Of Many Hands 2005 ~ ADA Recordings ADA106CD
Tracklist: | |||
---|---|---|---|
01 | The Girl I Left Behind Me | 2:20 | |
02 | One Night As I Lay On My Bed | 3:42 | One Night As I Lay On My Bed |
03 | Going To The West | 3:18 | |
04 | The Streams Of Lovely Nancy | 4:02 | |
05 | The Leaving Of Liverpool | 5:37 | |
06 | The Mountain Streams Where The Moorcocks Crow | 5:09 | |
07 | Barbry Allen | 5:41 | Barbry Allen |
08 | Spencer The Rover | 3:57 | |
09 | Loving Hanna | 5:03 | |
10 | Captain Ward | 3:33 | |
11 | New York Gals | 2:47 | |
12 | Willow Creek | 3:42 |
All tracks trad. except
Track 12 words Steve Tilston, music Chris Parkinson
Steve Tilston, vocals, acoustic guitar;
Chris Parkinson, harmonica [1, 8, 11], accordion [3-5, 7, 9];
Martin Simpson, slide guitar [3, 5, 7];
Nancy Kerr, fiddle [1-2, 7-8], viola [5, 9];
James Fagan, piano [2], bouzouki [7, 9];
Maggie Boyle, flutes [4, 6];
Scott Devine, acoustic bass [6, 9];
Mike Hockenhull, banjo [10];
His first ever traditional album looks set to speed further growing interest in one of Britain’s most skilled singer-songwriters.
The album comes with a generous sized booklet with entertaining and informative notes by Steve and Nigel Schofield about each track.
The Songs (with notes by Nigel Schofield)
As seen in films like She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, it was a regimental march for the Seventh Infantry, the Seventh Cavalry among others. To this day, it is the tune played at the annual passing out parade at West Point.
In America, the song has leapt genre boundaries to embrace folk, country, blues and bluegrass. Despite being widely recorded in the USA, it remains virtually unknown in the UK.
It is a structure of relationships, many of which are tenuous or unattainable.
Steve concludes this song with a brief quote of a variant of the song best known in its Irish form as The Holy Ground. There are a number of regional variants of this capstan shanty: the best known is Swansea Town, as recorded by Mike Waterson; others namecheck Whitby, Boston and Durham. Steve’s lines come from a Mersyside version.
Maggie Boyle’s recording appears on her album Reaching Out, on which Steve plays guitar.
Most versions of the song conclude with one of the most striking images in folkmusic – the wild and the garden rose growing in natural entanglement to form a true love’s knot.
The choice of Guy Fawkes’ Day for his departure is also seen by some as laden with significance. Certainly, it is an odd time of year to commence on one’s travels.
Freud introduced the word angst into the English language in 1908: clearly folksingers had known about it for centuries!
“But the men on board the ‘St. Denis’ fought desperately hard, And just as the ‘St. Denis’ was captured a ball struck Captain Ward Right on the forehead, and he fell without a groan, And for the death of Captain Ward the men did moan.”
Steve has added a little from “that infernal nonsense Pinafore” to the mix.