Born in Belfast and now based in Co. Antrim, Hall is both a songwriter/poet and a children’s storybook author/illustrator, both of which feed into Wake The Blue Sleeper, his eighth album. The latter sensibility is captured on several tracks, the first being the opening ‘Banana Banana’, which originating as a nonsense number for his youngest granddaughter developed into the fun singalong, comprising just the title, that has a very pronounced tropical lilt. Indeed, one of the prevailing characteristics of the album is the way Hall fuses Irish roots with Caribbean and African colours, case in point being the reggae infused ‘Monkey Just Might’, a call and response animals-themed number that grew out of school workshops which would have slotted perfectly into albums by The Pioneers, Toots & The Maytals or Dave and Ansell Collins.
More directly Gaelic in tone and subject matter, driven by distant Uillean pipes and hollow drumbeats, evocative of Christy Moore, moody and hypnotic with a tiddly um refrain ‘The Reiver And The Gael’ tells the story of The Border Reivers, clans who lived on the borders of England and Scotland in the late 1500s and, as a consequence of the many wars, were forced to live a life of crime, from rustling to murder and blackmail, the term originating from the protection money paid to avoid being raided by chieftains and outlaws.
Also with a historical background, this time set in 1792, opening with melancholic strings before slipping into a reggae lilt, ‘Duggie Dubh’ relates the story of an Irish highwayman who was sent to Jamaica for his crimes despite protesting “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. I was far away”, the repeated title refrain an aural play on words with regard to the predicament he finds himself in.
On a different musical and narrative note, ‘Looking For Your Lights’ is an accordion and fiddle-surging rowdy bluesy rocking romp with the protagonist out on the pull in the bars and clubs on a Saturday night, more vintage rock n roll influences to be found on the lazing doo wop, fiddle, piano and organ backed ‘Sheepi Sheepi Moo Bah Bah’ which might sound like another kiddies’ song but is actually a lost sheep story tribute to Elvis and Sun Records featuring a sheep and a cow called Buddy who may have a friendship probably not suited to young ears.
Also digging into a musically retro American bluesy groove, ‘See You See Me’ with harmonica and organ frills is actually a song about likely change over the next twenty years as Pluto moves into the age of Aquarius and as such has a kind of link to ‘The Green Man’, a folksier flavour again with tropical touches that takes the mythic figure as a call for growth, change and positive transformation for local environments, not least in a greater emphasis on recycling.
Also of an environmental persuasion, opening with the sound of waves and featuring Mick Parker on accordion and piano, ‘One Hand And The Whale’ is a lilting swayer about humankind’s impact on the ecology (“Oh I am the whale and I live in the sea/What are you making that’s just killing me”) and sounding the cautionary note “And when you are gone we will tell tales of you/The woman the man and the children we knew/For they all lived amongst us when we shared this land/When we were so young we were just like one hand”, the image of interconnection drawing on the ancient symbol of the Red Hand of Ulster and a call for peace rather the division with which it’s usually associated.
Ulster being originally used to designate all of Northern Ireland, the capital seat is Belfast, where Hall spent thirty two years before moving to East Antrim and which is the backdrop to the slow march folk sway ‘The Boatyard’, recalling how he could see the shipyards as a child that, with strummed guitar, pipes and organ, imagines a man named Noah McFreeboy working there, his line about “the boats we are building are so strange and new” serving to speak of forging new ideas as a community where self-interest is not the driving force (“I’m working with friends and relations/All nations are working down here…there’s many a colour around me/There’s many a language I’ve heard/They hammer and bang, they saw and they weld/But there’s nothing they make that’s absurd/For no one is grabbing for money/No one is grabbing for power”). Whether directed at Ireland or more universal, the message is clear: “We’ve a new manifesto this year/all women and men are equal/All islanders under one sun/For the S.S. Sectarian broke on these rocks/And their crew, well their race/Is so nearly run”.
It ends with ‘Yaheya’ which, apparently began as a song to a dead badger by the roadside and developed into another workshop number which, Hall on mandolin and Kenyan hand drum and comprising just the repeated title, has an unmistakable Native American tribal chant sound and form.
The album title refers to the mask we wear in public rather than presenting our authentic self, and a call to awaken to those untapped possibilities, to reach out and connect with others – just as he melds musical genres – and to recognise the responsibilities we have to them and the world in which we live – blue sky thinking.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.randolphstephenhallsongs.com
‘The Reiver And The Gael’ – live:
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