Another song to dive into - this time with a nice blether beforehand with my dear pal Marcus. This was a sort of 'proof of concept', a way to frame songs that would immediately eliminate folk who prefer to consume music in 30 second snatches (no disrespect to them, obviously) - we both liked the blether, and I do like the concept. I'm also, for what it's worth, very happy with this particular song. This would be a chance for interested folk to step up and let us know whether they might enjoy more of these, though I'm aware that all the platforms I can share this on have FAR MORE URGENT JOBS FOR YOU TO DO, so no blame attached if you can't: but if you ever worry whether or not your online activism makes a difference, I can guarantee that personal responses to art make a huge, potentially career-defining difference, whilst flinging articles about the evils of the world at a numb, saturated public probably doesn't. Anyway - hope you enjoy this.
A different type of song from a similar inspiration this time. I wrote 'Silent Chorus' in 2016 while worrying about the increasingly divisive politics of the West, and perhaps the world in general. Whether it's a function of late-stage capitalism, or an accidental byproduct of social media algorithms wherein negative engagement is often more successful than positive engagement, I was and remain reluctant to be railroaded into any particular group or position: finding common ground seems to me to be one of our principle missions in life. That's not to say that I find it diifficult to condemn fascism and bigotry, for example - I don't - but I prefer to take the writer's approach, which is to say a somewhat solitary one. The scariest thing I've ever witnessed is the liminality of crowds: being the social beasts we are, we find ourselves able to do things with a group's permission that we would never consider doing alone. Those can be great things that bring us on a species, and they can be utterly shameful things, but (and here's the terrifying bit) in the moment of crowd-fuelled execution, they feel equally good. We are ready and willing to be persuaded that we are better, more righteous, more deserving than whichever group we are othering at any given time, so much so that rules which we would furiously enforce upon them do not really apply to us - when WE break the rules, it's for GOOD reasons. When THEY do it it's because they are (insert dehumanising vocabulary here). Any view, uncritically held, can lead us there with the right degree of encouragement from bad-faith actors - often the 'self-made man' mentioned in the song.
The song itself is of a type that uses music chiefly as an unobtrusive frame for the lyrics, which are lengthy and a bit convoluted. That's a consequence of their having more or less poured out in a oner. I only have a handful of songs like this in the catalogue, being somewhat in thrall to the verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus formula, but sometimes you want to avoid any 'singalong' element, you just need to get a thing off your chest.
My son Fergus, who was 11 at the time, gamely agreed to sing for this recording, a cowardly deflection on my part but a really great performance on his. He understood the point of the song inuitively and, I think, relays it better than I do when I sing it. Rather selfishly he has, in the intervening years, allowed his voice to break, which makes this a poignant listen for his parents as I'm sure you can imagine.
Silent Chorus is on There Will Be A Test At The End, one of several demo albums I've made over the years and which only I and perhaps a dozen other folk have copies of.
Will you be the German who is tutting through the shutters as the trains roll by
Or will you be the Christian busy ticking off the reasons you can shut your eyes?
Screw the Left, screw the Right, this is everybody's fight, and we're battling the evil in our hearts
It's a long road to Hell but we know the journey well, and a hatred of the stranger's where it starts
Will you be enchanted by the pretty little whispers of the self-made man
Strutting on the scaffold of the skeletons he shackled as he made his plans?
Well his dazzling election was a clever misdirection, builds a figurehead to follow or defeat
Still whenever evil comes, braying trumpets, banging drums, it's the likes of you and me that keep the beat
See the little kingdoms slickly built to keep the guilt and sorrow out of range
Mastering the darkness simply saturates the masses with a fear of change
We cajole, we corral, who's against us, who's our pal, who's the sacrifice to calm the raging seas?
Tides will rise, tides will fall, breakers burst against the wall - it's our terror that will bring us to our knees
Each of us is given just one minute, and a million choices every day
Struggle for the love or love the struggle of the jungle hunter gone astray
Comfort loosens our grip, wicked wishes crack the whip, and a black and hungry vulture takes the air
Every road goes up or down, we can climb or we can drown, be the Beast, or be the Angel if we dare.
I thought this blog might be a good place to share some of my songs with folk who have an attention span beyond that engendered by TikTok, so here's a shot across the bows. An odd choice, since this barely qualifies as a song, but I wrote this as a mood piece during Trump's first term and if anything the mood has deteriorated during his second. He's besmirching Scotland right now with his fetid personality, hence the timing.
Mean Guy was one of a number of tracks I used to develop my digital production, and to get beyond the guitar in terms of composition. You can judge for yourselves how worthwhile or effective either mission was - as usual, I had no real thought for audience appreciation (sorry!) as I was chiefly entertaining myself.
