65 # 5 Eddi Reader in a shopping mall in Japan

My dear friend Phil (sometimes known as Ian for no sensible reason) McCutchion took this picture at Portslade Railway Roots Club. Its not a nod at narcissism to post it, its because its relevant to a story I heard twice inside two days from two different sources. Boo Hewerdine, who was heading the bill at the club, told us how he was playing with Eddi Reader and her band in Japan, when Eddi announced a new entrance for herself. The band (with Boo) were to go onstage and start playing and Eddi would come on, open her arms wide and the lights would come on just as she was about to start singing. Yay, 'show business' - it doesn't happen at Portslade Railway Roots club - however, it was all going to plan, the band got on stage, made a start and waited... and waited... and waited - it seems Eddi opened the wrong door and instead of walking onto the stage she ended up in a shopping mall attached to the venue. Subsequently she had to run out of the mall, round to the front of the venue, get inside and then run down the aisle while the bewildered band were playing and playing, waiting for her entrance. We laughed, of course, Portslade Railway Roots club is a friendly place. Boo went onto sing his song, Bell, Book and Candle which Eddi had recorded (a fine song it is too) and it should have been the end of the story. However, on Saturday my friend Ray Knight (a very fine harmonica player) said he had a spare ticket for Transatlantic Sessions at The Brighton Dome, would I like to go? I had meant to get tickets, the cast was hugely impressive, Gerry Douglas, Aly Bain and a host of some really special players. One of those was John McCusker who announced he had written a new tune called Eddi Reader in a Shopping Mall - and then proceeded to tell a story about being in her band in Japan... and well you know the rest, I nearly shouted the punchline but didn't want to spoil it for the other 1699 people there (it was full). But it got me thinking about stories and tunes and songs and how we carry them around as part of our own cultural identity, as part of our own story. Who can claim to own them at all. I always try to write with an underlying social concern and meaning, and sometimes it hinders my own writing process. Sometimes I wonder if I should worry about this at all. I mean a song never changed the world, all it can possibly do is expand life with a range of observations, a depth of empathy, sentiment and expression which might make a difference to some. As the poet Wallace Stevens once put it (I'm paraphrasing his idea) poetry, songs, music, all art gives us ideas about the thing, not the thing itself. As Simon Critchley says, it's, 'an experience of meditation that occurs not through a retreat from the world, but by relearning to see it in all its quotidian banality and violent beauty.' So whether you're lost in a shopping mall or confronting your world with thoughtfulness and humility, take a moment to enjoy the experience - unlike the story of Eddi Reader in a shopping mall, it may never come round again. Here's a poem from a compatriot of mine, that became a song featuring John McCusker, Boo Hewerdine and Eddi Reader - take a moment:

65 # 4 Sonder

Sonder is a word which defines the idea that everyone we encounter in life are leading lives as vivid and as complex as our own; lives populated by visions and hopes and friends and the inherent agency of love and lovers and families and dreams and desires. Pondering this while looking back on what you know of your own mother’s life is fraught with its own problems. Do we ever really know our parents or our children? Or indeed that of our friends and lovers? And yet it’s hard to escape the influence and impact they had and continue to have on our lives.  Its with this in mind that I ponder the life of this young woman, pictured left. Born in 1933 and so I reckon this must have been taken around 1950-ish, sitting on the cusp between teen and womanhood. Before she was married, before I was born, because she was 21 and I was a honeymoon baby - 9 months and a day after their wedding. Such memories I hold of her, and yet this period reveals nothing except the joy of the moment - I'm reading a pony and candy floss. It could be Portobello and the beach, or equally the miner's gala or some other such fair. But she looks happy and I remember this look from my own childhood. Its nice to reflect. It is said Harry Houdini grew up as a witness to his own father’s failings, a man who was always haunted by the shadow of his own past. Yet evading that past was probably Houdini’s greatest escape, as he guided himself into the culture of the new world that had left his father so disappointed. We all escape our own pasts to some degree because we all move on - and its what we want for our own children, is it not? I suspect Houdini's father would have been proud of his boy. One of the things that has helped me to move on is music, which I have a passion for. And today we can grab this out of the ether. Take a moment and listen - I have tried in vain to translate it, but does it really need that because its just lovely. Take time to sonder about the people in your life.

65 # 3 Happy New Year

And that's the end of that and the start of this. The first decade of the twenty-first century has gone and now we are into the roaring 20s - bring it on I say. I'm not sure how to gauge the success of a decade, or compare one with another because the ups and downs seem to even out - thank goodness. And that's how it seems to have gone for me. But I guess I'm hitting the final third of my life. Some might say that's optimistic but hey, what's wrong with optimism? Many's a guid tune frae an auld fiddle, and all that. So what will the new decade bring? Well this month I will be recording - just waiting for my new mixer to come, as well as tidying up the space I use as a studio (in the attic), which I will do today. But I have a plan to record a themed record, bunching songs together - and they have been written that way, though not necessarily intentionally. Its just the way they have come out. But I am looking forward to it. So a month at a time is just fine - and maybe I'll even take a drive and listen to this:

65 # 2 Nightjar

Christmas started with a walk down to the beach to see Jade (Adams)| swimming for charity. Huge effort on her part and small effort on ours, but well worth the effort all round. I guess the time of year brings out that kind of event but I have to say its becoming the new normal. Food banks and charity giving for the sixth most successful economy in the world and all the Queen can say is its 'been a bumpy year' - well how to be patronised with one sweep of the hand. But this is not the time for looking back at another annus horribilis. What propels us forward is optimism that 2020 will have the vision to be better. Is that too much too hope for? Christmas came with a new assortment of jumpers and a new electric mandolin for those tricky live events. And I will post a picture of it before the year is out but it has been a horrible year and now the corner is turned. So onward to new and better days. I feel a change in my bones and optimism is a good way to start. As my dear friend, the poet, Katharine Coles once wrote:

      And if we grieve in anticipation, will we
      Take the edge off or only bring grief

The question remains unanswered but I know what I think - I raise a glass to optimism and good cheer. And this tune 'Nightjar' by my very dear friend Nigel Horn always raises my spirits.

