Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK:
Hold Everything: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis & Karine Polwart
Karine Polwart’s message to listeners about her latest song for an exciting new venture is simple: Hope it touches you. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is the haunting Hold Everything. We could not fail to be touched.
When the beloved American songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter reached out to Polwart and Julie Fowlis to work on an album as a trio, the Scottish artists could not resist. Carpenter had provided harmonies on Fowlis’s 2017 album Alterum and had always admired Polwart’s work, including the magical Spell Songs project with Fowlis. They had all appeared on the BBC series, Transatlantic Sessions.
Polwart recalls Fowlis’s ‘You’re never going to believe this’ phone call: ‘I mean, of all the musicians in all the world that a multi-Grammy winning, multi-million album selling writer of immense heart and heft might want to collaborate with, Mary Chapin Carpenter wants me and Julie? I sob after hanging up.’
There’s a sobbing quality to Polwart’s song whose chorus ‘Hold everything dear’ borrows from the title of one of her favourite books by the late John Berger, his 2008 meditation on the causes behind political activism and resistance. It is the first single to be released from Looking For The Thread, conceived at Kinlochmoidart House in the remote west of Scotland last year and recorded in spring this year at the Peter Gabriel-founded Real World studios in Box, Wiltshire.
Could you hear the car coming?
Did you stumble and fall?
Did you sleep without waking?
Were you ready to go?
Or did you feel the tightening pain in your chest?
Did you lie down that morning and pray for eternal rest?
When you saw the wave rising
Did you run to the shore?
Were you half way through coffee
When he broke down the door?
Did you hear the brake sing as you stepped on the line?
Could you tell by the look in his eye that he’d do it this time?
Hold everything
Hold everything
Hold everything dear
It is a lament to leaving the living, a reckoning with mortality, an unsettling story made more affecting by the fragile beauty of the singing, as folk’s history of brooding ballads is poignantly brought up to date. ‘Were you swaddled in morphine?’
‘It was like some Hollywood notion of the Scottish Highlands,’ says Polwart. ‘Everything was conducive to creating. It was dark and we were hemmed in, sitting by the fire making stuff.’ As you’d expect with the quality of such company, the blend of voices is captivating. ‘That first visit to Kinlochmoidart helped us feel that we had some things that might serve us,’ says Carpenter. ‘We’d gather in the beautiful room where the fire was, play and sing together, and then go off to our little corners and work on stuff on our own, come back together, and get to the next step.’
The women wrote together though none of the co-written songs appear on the album, which may suggest a sequel. But Carpenter points out: ‘There’s no way any of the four songs that I contributed would have existed in the way that they do without Karine and Julie. So there’s that version of co-working together. It may not be a formal co-write, but the energy, the personality, the artistic thoughts shape the songs as well.’ For Fowlis’s Hebridean Gaelic contributions her bandmates, non-Gaelic speakers, had to learn their harmony parts phonetically.
The 10-track album, scheduled for release in January, was produced by Josh Kaufman whom we saw recently as part of another stellar folk threesome, Bonny Light Horseman. Carpenter, Fowlis and Powart returned to Kinlochmoidart earlier this year to rehearse for the studio where Kaufman recorded them live. It was a joyous experience. ‘The songs hadn’t been pre-produced to within an inch of their lives and the band hadn’t heard them in advance,’ says Polwart. ‘The musicians were such attentive listeners, none of them overplaying, all of them bringing a beautiful textural quality. There was something really fresh about it.’
There’s a promotional tour of the UK from March with the trio backed by the impressive support cast from the album, including Kaufman on guitar and keyboards and Caoimhín Ó’Raghallaig, master of the hardanger d’amore, a 10-string fiddle. We can expect songs of empathy, anger, connection, resilience and resolution, a thread that binds us all. If Polwart’s appetiser is any guide, we will hold them all dear.
Not The Only Road: Richard Hawley
My father, 40 years departed now, always loved a crooner. Frank Sinatra was his favourite but he was happy in the company of Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Dean Martin and even Matt Munro. We feel sure that among the modern serenaders he would have enjoyed the baritone of Sheffield-born Richard Hawley. Our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com is the beautiful Not The Only Road. Dedicated to dad.
Hawley’s career as a beloved balladeer (a more respectful label than crooner) has been magnificently encapsulated by Now Then: The Very Best Of Richard Hawley, released last October. We were tickled by the wordplay in the title from a Yorkshireman immensely proud of his Pitsmoor roots.
Best Of albums are usually more miss than hit, particularly when hurriedly compiled by labels eager to make further inroads into our cash, but this really is the Very Best. It was compiled by the man himself and long-time producer Colin Elliot. The double LP, its vinyl in Sheffield Wednesday colours, comprised 23 tracks which were expanded to 32 at the CD stage. The prolific Hawley has so many songs tucked away a second volume is a distinct possibility.
The Now Then collection is a celebration of the songwriter’s profound blend of melancholy, warmth and romanticism, one observer calling his ballads ‘the sound of falling in love’. The phrase perfectly describes Not the Only Road, a recast of The Only Road from his 2003 album Lowedges, with Hawley’s honey-rich burr now swathed in luscious strings.
The only road I walk alone, where beauty nails me to her cross
Bleeding from my hands and feet I whisper that my love is lost
I water flowers in the rain, I dance beneath your silver flames
I’m crippled by the sound of love
Beating in my lonely frame
My lonely frame
So please keep me in your heart
So please keep me in your heart
The song was written in, of all places, Hawley Street where the musician lived in the days before he even held a bank account. We can imagine the orchestrated version becoming a funeral staple, with its mix of sadness and hope. Indeed it was played at Jeremy Hardy’s service, his wife Katie revealing to their friend that it was his favourite song. Another famous outing soon followed; it was used as the closing piece on the soundtrack for the TV series of The Full Monty. The stripped-back original might have been more appropriate.
We can thank Jarvis Cocker for playing a key role in encouraging Hawley to go solo after his contributions mainly as a guitarist to Longpigs and Pulp and record his first self-titled mini-album in 2001. There have been nine full albums since in which he has regularly namechecked the landmarks and curious corners of his birthplace. There have been countless film scores and we should not forget the collaborations: Arctic Monkeys, Paul Weller, Manic Street Preachers, Elbow, Lisa Marie Presley, Nancy Sinatra, Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, A Girl Called Eddy, John Grant, Robbie Williams and Shirley Bassey.
The latest of those solo records, In This City They Call You Love, is a restrained affair but with barbed undertones about life under the last government. ‘It’s not a political, finger-wagging exercise. I’m not pointing the finger, it’s about loss,’ he told Clash Music. ‘It’s insane. I’m old enough to have lived through this shit at least once. The Thatcher years, and what it did to this region is [happening] now, and I can see it in every industry and every form of people making a living.’
Most of the material was recorded in Disgraceland, the studio in his garden shed. ‘But it’s not a depressing record. There’s a lot of hope in it, or I hope there’s hope! I meant to put something out there that’s the opposite of the vibes that’s being put out there by our leaders. There’s a lot of amazing, positive, beautiful things out there, but it’s the polarisation which really scares me.
‘We need to get together to affect change. We mustn’t be afraid. They use all the power they have to make us afraid. They make us doubt ourselves, they demonise young people and people who want to make a change to the way we think. The album is a reaction against all that.’
I’ll Never Get Over You, Prism In Jeans, People and Heavy Rain retain the tender quality of our favourite tracks from his 25-year retrospective: the buoyant Tonight The Streets Are Ours, the poignant Remorse Code, My Little Treasures (a tribute to his father), the psychedelia-tinged Don’t Stare At The Sun, The Ocean and Not The Only Road. The only cover is an intense interpretation of Bob Dylan’s Ballad Of A Thin Man you may recall from the Peaky Blinders soundtrack.
Then there’s the Hawley musical, Standing At The Sky’s Edge, a majestic love letter to Sheffield and social commentary inspired by his 2012 album of the same name. He told NME: ‘I lived through the story – either through myself or close family relatives – so I’m always on the edge of tears or really angry about the whole thing. The bottom line is that it’s touched a nerve with people; and that’s a nerve that needed to be prodded for some time.’
Most of his songs touch a nerve. The Now Then slow-burners might have been covered by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself if they’d occupied the same era. And dad, drumming the arms of his easy chair, would have been in heaven. The very best of Hawley will keep him in our hearts.
Fruits Of My Labor: Cris Jacobs
We are so relieved Cris Jacobs decided against jettisoning his music career. We would never have heard his latest album One Of These Days or his new single, Fruits Of My Labor, a Lucinda Williams cover and our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. A triumph of self-discovery.
Jacobs’ joyous collaboration with dobro guru Jerry Douglas was a defining moment in the revival of a Baltimore musician who had lost his way. Douglas produced the album, backing the singer-songwriter on a number of tracks, before embellishing his rendition of the Williams classic.
‘I was on the verge of giving it all up,’ Jacobs said at the time of the album. ‘I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with music anymore, because it felt like I’d been scratching and clawing for years – just never quite getting there, even though, when I zoom out and look at the life and career I’ve had, well, 20 years ago I would have been ecstatic if you’d told me these things would happen.’
Williams’ Fruits Of My Labour original was released just over those 20 years ago. Jacobs’ choice of cover, one of his desert island discs, could not have been more appropriate. After 10 years fronting The Bridge and another decade on his solo journey, Jacobs has earned the endorsement of bluegrass doyens Douglas and Billy Strings.
‘I met Jerry at a festival a couple years ago and I remember him watching my set,’ Jacobs told Live For Live Music. ‘Afterwards he was really nice to me and told me to keep in touch. As I was putting together my ideas for my next album I was wanting to take it back to a more bluegrass-y thing so I called him and he was into it right away. That solidified the idea. I hadn’t even written any songs yet but if, in the back of your mind, you know that Jerry Douglas wants to produce you, you get to work.’ Eleven fine tracks are the product of that new-found motivation.
He added: ‘I know he’s a great player but he’s also a great producer and person. When a guy like him is telling you that your songs are great and he’s patting you on the back, it’s pretty encouraging.’
Williams’ song about the loss of profound love, from her superb World Without Tears album in 2003, hardly requires improvement with its echoes of Sam Cooke but Jacobs gives the poetry therein a powerfully tender reimagining…
Baby, see how I been living
Velvet curtains on the windows to
Keep the bright and unforgiving
Light from shining through
Baby, I remember all the things we did
When we slept together in the blue behind your eyelids, baby
Sweet baby
Got my Mercury and drove out west
Pedal to the metal and my luck to the test, baby
Sweet baby
I been tryin' to enjoy
All the fruits of my labor
I been cryin' for you, boy
But truth is my savior
Meanwhile, Williams herself has been promoting the art of the cover by reworking the Beatles album Abbey Road, a delightful version of George Harrison’s Something providing the first single. Like all skilled interpreters, she somehow inhabits the song with her distinctive Louisiana drawl and makes it almost her own.
Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road, a mouthful of an album title, is eagerly awaited before Christmas. One of America’s greatest songwriters has always found time to honour her forebears and peers. The Beatles salute is part of her Lou’s Jukebox series she began streaming during the pandemic; there have been tributes to Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, southern soul from Memphis to Muscle Shoals, and country classics of the Sixties.
Jacobs’ One of These Days, influenced as much by folk and blues as bluegrass, boasts an impressive support team: Billy Strings, mandolin master Sam Bush, Lee Ann Womack, the McCrary Sisters, Lindsay Lou and rousing house band The Infamous Stringdusters with Douglas on dobro as well as the dials.
Jacobs’ storytelling style of songwriting is brutally honest as he confronts years of depression and self-doubt. Just listen to the beautiful Wild Roses And Dirt, the haunting Poor Davey, Queen Of The Avenue, the deeply personal Daughter, Daughter and Everybody’s Lost. Compelling reasons to reaffirm his calling.
‘As kids, we always had that feeling of, things are going to work out, the way I dream they’ll work out,’ Jacobs says. ‘But then, the goalposts keep moving. And you wake up one day, and you’re 45 and still reaching.
‘I’ve always found so much comfort in roots music – in string band music. There’s just something about the sound of all those instruments together that resonates with me to my core and brings me grounding and peace.’
