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<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ad005a0dvldtc.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Tahoma" ><B>Waterson:Carthy</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Tahoma" ><B> </B></FONT><B>   </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Waterson:Carthy"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand"><U>Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand</U></A>   |   <B>Dark Light</B>   |   <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Broken Ground"><U>Broken Ground</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Common Tongue"><U>Common Tongue</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Waterson:Carthy"><U>Waterson:Carthy</U></A>                                                                                                                                        <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#CCFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><B>  </B></FONT></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>  </B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#330000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="0aed2c00dvldvb.jpg"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>For all booking enquiries</B></div> <div> <B>please contact</B></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.alanbearmanmusic.co.uk" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.alanbearmanmusic.co.uk"><U><B>Alan Bearman Music</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Website by </B><A HREF="mailto:ps@heypressco.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:ps@heypressco.com"><U><B>heypressco</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Powered by </B><A HREF="http://www.bluesock.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.bluesock.com"><U><B>bluesock.com</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Copyright Waterson:Carthy</B></div> <div> <B>Updated 6 March 2008</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Dark Light</B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="albums.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Albums"><U>Back</U></A></div> <div> <IMG SRC="04dc8c80.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="200" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> Released in 2002 on Topic Records TSCD536</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Engineered by Ollie Knight at Panda Sound, Robin Hood's Bay</div> <div> Produced by Ollie Knight and Waterson:Carthy</div> <div> Executive producer Tony Engle</div> <div> Design and photography by John Haxby</div> <bR> <div> Musicians</div> <div> Norma Waterson: vocals</div> <div> Eliza Carthy: fiddle, vocals</div> <div> Martin Carthy: guitar, vocals</div> <div> Tim van Eyken: melodeon</div> <bR> <div> Thanks to:</div> <div> Ben Ivitsky, viola on Diego's Bold Shore,</div> <div> Martin Simpson, guitar on Death and the Lady and The Holland Handkerchief,</div> <div> Barnaby Stradling, Fylde acoustic bass guitar on May Morning, and to Hobglobin Music for the loan of Tim van Eyken's melodeon</div> <div>      </div> <bR> <div> <B>Track Listings:</B></div> <bR> <div>    1. The Devil and the Farmer</div> <div>    2. May Morning</div> <div>    3. Death and the Lady</div> <div>    4. The Outlandish Knight</div> <div>    5. Balancy Straw / Seventeen Come Sunday / Whitefriar's Hornpipe</div> <div>    6. The Lofty Tall Ship</div> <div>    7. The Holland Handkerchief</div> <div>    8. The Old Churchyard</div> <div>    9. Crystal Spring</div> <div>   10. Diego's Bold Shore</div> <div>   11. Shepherds Arise </div> <bR> <div> .</div> <div> Tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6: Trad. arr. E. Carthy, M. Carthy, T. van Eyken;</div> <div> Tracks 3, 8, 9, 11: Trad. arr. E. Carthy, M. Carthy, T. van Eyken, N. Waterson;</div> <div> Track 7: Trad. arr. M. Carthy, N. Waterson;</div> <div> Track10: Trad. arr. E. Carthy;</div> <div> All titles published by Topic Records Ltd.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Track Notes & extra details by Martin Carthy </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The Devil and the Farmer</B></div> <div> The Copper Family, Packie Manus Byrne, Seamus Ennis, Sam Larner, Almeda Riddle, Cecil Sharp and A.L. Lloyd, who, in this case, co-produced The Penguin Book of English Folk Song, were some of the people who had a profound effect on one or other of us at some stage in our musical lives, and, in part, this CD reflects that involvement. In the end all our choices wouldn't fit on to one balanced CD and there were glum faces at the end of the sessions. But, since everybody lost something, we ended up sort of happy.</div> <div> For myself, there were two people in the late 1950s whose unforgettable wildly different performances - one at the Troubadour Folk Club in Earl's Court and the other at Ewan MacColl's Ballads and Blues Club in the upstairs room of a pub in the Edgware Road (the name of which I can't remember) - decided for me the musical direction which my life was going to take. That pub, close to the old Metropolitan Theatre, may lie buried along with that famous theatre under the flyover which leads on to the M40 Westway, but the memory will never, ever fade. The people I'm talking about are Seamus Ennis, whose version of The Devil and the Farmer starts this CD off, and Sam Larner, whose mighty telling of the Henry Martin story in Lofty Tall Ship was probably the single moment that ensured - bewildered though I was by what I thought of at the time at its baffling tune - that this music would embed its hooks into me for life.</div> <bR> <div> <B>May Morning</B></div> <div> Liza learned May Morning from the Cecil Sharp collection, also Crystal Spring, where she played with a rhythm of the tune, changing it from a straight three-four time to a kind of twelve-eight, filled with shifting accents. People sometimes get nervous about country idylls. The exist a-plenty in England, and, superficially I suppose, such reluctance can be seen as understandable. But, going even the teeniest bit deeper, isn't it surely true that people have always dreamed about having it better? And why not? When one lives a life as hard and unrelenting as the people who made these songs then dreamworlds such as The Big Rock Candy Mountain or, indeed, The Land of Cockaigny (as the European variants are known) can be seen in a clearer light and with a proper perspective.