65 # 1 Soul for Sale

Well its been quite a year though not a 'groundhog' one I want to repeat because the speedbumps have been more like mountains, at times. Still, I guess life can only get quieter and where would that take us. As I write this in preparation for the beginning of my being 65, votes from another general election are being counted. I am not holding out great hope for my team - unashamed socialism in the mainline! My neighbour just over the fence (Caroline Lucas) should get in, and I hope so. And if we can bookend Brighton Pavilion with Labour each side of her, in Kemp Town and Hove, then we will be doing okay. But there is a lot about voting that I don't understand - like how can any reasonable person swallow the lies. But I guess we do. People lie to us all the time, the lad in Spec Savers lied to me (new hearing aid not glasses) just because it was easier and we accept with a tolerant nod because its what people do. Now this isn't a theme I am riffing on, or will be chasing this coming year which I will be recording here, though it might become one.

They lie those that say I lost the moon,

those that prophesised my fate of sand,

they assert so many things with cold tongues:

they wish to ban the flower of the universe.

Pablo Neruda knew a thing or two, 'and look what they did to him, I'm not ready for that parade...' (which is a line from a new song I've written). So anyway, here I am at the end of my 65th year and starting out on number 66 which I will begin recording here. This video was of a good event, a high point, we launched The Briar Band's first record.

It was a lovely thing to do and here's my song Soul for Sale. Playing music is such a lovely thing to do - long may that continue because as I write news os a landslide is just filtering in. See you around, I hope. 2020 is just around the corner and there is symmetry to that if nothing else. I wonder what the poor will do now? I have written a new song, 'No room at the inn' - its going to be a long decade - sigh.

January 2018: A premonition

Inner hope or outer hope, what's it to be?
Hope and Anchor looks the best bet all round

I got a missed call from Israel today (the country of origin now flashes up on the screen). I have no idea who it could have been; most likely a wrong number but you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives. I've been lucky all my life. I mean I wanted to write and I do, make films and I have, sing my own songs and have people like them and that happens too, and it might sound dramatic but I have also nearly bled to death after an operation, been run over by a car, stabbed, shot, fallen off a motor bike, fallen off a ladder and driven a car head on into a brick wall; but I'm still standing, as Elton once sang. Its been a busy life. But I wanted to talk about a premonition which happened sixty years ago but I have only just been told the story. When I was a wee boy, as opposed to a wee man, two going on three, my dad would put me to bed. I confess I have no recollection of that time, in what I recall as happy years in Burnside Road, Arniston, before an ill-fated move which I am not sure I really recovered from. Anyway, he had put me in a cot (which I do remember, we had two, a big one - where I slept - and a small one for the baby (Debs then Mags). According to my dad's telling only last week, one night he was tucking me in and I said, 'Dinnae go tae yer work tonight, Daddy... Daddy dinnae go tae work.' (that's the first I have ever been told or knew that I called him Daddy, which I rather like). But the words held more force than that. My dad grew up with a deeply superstitious mother, 'Dinnae put thae new shoes on the table - its bad luck!' She had a bad luck story for every turn. Took her years to get over my mum breaking a mirror in her house (seven years come to think on it). As an adult I would have thought it a bit daft. I have only been off sick one day in twenty five years of working at the University of Winchester, far less taking a fly day off. He wouldn't have missed a shift for anything - after all, you didn't get paid. But after a chat with my mum they agreed it was a 'premonition' that he shouldn't go. Well, guess what happened in Arniston Colliery that night? We take this idea for granted, especially these days when we are much more cynical, more secular and more in tune with ideas. Does anyone really believe in horoscope and premonition? But the history of such things isn't as clear as it could be. Indeed, we still suspend our disbelief for films and books and the like, mostly because at the time we want to believe it. And then there are dreams; if I am honest, I think all of my dreams have actually come true and maybe I have some new ones too. I wonder if in hoping I could have predicted that away back in Arniston? Who knows? But back to the premonition - after a sleepless night we discovered that... oh... nothing at all untoward happened on the night shift, nothing at all, that night in Arniston Colliery. Well all I can say, in defence of my premonition, is thank goodness he didn't go to the night shift that night, because if he had he really might have been the trigger to some catastrophe. Well you never know do you? His not going avoided that! As I said, you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives? I wrote this song (coming up) thinking about Allepo but also about the enormous homeless problem in the UK - its huge down south, here in Brighton. We were a working class family growing up, with a coal miner father and school cleaning mother, but we grew up in a house which had loads of laughs and premonitions. And the point of this song is, surely somewhere to live should be a basic human right! Forgive the recording, its in my attic, but you'll get the gist of it: