Playing everything except sax and drums, which, along with bass on one track, are handled by Graham Crawford, Different Kinds Of Folk is Edinburgh-based Ferguson’s finest and most accessible album to date, kicking off in fine form with the cascading jangling chimes of ‘Reel to Reel’ (coincidentally evoking but nothing to with the Ferguson tape recorders), a musing on the march of time and being caught in a moment of history. Inspired by a news item about a gladiator’s bones being found in an urn in a museum collection (“thought his name would live forever, now you have to pay to go and see him”) that links to the way Dutch Old Masters specialised in paintings of tavern scenes that freeze time (“Something about that painting though, that catches in your eye; some ancient frozen moment there’s some darkness in the sky; in the courtyard of a tavern, and all of life is shown, there’s a woman who knows better, and a boy not fully grown”). It moves through time to the present as we are now the ones in history’s arena facing down the lions as progress and obsolescence (as embodied in the means of recording moments in time) consign us to the past.
There’s more jangle on the circular pattern of notes that carry ‘Morning Song’ where “half-remembered words from half-forgotten songs” are “just like half-remembered promises from half-forgotten nights”, a musing on how easily we get distracted (“they sort of had my attention till I heard something new”), whether from music, relationships or life in general (“isn’t that just like the thing, how life keeps rolling on, from the corner of your eye you see it go”) but accepting that’s just how it can sometimes be (“I won’t hold you to them, even if I held them dear; that isn’t your fault that much I know”).
Ferguson’s an author and poet as well as a musician and that sensibility informs several songs, the first being his 60s folk troubadour-styled affectionate snapshot of the community built around and frequenting the ‘Neighbourhood Bar’ for company (“Old guy over there, table by the door; says it’s his last one, but there’s always one more/Sees his wife every morning, she’s in a home, ducks in here on the way back, better n’ being alone”) or refuge (This bar’s our safe haven, just hang up your dreams at the door, cheap whisky is our saviour; so we tell ourselves when asking for one more”).
It includes the line “There are times when I feel less than half a man, best part of me’s still in Afghanistan” and that legacy of war finds powerful expression in the near acoustic strummed eight-minute album standout ‘Ballad Of Billy Robertson”, a harmonica-shaded waltzing sway that’s somewhere between Eric Bogle and Country Joe McDonald that narrates the story of titular character, who “grew up a handful, causing trouble at school” before joining up, serving sixteen years and ten deployments in hot zones like Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan where he “fought hard and fought bravely not for ribbons on his chest but for the men in his company, and the regimental crest” even if he “did things he wasn’t proud of, but it was an eye for an eye”.
But the world back home falls apart (“His folks they were farmers, brother and sister in oil; didn’t have to kill anyone, for a day’s honest toil; but the economy crumbled, there were budgets to meet, missed both his parents’ funerals, saw his brother on the street”) and he comes to question why he’s fighting (“In Iraq oil wells burned, didn’t save jobs back home; burned the Afghani poppy fields, drugs still took his own”) and being a pawn in politics (“Got told they were pulling back, no longer their war; sure got Billy wondering what all the killing was for; politician came to talk to them, Billy stared at the man; no blood on his uniform, but there was blood on his hands”).
His brother dead of an overdose, the narrative turns to one of despair, lost in freezing snow and, praying for forgiveness for “all the hurt he’d brought, into the world”, finding a miracle of salvation in “the roof of the farmhouse, standing clear of the snow” as it ends with the grace of redemption “Still has no religion, but what happened that night means God and him are on speaking terms, and he thinks that’s all right;/now he lives clean and sober, helps his sister on the farm; and he lives by one single law, not to do any harm”. It’s quite magnificent.
They say write about what you know and, harmonica again blowing, ‘St. Anthony Street’ is firmly set in Edinburgh along with a reference to Jeremiah’s, a taproom on Leith Walk, as he sketches the end of the week scene where “white collars fill the bars along the Shore; that first taste of a cold one’s what coming in on Friday’s for; they’ll go home on the top deck, struggle to their seat with darkness falling on St Anthony Street”. The song talking of football (“Big game on tomorrow, ‘Sunshine’ ringing from the stands; will the boys in green and white play like they’ve an extra man?”) and hen nights wearing “party sashes with just a hint of pride”. It’s not quite ‘Under Milk Wood’ but you get the idea.
