught my attention with this. I was completely unprepared for "On The Road Again". Previously to its release in 1968, I'd erroneously classified "The Blues" as slow and dreary stuff, done by trad jazz bands. 

"On The Road Again" was an education for me: "Vamos a ver!" That should be my motto.

"On The Road Again" achieved No. 8 in the UK Hit Parade and, thank goodness, that was enough to justify several TV appearances, which got me hooked on blues and more off-the-radar music for a whole lifetime.

I've done something a bit free and new with the song, which I hope you will forgive; maybe like? 

Please let me know. I thrive on your comments.

On The Road Again (after Canned Heat)

This song is John Mayall's tribute to a blues history giant living in Hollywood's Laurel Canyon many years ago. Bob Hite had an enormous collection of 78rpm blues artists "goin' back through the years, hear any record you choose".

I've been singing this song in public for many years without knowing Bob Hite (The Bear) "rolled" his last in 1981. Mea culpa.

The repertoire of Canned Heat and John Mayall has been a constant reference throughout my musical life.

The Bear (John Mayall cover)

I'm back in the U.S. Civil War again. A relentless diet of Western films has hopelessly romanticized this atrociously violent period for me.

The presence of snow dictates who we see in this sequence, as follows:

Picture a troop of Southern boys trudging though a wintry forest in the North. Importantly, because they were born in The South, these young'uns have never seen snow before! Some of them can hear banjo music in their heads, keeping time with their steps. No Yankees spotted yet, but they could be just around the corner.

They're young and they intend to stay alive...

The Way Through The Woods

A descriptive track commemorating a trip steaming along the Caledonian Canal, which crosses the world-famous Loch Ness.

Loch Ness By Steam

In the novel "The Vanished Birds" by Simon Jimenez, the captain has to re-assert her authority after somebody deliberately and secretly breaks the flute from Macaw. She is righteously furious with her crew.

I've written a tune for the flute from Macaw. It's here on Soundcloud. Enjoy!

My Ship, My Rules

A friend sent me a recording of some rapidly vanishing Australian birds with a challenge to make music. This fits so neatly with my continuing obsession with the sci-fi novel "The Vanished Birds" by Simon Jimenez that I could not resist that challenge.

The Vanished Birds

I wanted to exploit the sound of one of my favourite folk instruments. The hurdy-gurdy is not heard so very often in the UK. What could be better than to use a medieval instrument for a leading-edge space opera like my essay into "The Vanished Birds"?

Home Has The Brightest Stars

There's a last time for everything and it is possible to be sentimental over an old trusted machine. I must make one last journey in the old ship before the technology revolution makes it uneconomic or, worse,  socially unacceptable.

One Last Trip In The Old Ship

This is a tune for wind band instruments. I used to play some very ragged slide trombone parts in two wind bands.

The insistent bass-line suggested a mechanical device to me. We haven't heard from the tuk-tuk since it was on the autobahn, so it reappears now in the north of England in the shadow of the famous Angel Of The North sculpture.

Brass band sounds often evoke impressions of the historic industrial UK northland to English minds.

Picture by Neural Blender, a web artificial intelligence.

Tuk-tuk In The North

This Dancefloor Was Empty Until You Showed Up

Literature is a major influence on my music.  As a boy, in the 1960s, I read cowboy novels by Zane Grey (1872 - 1939), e.g. "Riders of the Purple Sage", but no other Westerns until recently.

In April 2023, I'd just finished reading "Butcher's Crossing" by John Williams, which spurred this composition. The novel is set mainly in Colorado and has many highly visual passages. This is one of them. A young man forgets to wear his improvised buffalo-hide eye slits (1870s tech) after a huge blizzard and temporarily loses his sight. His eyes don't recover for many hours, giving rise to much internal anguish as to what his life as a totally blind man might be thereafter.

The piece uses a blues scale to give that North American feel.

Snowblind

There is no room for sloppy habits in space. They could be fatal. But then we are only human (apart from those non-humans, that is).

Image by Neural Blender, a web-based AI artist.

Things Began To Slide

This is the very first song that impressed me as a teenager in my college folk club. Two ordinary-looking male engineering students stood up, harmonized and made this song come alive and ring out. Several decades later, I have done my own version

In England in 2023, English folk music is largely scorned (in England only; there is more respect in other UK nations) and is the butt of many popular myths and jokes. Some of us persevere in this unpromising field, withstanding any mockery... (so far).

In English public houses and bars, before radio & TV entertainment kept everybody indoors from 1952 onward, everybody then alive had a party-piece (often from childhood) that could be performed in public for friends and family or in a public house.  And that there, my friends, were (in those days) the last remnants of that there English what-dya-may-callit folk music. Or thereabouts. Some of us survive.

