Following on from last year’s debut album, Old Tall Stories, Birmingham (Kings Heath actually) duo Evan C Ritchie and David Fisher, return with Of Wind And Tide, another collection of self-penned shanty and traditional folk, many numbers inspired by their trips to Cornwall.
The more nasally-voiced Fisher leads off, Ritchie on bouzouki, with the swayalong stomp ‘Pilgrim Song’, a tribute to all who undertake pilgrimages, be they of a religious nature or Harry Potter fans paying their respects to Dobby the House-Elf at the Freshwater Shrine in Pembrokeshire as he sings “So here’s to the traveller, the ones who set out/To find and discover what life’s all about /Here’s to the wanderers, the waifs and the strays/And those who hold on to the old-fashioned ways”.
Swapping vocals, the deeper-voiced Ritchie’s first is ‘Shantyman’, a song in celebration of those who lead shipboard singing “to lift your spirits/And sometimes to make the capstan go” sung in the person of a master of his trade and with a definite wink in his eye as the crew go about their work (“You might think a shantyman would never strain his arms/But I’ll tell you, they get heavy, boys, when I’m playing this guitar/So save it with your envy, there’s a/Reason it looks like I’m living high/While you haul the ropes on by”).
The first of five traditionals, fuelled by urgent banjo, guitar and harmonica, Fisher sings the away to war ‘Blue Cockade’, the version here inspired by Frank Blair’s uptempo interpretation, while Ritchie takes charge of the sturdy strummed swayalong ‘Maid On The Shore’, wherein a woman turns the tables on the sea captain who abducts her, the arrangement borrowed from the iconic Stan Rogers.
It’s back to originals with Fisher on banjo and Ritchie on slide for his self-penned ‘Liskeard Lights’ about an old salt who’s married a tavern wench (“Always laughed at the older men/When they said one day you might have yourself a wife/Then one day ashore did row/On a bender I’d thought to go/The barmaid smiled and asked my name and off we went”) and settled down (“Now all I think is hearth and home and bed”), his wife wise enough to give him space to go to sea when she sees he’s restless (“she says to me I need my space/So go to sea to waves and wind/I’ll think of you and no other men/I promise you when you come home you’ll find your place”) but home’s call is stronger than waves and he’s always looking to return to see the lights of the title, even if Ritchie never has.
Written some years back, Fisher’s banjo bouncy ‘Down By the River’ is, as you might guess, about the serenity of sitting on the riverbank (in Worcestershire here) and watching the world go by (“Well I wouldn’t swap my hometown/For another one I know/But you have to take yourself away/When you feel the cool winds blow”), then, sung unaccompanied with Ritchie on lead, ‘Song Of The Western Men’ is the unofficial Cornish national anthem, a stirring patriotic number with lyrics from a poem by Robert Stephen Hawker published in 1826 and set to music in 1861 by Louisa T Clare.
Another setting of a poem, this time by William Wilfred Campbell to a tune by Fisher who sings lead while Ritchie provides slide and whistling, the lightly fingerpicked bucolic domestic bliss ‘Margery’ (“The cattle are housed in shed and byre/While singeth the kettle on the fire”) was originally titled ‘Canadian Folksong’ with Campbell, like Rogers, hailing from Ontario.
Being inspired by Cornwall, there’s inevitably song about smuggling, this, titled for the cove in west Cornwall, being Ritchie’s ‘Lamorna’, the story of a man who finds escape from life’s oppression (“The price of grain is rising again/But no compensation for the hardworking men”) through smuggling and partially inspired by the history of the Carters of Prussia Cove, an 18th century smuggling family.
There’s three further traditionals, first up, Ritchie on lead with additional vocals by Pete ‘Howlin’ Bush’ Smith, being the evergreen tale of a cannonball at sea tragedy ‘Mrs McGrath’, the second is the album’s sole instrumental ‘Ievan Polkka/Newlyn Reel’ which mixes the Finnish former with the klezmer-like Cornish latter, while it all rounds off with the acapella ‘Padstow Farewell Shanty’. The remaining track, and arguably the album standout, is Fisher’s banjo-dappled tongue in cheek ‘Generic Folk Song’ which, as you might gather, takes the piss out of traditional folk cliches with May morn walking, false hearted pretty maids and a gallows (“And the sad end to this sorry tale/Is that everybody died”) as he invites “Come sing along with me/With a fol-a-lol-a-lol and a too-rye-aye/And without the copyright fee”. Definitely one to haul away.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website: www.davidfishermusician.com/kings-heathens.
‘Blue Cockade’ – live:
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