Well, I couldn't possibly say whether this post is a reflection on esteemed turkeyfest Thanksgiving, normally featured at this time of year, or not, being no celebrant, turkey being next month for us over here in Blighty, and, anyway, aren't you celebrating your freedom from "us"? (Which begs the question as to whether, in exasperation over the Greenland snub, your guy elects to take up our tousle-headed lookalike leader's offer to flog us off, or our health, lock, stock and barrel. Give or take an election in a fortnight, or two of your weeks, which ever is shorter.)
Drunk By Noon
So, the Handsome Family, or Mr and Mrs Sparks as they are known to friends, a little known institution until a recent stroke of luck, courtesy the first series of 'True Detective', launched into every living room in the land with the song that opens each episode. In these days of streaming, downloads, legal and otherwise, and youtubetomp3 software, money in music biz land is tight, the only real resource being touring, with then the merch table as profitable as the tickets. But you need money to tour too. Luckily, although they may dislike the concept and deny the vanity, the Handsome Family are cheap, basically husband and wife Rennie and Brett, she on bass, banjo and lyrics, he on guitar, keys and tunes. Both sing, but it is Brett's basso profound that is their main calling card. Over about a quarter century they have built an enviable body of work, with 11 albums, plus compilations, built on the back of solid touring, in the US and overseas. I first caught them back in about 2004, when they were part of a rolling roadshow, with and organised by venerable agitprop UK folkies Oysterband. The bleak mix of dark country and murder ballad that they revel in had me hooked.
When the Helicopter Comes
Always sort of a hidden gem, a secret passion, it must have been a huge boost to their profile and, I hope, to their income, to have the kudos of a boxset bonanza. (Here is an interesting article about the economics of such.)
Far From Any Road
Above is the song in question, but go search the back catalogue, there are myriad equivalent gems. As to 'Drunk By Noon', Rennie's lyrics are broadly unhelpful in interpretation of the absolute meaning or circumstance, but, if you are having the family over, and need to be, be my guest. To some decent music, of course......
I suppose I may be the exception to the rest of the blogging parade here in that I don't know any New York girls. Girls from York, sure, one or two, yet how is it that this most english of songs relates to the women across the pond? To answer this question I consulted all my usual sources of education and edification, aka Google, and the fabulously entitled Shantypedia was the best I could find. (As a swift digression, don't you just love how any manual of information nowadays is a hyphen-pedia, and every crisis a hyphengate-gate? If there were a massive fallout between Jimmy Wales and his team, would it be pedia-gate? Actually, probably Wiki-gate, but anyway.......) So, moving on, we establish it is a sea-shanty, a song sung by jolly jack tars as they avasted landlubbers ahoy, or, more likely, suffered in the bowels of an unforgiving galleon, gnawing on rancid ship's biscuit. In another twist of fate, such songs of self-encouragement to lighten the curse of a sailor's life are now sung by choirs of earnest townsfolk in striped pullovers, a glee club for the vocally seasick. But, again trying to stick to the point, has this song ever been sung in an american tradition or do the US maritime corps sing of Old York girls? In the absence of me providing you with an answer, can any of my reader supply the answer?
Let's have a version:
I hope you stuck with that, if only to read the lyrics, as it saves me cutting and pasting elsewhere, itself no mean challenge, as, similar to most songs in any folk tradition, there are as many versions as, um, versions. I accept it hasn't aged well, as in from 1975 to the present, rather than the 200 odd years of the song being known, but, back then, this toothsome band were almost quite the big thing in one of the regular sightings of a predicted folk music revival, vying with the better known Fairport Convention to be at the forefront. (And, actually, still are, as seems compulsory for all bands of that decade. 'Commoner's Crown', the LP from which it came was their big budget breaker, or would be breaker, reaching 21 in the album chart.) The song is actually far from typical of their style, perhaps trying a introduce a levity into their otherwise very serious and strait-laced fusion of traditional folk with electric rock instrumentation, and features no less than Peter Sellers on ukelele and vocal asides. Again, hard to believe now, but he was the only uke player anyone could think of at the time. No such shortage now, eh, and more's the pity.
Fast forward to 1989 and it is (the) Oysterband, featured here by august sometime colleague Boyhowdy in 2008, who are having jolly japes with the tune. I like to think it has a little more muscle than Steeleye, but it is still a fairly overt bid for crossover commercialism. Failed, of course, but still, to this day, a staple of their live show, they too still plugging away valiantly.
As a bit of a diversion, even if not answering the question of my first paragraph, with Finbar Furey being irish through and through, but, for the purpose of its place in Martin Scorsese's 2003 film, 'The Gangs of New York', this is defined as close an imagining of how the native New Yorkers of 1863 caroused. (Come to think of it, most native New Yorkers of 1863 were probably irish through and through too.) I guess you had to be there?
My final offering is from only just recently defunct folk big band Bellowhead, darlings of the last predicted folk revival. Somehow this grabs bits from all the 3 earlier examples, filtering them through a venn diagram of weird versus trad, with a side order of shake vigorously.
So, me Santys, New York girls or Tarrytown men, can YOU dance the polka?
