I’ve been a little depressed at having to cancel a few dates this year because of ill health (including a Lafrowda fundraiser and the Weston-super-Mare Sea Shanty ad Folk Music Festival, unfortunately – shanties are not very Harley, but the event would have been fun). However, I’m very pleased to have been invited to support the rather excellent Green Diesel at the St Ives (Cornwall) Arts Club on August 9th. (And as it’s quite near to where I live, it shouldn’t be a problem healthwise this time.) Tickets (only £3!) from Eventbrite.
I’ve posted a version of this here before, but I think I prefer this less ambitious and better executed guitarlele version. Closer to the spirit of the original, I guess.
Backup:
Here’s a version using guitar rather than guitarlele that I also quite like: the guitar version has been released as a single, but the guitarlele version will be released on a forthcoming album.
Backup:
According to Ewan MacColl, from whose singing I learned this many years ago, this doleful World War II song was originally “the anthem of the Middle East air force regiment” but was adopted by many units that saw service in the region. I revisited it more recently as part of a project by Clive Richardson in which I played a small part, accompanying Anne Merrill Gray on guitar, but did this one on my own. Not on guitarlele at that time, but hearing this again, I rather wish I had.
Seven years in the sand
Seems a long time somehow
Never mind, tosh, you’ll soon be dead
100 years from now
The pay is low, the food is rank
You get jankers now and then
You’re fed almost entirely on
The produce of the hen
Seven years in the sand
Seems a long time somehow
Never mind, tosh, you’ll soon be dead
100 years from now
Guitars, bouzouki (don’t blink or you’ll miss it), vocals by David A. Harley
All words and music by David A. Harley except ‘Thou Art My Lute’ – words by Paul Laurence Dunbar, music by David A. Harley
All rights reserved.
A mixed bag, but slowly catching up with some of the songs I should have recorded properly years ago. Plus some lyrics that have only recently found a tune (notably the Falklands song, 40 years too late for most people to care), and yet another setting of a poem, this time by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
David Harley Words & Music 
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