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Death and the Lady</B></div> <div> Norma learned Death and the Lady from [the Cecil Sharp collection]. It's a dark song here and she did what was second nature to the Watersons in their heyday, transforming the tune by altering just a couple of notes.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Outlandish Knight</B></div> <div> Norma similarly, but this time rhythmically, also tweaked (ever so slightly) the tune of The Outlandish Knight as found in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. This most mysterious of songs has haunted her for years ever since she heard it (with a different melody) from the great Shropshire singer, Fred Jordan. Mysterious in a different way is how it can be that so old and so widespread a song should, wherever it is found, display so very little variation as far as the words are concerned.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Balancy Straw / Seventeen Come Sunday / Whitefriar's Hornpipe</B></div> <div> Balancy Straw is a Morris tune from quite a few places including Ascot under Wychwood and Bledington which Liza found in the Journals of the EFDSS, and chose to play more as a reel or a quick hornpipe, and it was Tim who introduces us to Whitefriar's Hornpipe, one of those crooked tunes gracing the repertoire of John Kirkpatrick, whence he learned it. Seventeen Come Sunday is pretty much the standard way with the song but set by Tim to a Cornish tune and with the alternative ending chosen because of Tim's predilection for Rum. Lots of it.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Lofty Tall Ship</B></div> <div> See track notes for The Devil and the Farmer</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Holland Handkerchief</B></div> <div> Packie Manus Byrne appeared on the English music scene in the early 1960s and quickly made his mark. He is a canny man. Because he never paraded his knowledge many people took him far too lightly far too easily, but a treasure house is what he was. And, indeed, is. The musical sweep of his knowledge is colossal, and he is also generous. It is from him that Norma learned The Holland Handkerchief, one of the truly spooky songs and one not found that often these days.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Old Churchyard</B></div> <div> When, in 1976, The Watersons were invited to the Bicentennial celebrations on the Mall in Washington DC, we met various of our idols including a remarkable old-fashined singer from Arkansas called Almeda Riddle, who insisted that people called her ``Granny'' and who always knew an extra verse to just about any song you could sing her - unless the singer was Walter Pardon who, of course and as was his wont, kney yet another. She sang The Old Churchyard and showed endless delight when we announced that we wanted to sing it.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Crystal Spring</B></div> <div> Liza learned May Morning from the Cecil Sharp collection, also Crystal Spring, where she played with a rhythm of the tune, changing it from a straight three-four time to a kind of twelve-eight, filled with shifting accents. People sometimes get nervous about country idylls. The exist a-plenty in England, and, superficially I suppose, such reluctance can be seen as understandable. But, going even the teeniest bit deeper, isn't it surely true that people have always dreamed about having it better? And why not? When one lives a life as hard and unrelenting as the people who made these songs then dreamworlds such as The Big Rock Candy Mountain or, indeed, The Land of Cockaigny (as the European variants are known) can be seen in a clearer light and with a proper perspective.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Diego's Bold Shore</B></div> <div> It is to Vic Gammon that I personally owe thanks for pointing me to Diego's Bold Shore, a truly remarkably poem/song printed in Songs the Whaleman Sang by the indefatigable Gale Huntingdon (1964, reprinted Dover, 1970) and which I passed to Liza. This book is a work of extraordinary patience, collecting together from 19th century whalemen's personal logs examples of the sort of things which these sailors would jot down, whether it be songs, poems, drawings or anything else which took their fancy. Gale Huntingdon says that, on the evidence of these logs, this song was by far the whalemen's favourite song. These men of the 1850s, ore thereabouts, who had signed on for such voyages, were always gone from home for months and, very often, years and, if the picture printed in this song may seem on occasion slightly romantic, there is, running through it, a vein of pure gold along with that tiny hint of the hardships involved and clues as to their state of mind during rare moments of relaxation. Whaling was a massively different enterprise a hundred and fifty years ago, but that should not tempt anyone into any roseate reflections about people "only taking what they needed" or "ensuring sustainability". The fact is that risking their lives as a matter of course, they exploited and were dreadfully exploited in their turn. Returning from such voyages, their pay had necessarily taken into account various "expenses" calculated by The Company and was shrunk accordingly. Rather like being signed to a Major Label really. The Bold Shore itself is, I think, the Diego Ramirez group, which lies south of Terra Del Fuego. Must have been quite a sight.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Shepherds Arise</B></div> <div> A lot of nonsense is talked in some quarters, when referring to us, about "The First Family of Folk" or even (God help us) "The Royal Family of Folk". People who do that, in my view, want their backsides kicking - hard. If there is one family in this country who deserve such a title - and I must confess to the severest of collywobbles at the idea of anyone being saddled with such a miserable title - then that family is surely The Copper Family of Sussex. Shepherds Arise is a salute to them and gives us a chance to pay tribute to real nobility. Thanks very much.</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="albums.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Albums"><U>Back</U></A></div> <bR> <div> Many thanks to Garry Gillard and Reinhard Zierke (and friends) for use of their album information. Check their site on the weblinks for more Waterson:Carthy history.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>