River Gypsy

Armstrong & Shoesmith

River Gypsy
Performed By Armstrong & Shoesmith
Album UPC 5029385995164
CD Baby Track ID TR0001689821
Label Carlenrig Music
Released 2012-08-02
BPM 120
Rated 0
ISRC UK2BU1200007
Year 2012
Spotify Plays 9
Writers
Writer James Dennis Pollock
Pub Co James Pollock
Composer James Dennis Pollock
ClearanceFacebook Sync License,Traditional Sync,YouTube Sync ServiceOne Stop
Rights Controlled Master and Publishing Grant
Rights One-Stop: Master + 100% Pub Grant
Original/Cover/Public Domain original
Country FRANCE

Description

Original folk rock compositions about ageless themes with scintillating harmonies, haunting melodies and fabulous musicianship.

Notes

This album contains 12 songs, most of which were written in the past ten years. Four of them were written before then, three of them nearly 30 years ago.

SONG FOR JENNY I wrote about the 7/7 London bombings and the line 'despite everything life is full of beauty and meaning' was quoted by the mother of one of the victims in her book of the same name as the song and comes from the writer, Etty Hillesum, who died in Auschwitz in 1943. It is meant to be a positive song .

THE HIGHWAYMAN I got the idea for whilst watching a recent film of Moll Flanders. The words 'live fast, die young' come from Fielding's book. I prefer now to live very slowly and die very, very old...
Cabin Boy, the autobiographical tale of a Trafalgar veteran, just came to me out the ether as I was driving along : ready- formed and needing little to finish it. We souped up Phil's solo on this to give it a nice contrasting feel.

AIRMAIL FROM BRAZIL I wrote at a party a lifetime ago, when the poet and stuckist painter Bill Lewis gave me the lyrics written out in longhand and said, "You can have those to make a song out of..."

WHEN DRAGONS FLEW is one of my break- up songs of which I have written a few...tried to get an archetypal feel to this.
Paradise Row, the title track, is about a little street in Sandwich and is my homage to the Dubliners. I spent several years in a band called Drowsie Maggie singing most of their back catalogue and I'm surprised it hasn't rubbed off on me more. The subject matter is suitably bawdy and salty like the best of those rousing old trad. Irish songs.

RIVER GYPSY, is another archetypally themed ditty. Started off as a blues and then went somewhere completely different.

Somebody's Mother I wrote years ago after reading a newspaper article about an elderly lady who'd died of hypothermia in her home.

PIRATE ROUND is not about a horizontally-challenged buccaneer but the piracy practised by the American Colonists in the 17th century when they sailed to the Indian Ocean in search of Moghul ships to plunder.
Roses and Castle is a short history of British transport from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present day but it rocks (in a folky way).

GALLOWS FIELD is what is known as 'folk noir'. A tale of crime, punishment, love, bloody revenge and tragic death that I wrote because I wanted to write a song about a smuggler and his woman. The story just came to me out of the blue. The field was used as a place of execution and is just outside the medieval town of Sandwich in Kent, England, where I helped to start the increasingly renowned Folk Festival.

HAPPY ENDINGS I prefer in any film I watch or book I read which limits my choice a bit...

I am now living and performing in France and working on a new album with a different band - Bleu Charrette. Victoria Shoesmith and Phil Curry are still living and working in the UK.

I hope you enjoy the album.

James Armstrong

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