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)

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

Loch Ness By Steam

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"?

Several SoundClouders have remarked on the hurdy-gurdy. My own passion for it started in the 1990s when I found myself in a Breton village on the day of their hurdy-gurdy festival. We marched up and down through that village behind a band of 30 or 40 hurdy-gurdy players, with the odd Breton bagpiper and bombarde-player chipping in, as the mood took them. Somewhere, I still have my field recordings of the day. The tunes were simple and very catchy.

Home Has The Brightest Stars

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

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

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

The English saying "We're all going to Hell in a hand-cart" just about describes my mood when I wrote "Descent". It was one of those weeks in northern hemisphere Spring 2024 when there was absolutely no good news coming in from anywhere on the planet.

I trust that things will get better!

Descent

A traditional English song that describes the process of making beer. There are myriad versions with different words and different tunes.

Since recording this, I realised that, relying only on my imperfect memory, I'd omitted two verses: (1) The Mashing Tub (2) The Drying Kiln. Please use your imaginations for the gory outcomes of the missing lines... only then can you have your beer.

Down the hatch!

John Barleycorn

¡Esta conga no es una anguila! 

Believe me; I should know. We've been sharing a room for weeks!

This Conga Ain't No Eel

Rozabella

Follow That Tuk-tuk!

This track starts with a sample of the local village church bell, which I recorded for use in the soundtrack of a cartoon film that celebrated 900 years of village history.

I also recorded a full peal of the bells, but it was marred by high-revving motorcycles at the nearby crossroads. The full peal was intended to celebrate an important historical village wedding. The sample could not be used in a scene that was set before the internal combustion engine was invented!

The cartoon project is now defunct but this track attempts to assert joy, peace and tranquility in defiance of the modern noise of the crossroads. That was definitely a recurring theme of the film; village propaganda, really!

In my imagination, for musical purposes, the church is transformed into a tiny chapel in the woods.

Woodland Wedding

How We Bullfrogs Go About

The Crumbling Of The Walls

Snow After The Raid

The Curls Of My Sweet Are All The Gold In Kilkenny

And it's true m'lads, I'd be livin' there still,
If my Great Granda' had only signed his will!

In The Halls Of My Ancestors

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

From "Ode To A Nightingale" (John Keats, 1795—1821)

Amid The Alien Corn

This song came to me from Tommy Johnson (1896 - 1956) via Canned Heat. I pulled it about a bit, singing it in British clubs and bars for a couple of decades.

Big Road Blues

Swifts On My Street

This is a windlass shanty (Text from "Songs of the American Sailormen" (1924) by Joanna C. Colcord).

The tune is attributed to Liam Milner in the collection "A Bonnie Bunch Of Roses" (1983)
by Dan Milner and Paul Kaplan.

It's a fine example of a work song exposing a bit of social history.

William Tapscott and his brother James were brokers for at least two packet ship companies
and would arrange passage across the Atlantic Ocean from Liverpool to New York.
 
Regrettably, their advertising was often fraudulent and overstated the quality and size of the ships. The poor emigrants were well and truly ripped off. On board the ships, 
the food and accommodation were inferior.

"Clarence Dock" in Liverpool opened in 1830. It received many ferry passengers from Ireland 
during the Potato Famine, when Liverpool Atlantic packet ship sailings were more frequent 
than those from Ireland.

"Waterloo Dock" opened in 1834. It was the major exit point from England for the NY-bound. 

"Castle Garden", in the last verse, refers to Castle Clinton in lower Manhattan (The Battery),
which was the forerunner (until 1892) of Ellis Island for receiving new immigrants to the
United States.

Tapscott

Based on a true story...

Did you ever have a young, clean and handsome nephew in grievous need of a wife? This is for all such fellow uncles and aunts, wherever you may be.

In putting together this track, I had in mind numerous tales in literature of match-makers, amateur and professional, working with the lonely farmers of rural Ireland.

O, Let Him Find A Sweet Colleen!

This piece was inspired by a particular Shakespeare sonnet.

                      Sonnet 106
          
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Descriptions Of The Fairest Wights

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

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

This is for late night listening...

As a child, I was afflicted with inhuman amounts of school homework. I had to write several essays and compositions every week and the fashioning of these went on late into the night, until my little ears were burning with tiredness.  It was always tempting to finish an adventurous and dramatic composition with the ultimate cop-out: "Then I woke up..."

But I never did, because I recognised the cliché even at the age of 12. I hope I can avoid clichés evermore. All of my future adventures will continue to have proper logical endings, I hope. However, I do sleep a lot these days... perchance to dream?

Dedication: This song is dedicated to my good friend, the late Nigel Dean (pictured here playing a memorable and brilliant Caliban in 1996).

Then I Woke Up

@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!

Briny iByrn

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks