The Doomsday Gig

“…you sell a lot more records
when you’re permanently depressed…”
(Peter Buckley-Hill – apologies if I’ve misquoted. I can’t remember the name of the song, either.)

Recently I was thrown into a state somewhere between rage and gloom when one of my songs – admittedly not a particularly cheerful example of my oeuvre – was roundly and publicly condemned by two people for being depressing. (Well, we can go into debates another time about session etiquette, whether social comment is folk, and whether no-one should ever write anything that isn’t upbeat.)

After the gloom wore off, I started contemplating going back to that session with a handful of the gloomiest songs I know (of) and realized that without even looking at my own songs, I could easily find enough material to empty the Albert Hall several times over.

  • David Ackles: His Name is Andrew
  • Bob Dylan: It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
  • Phil Ochs: Crucifixion
  • Lord Gregory. The Recruited Collier.  And about a third of all the Scots ballads I’ve ever been tempted to fake an accent to sing.
  • Richard Thompson: The End of the Rainbow (or possibly Never Again, or Poor Ditching Boy, or Stuck on the Treadmill, or even Pavanne)
  • Blind Lemon Jefferson: See That My Grave is Kept Clean
  • One of several songs called Oh Death
  • Lay this body down
  • Hank Williams: I’m so Lonesome I could Cry, or Wedding Bells, or Lonesome Whistle
  • The Everlys (don’t know offhand who wrote these): Ebony Eyes, or Take a Message to Mary, or Crying in the Rain, or Rocking Alone in an Old Rocking Chair, or I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail
  • Leonard Cohen: Avalanche, or Dress Rehearsal Rag, or One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong – I’m sure I could think of one or two more…
  • Brother Can You Spare a Dime?
  • Nic Jones: Ruins by the Shore
  • Bruce Springsteen: Brothers Under the Bridge
  • The Lyke Wake Dirge (probably the tune Britten used rather than the one YT et al recorded: any French horn players around Ludlow?)
  • Don’t they know it’s the end of the world? (Kent-Dee)
  • Texas Girl at the Funeral of her Father (Randy Newman)
  • Jackson C. Frank: Here Come the Blues (Blues Run the Game would be a contender, too)
  • Fred Neil: Blues on the Ceiling
  • Neil Young: A Man Needs a Maid or After the Goldrush.
  • Bill Caddick: Oller Boller (am I the only person in the world who loves this song?)
  • Steve Goodman: Penny Evans (I don’t have a problem switching gender for a good song: see Recruited Collier).
  • Ann Briggs: Go Your Way, My Love
  • Weary Blues
  • Eric Bogle: No Man’s Land or The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

You know, I really want to hear that set. And I was starting to think about a running order, but I kept bursting into tears.

David Harley

(Farewell to) Severn Shore

My setting of a poem by A.E. Housman from ‘A Shropshire Lad’. All rights reserved.

Video:

Mastered audio capture of the performance:

Backup:

 

Homestudio recording

Backup:

 

Many online sources give the first line as title, but my edition of ‘A Shropshire Lad’ doesn’t give a title to this piece, so I’ve used a variation on the second line for the song title.

<strong>A Shropshire Lad VIII </strong>

‘FAREWELL to barn and stack and tree,
Farewell to Severn shore.
Terence, look your last at me,
For I come home no more.

‘The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
And my knife is in his side.

‘My mother thinks us long away;
’Tis time the field were mown.
She had two sons at rising day,
To-night she ’ll be alone.

‘And here ’s a bloody hand to shake,
And oh, man, here ’s good-bye;
We ’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,
My bloody hands and I.

‘I wish you strength to bring you pride,
And a love to keep you clean,
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
At racing on the green.

‘Long for me the rick will wait,
And long will wait the fold,
And long will stand the empty plate,
And dinner will be cold.’

<strong>David Harley </strong>

The Carpenter’s Son

Another version of my setting of Housman’s poem (A Shropshire Lad XLVII).

This version includes a guitar part. The words are published here, among many other places.  Here’s a version cleaned up by my friend Pierre Vandevenne: 

David Harley
Small Blue-Green World