The artists behind this album are somewhat reticent about their identities on the cover of this album but it’s important to give them full credit. The words are by author Gordon Phillips and were originally conceived as a cycle of poems and song lyrics and the music and lead performances are by John Bushby who hails from Tasmania.
There is more you need to know. The Square & Compass is the local nickname for The Freemason’s Arms, the only pub on St Mary’s Island, a speck of land to the north of Whitley Bay that is joined to the mainland for just six hours a day at low tide. Its main feature is the lighthouse built in 1898 when the island was given its final name.
These songs are all stories and are all true, given a bit of poetic license here and there. For such a tiny place, the island has seen its fair share of excitement, and Phillips has the enviable skill of making songs out of small moments from history. The earliest is ‘Haul In The Brandy’, the story of the murder of a customs inspector in 1722. Smuggling, piracy and shipwrecks inevitably feature but there are also tales of land disputes and drinking and the story of a Hampden bomber that crashed on the island in 1940.
The origins of the project lie in ‘The Quarantine Song’, reworked for the album, which tells of a troop of Russian soldiers, infected with cholera, who were quarantined on the island in 1799. One of them possibly reappears in ‘The Cellar Song’ in the form of a skeleton discovered when the pub was being extended in the 1860s. I’m sorry if this is turning into a history lesson but history is what The Square & Compass is all about.
There is a 1960s feel about the record and if I mention John Connolly and Bill Meek you’ll know what I mean. John Bushby plays eight instruments and is supported by Malcolm Bushby’s fiddle, Caroline Bushby’s clarsach – clearly a very musical family – and Rosie Lindsay’s piano. The words are the most important element and the arrangements support and retain the interest without interfering in the story-telling process. The record is accompanied by a handsome book of lyrics and historical notes by Gordon Phillips.
Dai Jeffries
Artists’ websites: www.johnandcarolinebushby.webeden.co.uk
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