Cheers
B iB

Martynne And Hys Manne

Between the ages of 8 and 18 years and firmly on dry land, I often sprang awake to the sound of the foghorn. 

Depending on your state of mind at these times, you could embrace fear and dread OR lie warm and still and be glad that there were grown-ups out there, wide awake and handling all the crises at sea.

From Foghorns (A Lament For Lost Shipping)

You find a big music-box in the attic. You can see that it has puppets playing instruments. You can't help but turn the key...

The Old Automaton

Following the popularity of my recording of "Martynne And Hys Manne", I present a (more recent origin) traditional song, performed a capella.

My theory is that "Young Banker" is a man who digs canals for a living.

Young Banker

Wisdom Is A Plant Of Slow Growth

It is winter here in the northern hemisphere. One day, I sat down to compose my stunning Christmas hit-song, but instead I had a vision of the crows in a snow-covered field near here, with the ancient village church visible in the distance.

The crows have been here longer than we have.

My Christmas stunner will have to wait for another year!

The Kingdom Of Crows

One of my party-pieces is to recite Robert Burns' ode "To A Haggis" from memory.  In 2024, I have publicly recited it 4 times in the course of the week that contained Thursday 25th January.

"But mark the rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread!
Clap in his waly nieve a bled; he'll mak it whistle
And legs and arms and heads will sneid
Like taps o'thristle!"

My tune is a little celebration of the Burns Night season in the UK in the 21st century.

Taps o'Thristle

This dancefloor was empty until you showed up, but there's one more thing you can do...

Dance a little closer!

Dance A Little Closer

Some tunes just drop into your head as you plod around the workaday world. This is one of them and, when Easter 2024 was approaching, I thought I'd better share the joy.

Fiesta!

The Giant And The Fairy Fiddler

Only play this track if you want to smile.

Carnival

Here I try to create some pleasant vocalised sounds.

Healing Voices

This is my sentimental tribute to the late Jack Bruce, a fine songwriter and musician.  He made the "Songs for a Tailor" album just after Cream imploded.

Theme From An Imaginary Western (Jack Bruce cover)

Atmospheric: crossing a large lake in a small boat when the weather looks a bit risky.

Crossing Lough Derg

The Beatles' "White Album" shifted me from listening solely to the "Top Ten Hits" in the "Hit Parade".  This is my homage to the track that affected me most.  George Harrison was such an original guitarist that it's hard to detect his influences.  He's certainly an influencer of me!

While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Beatles Cover)

This is for Halloween.  Never leave your old drums in the dark cellar!

The Ghost Has Found My Old  Drumkit

If you have a taste for The Blues, you may also like my collaboration with hummingbird: a song called "Don't You Ever", published more recently on Soundcloud. There's also my cover of Jimmy Rogers' "The Last Time", which is about as bluesy as I can get. Enjoy!

So Long, Fareham Town

I once owned a beautiful grey Connemara pony mare, called "Tír Dá Glas".  This pony had the sweetest temperament. She was named after a harbour on the north eastern shore of Lough Derg, now called "Terryglass". This is all in Ireland, by the way. I would live there, if I could. 

I celebrated Lough Derg in an earlier work, "Crossing Lough Derg", still available on SoundCloud. Enjoy!

Tír Dá Glas (Land of Green)

@user-561724285 hummingbird loves Americana and introduced this song to me some years ago. While working on a recording of an unplugged version and waiting for more contributions from the band, I applied some electric instruments. Imagine my joy when @user-561724285 hummingbird agreed to add some harmony vocals. Here's the resulting collaboration.

Octave mandola: hummingbird
Harmony vocal:   hummingbird
All other:              Briny iByrn

If you like this, you might also like my track "So Long, Fareham Town", also a blues, still available on Soundcloud. Enjoy!

Don't You Ever (Eric Bibb cover) ft. hummingbird

|   Flann Lies Within   |
|      Poet A.D. 736      |

On a high stone wall in County Tipperary, while standing in the street, I once saw a similar inscription. The incongruity of being buried inside a wall has stuck with me for many years and has inspired this tune to celebrate the work of the unknown poet, Flann.

I feel his poems would bring forth the goblins and dark places of Irish folklore, but also, at times, wax lyrical about the mountains and hollows.

Within Lies Flann, Poet

The Last Time (Jimmy Rogers cover)

Singer, arranger, producer and composer.

When younger, I played guitar and sang but now I hope I can do much more. My main interest today is in producing melodic (maybe electronically-enhanced) instrumental tracks. But I do still sing, whenever necessary.  

My roots are in English & Irish folk songs. In 2024, I'm regularly singing sea shanties in public venues.

Regarding life experience|: I've played in bars ("Sing something we know!"), on the street ("Look at that funny man, Mummy!") and in village halls ("When are they serving the food?") but now I embrace the peace that is only found in the studio.

Briny iByrn

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