As Williams wrote in Fruits Of My Labor: ‘Take the glory any day over the fame.’ Jacobs would concur.
Empire Of Love: Amythyst Kiah
In the domain of soulful, rootsy folk Amythyst Kiah is a force of nature. The Tennessee singer-songwriter celebrates her spiritual side on Empire Of Love, one of many powerful tracks on her latest album Still + Bright and our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
After her meditation on grief and trauma with 2021’s Wary + Strange, Kiah explores the struggle and wonder of self-discovery. She has made the album she has always wanted to make, revealing a deep affinity for Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions and an almost mystical connection with the natural world, particularly the Appalachian landscape of home.
‘On the last record it felt so cathartic to write about all the pain I was dealing with, but this time the songs came from a place of finding joy in the music,’ she says. ‘In the past I felt so mired down with anxiety that I sometimes held back from what I really wanted to write about; I felt like I needed to play it safe and keep certain thoughts to myself. But now I’m at a point where I’m confident in what I value and love.’
Kiah calls Empire of Love her ‘personal theme song’ as she builds her own belief system, with her customary compassion. As her website declares, here is an impassioned declaration of devotion to her journey as a spiritual seeker, with grungy guitar and defiantly delivered poetry.
Concrete pillars, golden domes
There are kingdoms that have come and gone
That we’ll never know
My religion is none at all
I build my own cathedrals and let them fall
Cause I don’t want a theocracy
Or some idle/idol ideology
We all came from stars from above
I pledge allegiance to my soul
I’ll follow where she needs to go
I’m a pilgrim for the empire of love
A repudiation of organised religion, echoing Lennon’s Imagine; she will build her own cathedrals and let them fall. ‘I believe in carving a path in life that honours my own experiences in the context of the wider world,’ says Kiah, who wrote the track with Sean McConnell. ‘As a seeker in the mountains, my sense of spiritual connection stems from nature, which is connected to all of the cosmos. And there is no religious or social dogma that can change that.’
Her voice is gaining muscle and scale without diminishing her capacity for tenderness. ‘One of my main goals was to show a new side of myself as a singer. I’ve always loved really strong, gospel-style vocals, and I put a lot of work into increasing my range for this record.’ It is an impressive instrument.
The album was produced by Butch Walker (of Taylor Swift and Green Day renown) and recorded in Nashville. On Empire Of Love Walker contributes electric guitar, bass and keyboards with Ellen Angelico on pedal steel and Matty Alger on drums. Other highlights are the dazzling Play God And Destroy The World, featuring guest vocals by SG Goodman, the fiddle and mandolin delight that is SPACE, I Will Not Go Down (with bluegrass wizard Billy Strings), Let’s See Ourselves Out (‘Sometimes I wonder if we’re just a mistake/ Millions of primates who can’t seem to find their way’) and the menacing Die Slowly Without Complaint (with Avi Kaplan). She is more comfortable as a collaborator these days; working with her soul sisters in Our Native Daughters – Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell – was an inspirational foundation.
‘With all of my music, I’d love to leave people with the feeling that it’s OK to go off the beaten path and to structure your life in a way that feels right to you,’ says Kiah. ‘And just like with the last record, I hope that these songs can help people out if they’re going through a difficult time. That’s what I always hope for more than anything: for my music to be part of the healing process for anyone who might need it.’
Kiah was raised in Chattanooga and later moved to Johnson City. She says of Play God And Destroy The World: ‘To fit in, you had to go to church and have conservative values – and I know that being black wasn’t doing us any favours either. This song was written for the 15-year-old version of me who suspected that there was a big world out there that allowed for many beliefs and a more connected humanity.’
Johnson City, Tennessee
My home in Appalachia is still calling me
Give me a mountain, something divine
A river that can carve its way through stone and time
Wild Turkey, a song that mourns the loss of her mother who took her own life in the Tennessee River when Kiah was just a teenager, was a Song Of The Week from her last album which also featured the Grammy-winning anthem Black Myself. Empire Of Love is just as memorable. Daring, original, uncompromising. The plaudits for this pilgrim do not exaggerate.
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