There is a theme in traditional music where we sing about betrayed women who are done with love. A wonderful example is Eliza Carthy singing ‘Awake, Awake’ which is also linked to songs like Drowsy Sleeper and Silver Dagger. The woman is most often a victim, forlorn and lost in the song. So in this […]
Category: Songs
This is a song written with my good friend Tom Shakespeare (who provided the lyrics). I case of doubt, the ‘sails’ in question are the sails of Sydney Opera House.
This song came out of a trip to Sligo where we enjoyed cycling, writing, foraging and playing music. It is an imagined relationship set in a real place.
The origins of this song go back to my college days when I tried to write a song with a friend of mine, Adrian Matthews. It lay dormant for many years until I thought it might be a song about William Blake. There are various references to Blake (who saw angels in Peckham Rye) still […]
One new year’s eve, while walking the Fife coastal path, we came across a cave. On the cave wall was a beautiful mural of the heavens. Under it there were two names and two dates, presumably marking the beginning and the end of their relationship. And next to this were the words ‘nothing lasts, but […]
Richard Thompson has a back catalogue of wondrous songs and among the finest must be Beeswing. The song is inspired by Anne Briggs, a Nottingham-born folk singer who retreated from the the limelight, apparently uninterested in anything resembling fame in the folk world. In my response to Beeswing, with Anna Ling on guitar and backing […]
This song was encouraged by the writing or Rainer Maria Rilke and you may pick up echoes of his writing in the lyrics. We all spend time in the dark hours of our being – more or less comfortably. And many of us have carelessly lost love, which is what this song is about. Anna […]
This is a song for someone I never met. Scott Hutchison played in the great Scottish band Frightened Rabbit and my song is a response to their song ‘Swim until you can’t see land’. It may be about having the courage to be the person you were meant to be. Anna Ling on guitar and […]