Steeleye, Bellowhead I can point you to, but for Oysterband get this, even if the song isn't included, and for Finbar, get the film.
"there lived a lady in Scotland o my love, o my love
there lived a lady in Scotland o my love so early
there lived a lady in Scotland
she's fallen in love with an Englishman bonnie Susie Clelland's to be married in Dundee"
And there you were, thinking that fireworks were clearly as part of the marriage nuptials as they are now.
Sadly I can not reveal that the above story ended well. In this week after a United (!) Kingdom general election, wherein 56 of 59 available seats in Scotland went to the would-be separatist Scottish National Party, perhaps it is no surprise that an Anglo-Scottish liason could or should end in tears. Based on a traditional folk song, this was a highpoint of 1990s "Freedom and Rain", a groundbreaking album bringing together progressive folk-rockers, Oysterband, with the doyenne of a more austere and frosty folk tradition, June Tabor. I have mentioned the former before, but Ms Tabor might need some introduction. Lauded by Elvis Costello: "If you can't appreciate June Tabor, you should just stop listening to music," she has proven herself to be a potent and original force within the traditional folk movement of the UK. Stirred into action by hearing the work of Anne Briggs (herself worthy of greater recognition and a piece on this site) in 1965, she has been an active and acclaimed singer now for 40 years, with 12 solo recordings, and many a collaboration, gradually introducing a chamber jazz sensibility into her interpretations. Her style has seemed sometimes a little severe, with a stark beauty, so it was a refreshing surprise to see her letting down her hair with the Oysterband, to produce, for each of them, their best-selling record, a trick later repeated again, 21 years later, with "Ragged Kingdom," folk album of the year in 2011, as judged by UK World Music magazine FROOTS (originally Folk Roots).
I love this song, the combination between the churning beat, evoking horseback, and the clinical vocal, underpinned by cello and violin, easily surpassing an earlier version by the band alone, on 1985's "Liberty Hall," when they were a very different proposition, yet to introduce the sin of drums, shock, horror, echoes of Dylan in 66, to their traditional canon. (Unfortunately I can't find this on YouTube.) But, as the story progresses, so too does the chorus, as it becomes clear that maybe the arrangements may yet be subject a hotter outcome than originally anticipated.....
"there lived a lady in Scotland o my love, o my love
there lived a lady in Scotland o my love so early
there lived a lady in Scotland
she's fallen in love with an Englishman bonnie Susie Clelland's to be buried in Dundee"
Lest all this tragedy has spoilt your day, let me cheer you up with a perhaps more typical wedding, this time successful, at least on the day. Again this is Oysterband, and it reminds me of both of mine:
The original recording of this tune from American folksinger Si Khan drips with social justice and the sweat of the fieldhand. But in the hands of British folk superstars June Tabor and the punk-slash-tradfolk combo Oyster Band, who came together in 1990 for the fine collaborative effort Freedom and Rain, the tune takes on a traditional UK folk rock vibe, upbeat and driven.
The conceit seems anomalous, at first - what could a British folk tradition know of the desperation of the Southern-bred dust field farmer? That the song works is a testament to the successful tradition of historical distance between the pastoral, pre-technological lyrics and the modern electrified bass, guitar, and drums that frames the British folk rock genre. Seems the combination of old world and new can just as easily transcend space as time. And so goes a bone-dry Mississippi summer, far, far from its native fields.
As long as sea-faring cultures have existed, boats and the sea have long been portrayed as both livelihood and life-stealer in our cultural narratives of love and loss; if the predominance of tempted lass tales among traditional folksong are any indicator, the long voyages which separated mate from mate were, indeed, once the biggest scapegoat for temptation an entire community could imagine, more even than beauty or fame.
Here, then, folksong as morality play: a lass responds to a propositioner (why do you roam?) by telling of her long lost love, for whom she waits, and how she wanders distracted with half a ring while the other half lies surely below the deeps; he responds by assuring her she will get over it eventually, but she will have none of it; finally, he reveals himself as her lost William, his proof the other half of the ring in question. Nothing subtle here: they marry, and the moral of the story is spelled out pretty baldly in the final verse as "so maids be loyal when your love's at sea".
You'd expect that, as a product of oral tradition, there would be plenty of different versions of this song out there in the wild. But according to the Digital Tradition Folk Music Database, the song is remarkable in that, while it has been collected from oral tradition hundreds of times throughout the UK and Ireland,
... all versions are virtually the same and can be traced back to one broadside printed in early 19th century. Therefore this song is sometimes cited as a proof for the damaging influence of the broadside on the variety of oral tradition.
Sure enough, this typical "broken token" English ballad has been recorded several essentially interchangeable times in recent history, predominantly by artists such as Christy Moore, Steeleye Span and others from the mid-seventies UK folk rock scene. Brit folk singer June Tabor and folk renegades Oyster Band both come from that tradition, but listening to this take on the song from their 1990 collaborative album Freedom and Rain, it's hard to believe that either of them were ever considered folk -- to me, this is pure upbeat post-Pogues post-punk mid-grunge-era rock, fiddle be damned, and its a surprisingly good fit for the lyric. My, how genre labels change, over time, even as song versions crystallize and turn to stone.
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