Lafrowda photoNow released as a single on Bandcamp. (You don’t have to buy it to hear it!)
Should appear on Apple Music etc. in the next week or so.
First and probably last single from the forthcoming Swan Songs album, consisting mostly of recordings made as tryouts for a solo set with electric guitarat the Lafrowda festival in July 2023.
David Harley
The lyric is from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’ (LII), the tune is mine. I only recently realized that I hadn’t put it on any of my blogs. It’s likely to reappear shortly on an album, though.
[Backup]
Far in a western brookland
That bred me long ago
The poplars stand and tremble
By pools I used to know.
There, in the windless night-time,
The wanderer, marvelling why,
Halts on the bridge to hearken
How soft the poplars sigh.
He hears: long since forgotten
In fields where I was known,
Here I lie down in London
And turn to rest alone.
There, by the starlit fences,
The wanderer halts and hears
My soul that lingers sighing
About the glimmering weirs.
Back in the Dark Ages, I used to spend a lot of time sitting in the Refectory Lounge at what was then called the University College of North Wales, Bangor. No doubt I should have been in the library, but was likelier to be mistreating a guitar, often in the company of other guitar addicts, including David Higgen, who was better known in those days as Mex. (It must have been a student thing that no one called David should be known by their real name, since I was mostly known at that time as Bert.)
I’ve lost touch with most of the people I knew then apart from Sally Goddard (with whom I used to sing, and who visits my part of Cornwall quite regularly). I’d lost touch with Mex, too, but when I mentioned his name in a blog article, he picked up on it and contacted me, which is nice. During one of our recent exchanges, I mentioned this thing that we used to do as a rather flippant guitar duet. He didn’t remember it, but started to nag me to include it here. I don’t remember exactly how it went (or even what we called it, if we called it anything at all, and I can’t remember Mex’s riff either), but it went something like this. I suppose I ought to have another go to correct a couple of bits of slightly suspect notes and timing (but as Broonzy said, there’s no such thing as a strict 12-bar; or something like that, though I suspect that he had in mind putting in an extra bar, rather than an extra beat). I guess I should put in a second guitar part in at some time, but in the meantime…
I’m not planning on putting it on an album, but never say never.
David Higgen has a lot of very interesting stuff on YouTube.
Sally Goddard has been singing for many years with the Canada-based folk band Atlantic Union, which has put out several classy CDs.
And here’s that boogie thing. Feel free to tell me to boogie off.
Backup:
David Harley Words & Music 
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