Our Town

Kate Rusby

Up the street beside the red neon light
That's where I met my baby on a hot summers night
He was the tender and I ordered a beer
It's been forty years and I'm still sat here.

Can't you see the sun's sinking fast
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on then and kiss it goodbye
But hold on to your lover 'cause your heart's gonna die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can't you see the sun's going down on our town, on our town
Goodnight.

It's where I met my baby and I had my first kiss
I've walked up Main street in the cold morning mist
Over there is where I bought my first car
I turned it over once now it won't go far.

Can't you see the sun's sinking fast
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on then and kiss it goodbye
But hold on to your lover 'cause your heart's gonna die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can't you see the sun's going down on our town, on our town
Goodnight.

Sat here on the poarch I see the lightning bugs fly
I can't see too well for the tears in my eyes
I leave tomorrow and I don't want to go
Oh I love you my town you'll always live in my soul.

I can see the sun's sinking fast
And just like you've said, nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on I've got to kiss you goodbye
But I'll hold to my lover 'cause my heart's gonna die.
Go on then and say goodbye to my town, to my town
Can't you see the sun's going down on my town, on my town
I can see the sun's sinking fast
And just like you've said, nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on I've got to kiss you goodbye
But I'll hold to my lover 'cause my heart's just died.
Go on then and say goodbye to my town, to my town
I can see the sun's gone down on my town, on my town
Goodnight.

The Cloud Factory

Sometimes you hear a song that is so touching and that can speak so tenderly it brings tears. Bill Caddick's song does that. Listen to June Tabor singing on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMYYkDJDUYI









The Cloud Factory
(Bill Caddick)

My father worked in the Cloud Factory,
He'd come home wreathed in dreams each day
My Mother took his cloudy clothes
To brush the threads of dreams away.
She'd scold and say "you and your dreams,
They're just for kids and fools like you."
But Father he'd just wink his eye and smile and say "Are you sure that's true?"

Chorus
My Father taught me how to sing. He sang that dreams were everything,
Can't be bought and can't be sold, More than silver,more than gold.

My Mother thought him fanciful,
She used to chide him all the while,
But me, I thought him wonderful,
Do anything to see him smile.
I used to hear him singing low,
The words are with me to this day:
"You have to hold on to youre dreams or else they simply slip away".

The last time I saw him ill and dying,
The only time I saw him cry.
Too late for dreams to come true now,
As he watched his last cloud rolling by.
Back home she opened windows wide,
And let the clouds out strand by strand
Til all but one had blown away and I caught and kept it in my hand.

My Mother doesn't do much lately
With no more clouds to clear away.
since they closed the factory down
No dreams seem to drift this way.
I found her sitting alone and still,
at first I thought her fasst asleep.
But Father'sd coat lay in her lap and around her feet the dreams lay deep.

Chorus
She said "He taught me how to sing......

Sometimes I pass the disused factory
And gaze into the empty sky,
and if I let the fancy lead me
A dream or two comes drifting by.
Oh I'll teach me children how to sing,
To sing that dreams are everything,
Can't be bought and can't be sold - More than silver, More than gold.


This track from At the Wood's Heart

Childhood moments

Along the Ardentinny road that winds down to the beach the low stone walls and trees are covered in lichens and mosses - they are old these walls - round riverboulder topped as west Scotland walls are made to endure. Walking along by them on a chillsnap February day the quiet is precious. On the wet open tussocks a flock of Curlews forages alongside of a gang of Oystercatchers and in the conifer branches there the yellow flash of Siskin. Out on the water of Loch Long the Eider duck oooh! ooh! to each other as though permanently surprised. We walked along the beach - tellins and mussels strewn by the sw gales just yesterday. Just the one pot boat that plies the Clyde for crab to send to eager diners. On this brisk day it was a time for a wee lass to toss pebbles at waves and wonder at things to see. These are fleeting precious moments easily forgot in the bustle of days. A shell in a pocket - a birdsong - a shared smile and holding of hands.
There is an irongrey about a winter beach - a corpsecold wind that nips little fingers. But nobody ails and laughter is singing its own goodtime song. For an adventurous pirate there are trees to climb and things to see and dare. Childhood like this is just the best and what wonder it is to share its moments. What would we now offer to visit its wonder again if but for a few moments. It is for us to make the moments for our children and grandchildren and hope we have made the memories that will be as ours are - precious treasures of times past that made us and gave us the will and need to love life and cherish its future.


Trees don't have to be high - its not the height - its what you can see and imagine when you get there.

June Tabor

If you haven't listened to June Tabor then you really need to.
Listen to her here singing a Richard Thompson song - adapted from a Sufi poem - Strange affair.
Martin Simpson's guitar is - as all his work - beyond compare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVFpMLE6WIo

The Cuckoo

Here is a song collected from Mary Langsworthy in Stoke Fleming South Devon in 1892 by Sabine Baring Gould. He went around the South West of England writing listening to ordinary people - mostly old - sing songs they had sung all their lives and that had been handed down from generation to generation. The Baring Gould manuscripts are in Plymouth Library. Back in the 1960's you could actually use the original manuscripts and this is one of the songs I collected and used myself. It was a well enough known song throughout England and could be found in various early 19th C. publications. The theme of the song seems to be that the inconstant lover is first likened to a Cuckoo that is a rover and lastly to a Sycamore which drops its leaves early.

The Cuckoo

The Cuckoo is a pretty bird she sings as she flies
Her bringeth good tidings her telleth no lies
Her sucketh sweet floers to keep her voice clear
And when she sings cuckoo the summer draweth near.

O meeting is a pleasure but parting is griewf
An inconstant lover is worse than a thief
A thief can but rob me of all that I have
But an inconstant lover wil send me to the grave.

The grave will receive me and bring me to dust
An inconstant lover no maiden can trust
They'll court you and kiss you poor maids to deceive
There's not one in twenty that one may beleive

Come all you fair maidens wherever you may be
Don't hang your poor hearts on the Sycamore tree
The leaf it will wither the roots will decay
And if I'm forsaken I persih away.

Here is a scan of the melody with chords.