If a pint or a wee dram in Jeremiah’s is about escaping the workaday grind, then, like an East Lothian Woody Guthrie, ‘Backshift’ is about enduring it (“Put on your work ID, you know it tells you who you are, 12 straight hours of backshift and then straight into a bar; you drink to have no memory, drink so you don’t care”) but “when you wake up in the morning the memory’s still there”. Cleverly, the last verse reverses the first with “Put on your work ID but it won’t tell you who you are, 12 straight hours of backshift then you walk straight past the bar; keep on past the second one, keep straight on home and then remember in the morning you’ll have to do it all again” with the message that “some endings are imposed on you, there’s some you get to choose”.
With ringing resonator guitar chords, ‘Superman’ is a lovely song about how as a child we want our fathers to be heroes (“When I was a little boy, my Dad was Superman in disguise; he didn’t tell anyone, you just knew from the look in his eyes”) and as we grow up finding new heroes only to discover that “most of them had big old feet of clay”. However, like an old raincoat, the old man never let you down (“Never taught me how to fly, but then his feet were always on the ground; taught me loads of other stuff; stuff that it’s been good to have around”) until, inevitably, “the day just had to come…turned out that Superman finally had to fly”.
Again with resonant chords and set to an old school hymnal-like melody, ‘The Plough’ is different take on relationships, specially screwing them up by screwing around (“See, I met this other woman, and from the path with her I strayed, guess I could try to blame the whisky but it just helped me on my way/Whisky is no judge of character, least it doesn’t do it well, it just breaks up something beautiful, sends the pieces straight to hell”) and the all too familiar fall-out (“For your sins you have to pay a price, in empty rooms I stand alone; get to see the kids on Sundays, rest of the week I’m on my own”) and of now trying to stay on the straight and narrow (“Got my eyes on the horizon, got my hand upon the plough/And I’ve learned not to hope for more than Heaven will allow”).
Again firmly in the frame of 60s folk protest troubadours, the infectious ‘What Do I Know? (Change Has Got To Come)’ is also about remaking yourself and your perspectives (“Knew so little of women, make a grown man weep, wouldn’t get your ankles wet when I thought that my thoughts were so deep feels like I know nothing, the more that I know; one thing that I know, you gotta go, we gotta make a change”) and not throwing metaphorical holier than though stones (“Can’t trust politicians guess that’s no big surprise but watch out for glass houses all those who would criticise”).
Pessimism about humankind is thick in the madrigal-like arrangement of ‘World Keeps Turning’ as he sings how “They burned the heretic anyway, safer so they said, good people came along to watch the burning/Someone told a dirty joke and others shook their heads” and of “When the jackboots came and hit the ground there wasn’t any need for iron gloves, in iron fists/The neighbours did collaborate to let the others bleed/ask the people with the numbers on their wrists”, with the despairing resignation that “all that is beautiful, and all that is kind, the human race will find a way to let it slip their mind”.
He’s in equally downbeat mood with the final ‘Travelling Through Alone’ which may open on note contentment (“got good music on my phone/got no deadline to be living by”) but quickly turns to melancholic reflection (“here’s a place I worked at years ago, here’s a street where once a friendship died, all these people that I used to know, all those times I had to say goodbye”) and of having to just rely on yourself when you’re trapped in a world where all the streets are cul de sacs (“these places maybe used to be my home, all that rubble was some factories, just like me now they’ve been so long gone…Folk get on and off again, maybe two stops on, why go any further when your dream of escape has gone”) and how there’s “none so blind as simply cannot see, who they were and who they damn well are”.
Different folks, different strokes perhaps but Ferguson’s melodies, words, insights and empathies are a constant you can rely on.
Those that buy through Bandcamp will also get a bonus track cover of Dylan’s ‘Shooting Star’.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.andrewfergusonassiasa.bandcamp.com
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