The track, and in fact the whole album, could only go so far under my stewardship, so when I felt I'd done as much as I could I went to my dear chum and studio guru Marcus Samson Wright to get into the nitty-gritty of mixing and mastering. You can hear Marcus's own fantastic music here - you'll quickly see/hear why I seek out his advice. We had a lovely summer removing all the unnecessary plug-ins and effects I'd been slathering all over everything, and Marcus was, as always, supremely generous with his expertise, explaining his process in terms I could understand and bringing on my own skills better than a month of youtube tutorials could ever do.
Anyway, here's Mean Guy - I hope you enjoy it, and if you can identify the "One, two, three, four" sample (clue - it was a countdown before I sliced and diced it), you win 600 fictional points.
A few folk have been kind enough to ask what I'm planning now that I've bid farewell to the Primary classroom. My glib answer is that I'm trusting to fortune for a bit, but I roll that out because the real answer is quite long and confused and I haven't yet got a clear idea of how to approach it all. However, for anyone who's curious, here's a wee annotated list of enterprises that I fancy a go at just now - if anyone feels like joining in for any of them, please drop me a line! (I won't include 'write a blog' in the list, but that is one of them...)
Music lessons: I got the chance, at Kirkcudbright Primary, to develop an approach to teaching music that respects the academic route, but keeps it at arm's length. That path definitely suits some folk, but I met scores of kids whose innate musicality was not immediately best-served by reading music and deep-diving into the theory. I go with the assumption that learning by discovery is nearly always more fun and effective than learning by instruction, so my job is to facilitate a student's own discoveries. That can be on a specific instrument, but it'll always be with reference to voice, percussion, the student's own taste and the musicality of language. I have a couple of students already and I look forward to every lesson - just weans so far, but it'd be a lovely journey to take with an adult. Songwriting is, was and always will be my main route into music, so that is thoroughly encouraged!
Podcasts: I cannot wait to get back into creating episodes of Oor Wee Podcast with Susi Briggs - hope to hit the ground running with that pretty soon, including developing the classroom materials that might make these useful to teachers - but there's also a new podcast on the horizon that indulges my Beatles geekdom. It's called Beatle Blethers, with me and noted political journalist Gerry Hassan (who is even more obsessed than me). If you like rambling conversations in general, and ones about that band in particular, then you'll like these. Gerry's big fat address book will be thoroughly raided and we're interviewing our first author, Graeme Thomson (George Harrison:Behind That Locked Door) this very week.That'll be three episodes in the bag, so we'll probably get round to releasing those quite soon - I will very much keep you posted, don't you worry about that.
Workshops: I already run a monthly Scots Creative Writing workshop through the marvelous charity Open Book, and have done for a few years now - I've also hosted a couple of songwriting workshops for the wonderful Mad Jam in Edinburgh - but I'm thinking of ways to bring writing and music workshops off zoom and into the real world (well, Gatehouse of Fleet, anyway). I'd love a regular songwriting/songwriters' program, there is loads of talent around without many outlets. I will need paid for this sort of thing though, and that either means charging folk (which, while perfectly reasonable, is always a bit icky) or applying for funding (which is as much fun as complex root canal work). We'll see...
Gigs: Did I mention I'm a singer-songwriter? Playing songs for a bunch of folk is my absolute favourite thing to do and I shall be looking for opportunities to do so every month. There's a few coming up - Govanhill International Festival on August 10th and Shambellie House on August 15th, to name but two. If you have a hoose that could host a concert and you've ever half-fancied doing so, why then, I'm yer man. I'll even read a poem or two, for the sake of variety.
Writing: Oh, yes, writing. I have four (I think) novels reasonably underway, in concept terms at least, and a few author visits lined up (Hawick Library in September and the Mitchell Library in October, for example) so I am still officially a writer. I'd love to get a collection of weans' stories in Scots published - I loved story collections when I was wee, and I have the stories, just not the publisher. I also finally have time to represent the Federation of Writers (Scotland), who generously voted me Scriever for the year - if I've not met a good few hundred fellow Fed members by the end of the year, I shall count my time poorly spent.
Commissions: I'm lucky enough to get the occasional musical commission, from incidental music for environmental films to full soundtracks for children's shows, and I'm very, very good at it. (What? I wouldn't have quit a secure and rewarding job if I didn't think I was any good...) The thing I need to learn how to do now is actively pursue these opportunities - if you know of a way to do this that does not involve miserable hours on social media, I'm all ears.
Farting About: this is the one I'm nailing so far.
So, friends, if you see me doing ANYTHING other than these extremely important things, feel free to wag a finger and demand a new album, or something.
