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

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 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

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 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

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

Don't be afear'd.  Keep a light heart, but always remember: "Here at Hotel Transylvania: You may freak out, but you can never leave".

Hotel Transylvania

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

@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

The Last Time (Jimmy Rogers cover)

Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is such an English institution that it's easy to forget that most of the play's characters are actually citizens of Athens. For the final scene of the play, I wanted to give Theseus and Hippolyta a Big Fat Greek Wedding in an open air theatre.

Theseus & Hippolyta Are Wed!

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

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks