Will Varley - Seize The Night - (official video)

Vince Gill, David Crosby, Jimmy Web - Surf's Up

The Last Time I Saw Dave Crosby

After hearing the sad news that Dave Crosby has passed away, I thought I would repeat a story that I wrote in 2014 after seeing Crosby, Stills, & Nash in Bristol. Two of the photos are from Glastonbury 2009 which I also saw.

Glastonbury 2009

Me and Smithy took our seats in Row E right near the stage and on walked the three legends. It was great to see them this close up. Crosby looks remarkably well with his mane of long silver hair and Nash is in very good shape as well. I'm not so sure about Stills. I think he is the youngest of the three, but he doesn't seem to walk that well and his speaking voice is quite croaky, but boy can he play the guitar. I think his guitar playing was the highlight of the evening for me. The first song they did was Carry On from the Deja Vu album, and you realise immediately that their singing voices are intact. They can still sing as well as ever. A lot of other singers of their generation are shot away vocally but CSN are perfect. They followed that with Marrakesh Express their big hit single from the debut album. Then a favourite of mine Long Time Gone, this song always reminds me of the opening scenes from the film Woodstock. Crosby excelled himself on this song. 

Then it was Steve Stills turn to show what he could do with Southern Cross his brilliant song from the 1982 album Daylight Again. He wrote it after getting divorced and it is about how music is his consolation.  Then they introduced Crosby's son James Raymond the keyboard player on a song called Lay Me Down. James Raymond wrote this song, and it is the opening track of Crosby & Nash's double album of 2004. Very nice it is too. Then it was back to Crosby for a song called Radio, I think it was called that anyway. I didn't recognise the next one either. It was a bluesy song sung by Steve Stills. I knew the next one though when Graham Nash sat at the keyboards for Cathedral from the 1977 album CSN. The song is about an LSD experience he had in Winchester Cathedral. 

Then it was one of the highlights of the whole evening for me when Steve Stills performed the Buffalo Springfield song Bluebird. The song evolved into an incredible guitar solo that Jimi Hendrix would have been proud of. It proves that Steve Stills was and is one of the great guitarists of all time. He was rewarded with a standing ovation by large sections of the audience. Then it was back to Crosby who said his job was to write the weird shit for the band and performed Deja Vu. This was brilliant and gave all the band a chance to show their skills. After the song Nash introduced the other five members of the band. I can't remember all their names but there was Tom from Lubbock Texas. Stevie D on drums, I think it was Kev McCormack on bass, Shane Fontaine on guitar and James Raymond on keyboards. 

Glasto 2009.

The next song was Love The One you're With which the whole audience sang along with. Then Nash announced that they were taking a twenty-minute break. They had been playing for ninety minutes. If this was a Van Morrison show it would be over now! We went outside for a drink and got chatting to a kid from Liverpool who is a huge CSN fan and had seen them at the Albert Hall a few nights earlier, but he said tonight was better. I think it’s great that they have some young fans. Then it was back inside for the second half which began with the song of alliteration Helplessly Hoping from their debut album. Then Nash said "We're here. we're alive. So, let’s kick ass". He sang a song that I think might be called Golden Days. It was very pleasant anyway. It was back to the genius of Stills then for Treetop Flyer from his 1991 solo album. This was received warmly by his devotees at the front, and he shook hands with some of them. Then Crosby & Nash sang the unaccompanied political song What Are Their Names?. This was followed by one of my favourites Guinnevere and then another great song Just A Song Before I Go. Nash wrote both those songs I believe. This was followed by another powerful political song called Burning For The Buddha which is about monks burning themselves in protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet which gets hardly any exposure in the press. I think the tragedy of CSN is that they are still coming up with great songs, but the audience just want to hear the old material. The next song was Triad which I think Crosby originally wrote for the Byrds. It’s all about the joys of having two girlfriends. Then it was Our House which Nash wrote for Joni Mitchell when they were living in Laurel Canyon. The whole audience sang along with this. I did do a little bit of filming during the evening but during this song a security man told me to put my camera away. Another of Nash's most famous songs followed Teach Your Children which again got warm applause. One of my favourite Crosby songs followed which was Almost Cut My Hair.

Sadly, that proved to be the last song for us because i was getting worried that we would miss the last train. I really wanted to hear Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, because that's my favourite but alas it wasn't to be. Thank you very much Crosby Stills & Nash for a wonderful evening.

R.I.P David Crosby.

KATE RUSBY - THE WILD GOOSE

Sauntering.

It is January 16^th. I am halfway through Dry January now. It has been a breeze, I have enjoyed it. I haven’t missed alcohol at all, but I bet they are missing me in the pub. Never mind, it is only two weeks to go. Not drinking in January was one of my New Year resolutions. Another was to go for a walk every day. I have kept to that one as well, but I added a proviso which is ‘if it isn’t raining’ because we have had a lot of heavy rain recently. We are back into a cold snap this week which means sunshine. I had a nice saunter through Southwick Country Park this afternoon. It was very enjoyable, getting some fresh air and communing with nature. A lot of people hate wintertime, but the way of getting through it is to embrace it. Get out there and start walking. You soon warm up when you get walking. I don’t walk quickly, I stroll, or saunter. I saw a quote about sauntering a few days ago by John Muir. He was a famous Scottish/American environmentalist and author.

“I don't like either the word hike or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre', 'To the Holy Land.' And so, they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.”

I forgot to take my camera out today, but I did yesterday when I had a bit of a saunter. The photos aren't that great, but they will have to do to illustrate today’s little blog.

 

 

Hebden Bridge Circa 1971-1974 by Trevor Beales.

Hebden Bridge is a small market town in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire about eight miles west of Halifax. I can’t remember ever visiting there, but I’d like to if I ever get up to Yorkshire again. That is because these days it is a popular tourist attraction famed for its arts and culture and has a vibrant music scene. It is home to artists, writers, photographers, musicians, alternative practitioners, teachers, Green and New Age activists and more recently, wealthier 'yuppie' types. The popular TV drama Happy Valley was filmed there, and Dream Academy made the original video for Life In A Northern Town in Hebden Bridge. 

It hasn’t always been such a pleasant town. In the early 1970s it was a grim post-industrial town in decline with the buildings black with factory soot and polluted with asbestos from a closed mill where 12% of the former workforce had lung disease. Change was beginning to happen though. Hippie types had begun to move in, attracted by the ease to squat in abandoned houses and the proliferation of magic mushrooms in the surrounding landscape. The counterculture had arrived. Trevor Beales wasn’t one of these new arrivals, Hebden Bridge was his hometown. He was a gifted singer-songwriter and guitarist born in 1953. In 1971 at the age of 18 in the attic of his home at 1 Ivy Bank, Charlestown, Hebden Bridge he began recording his songs on tape. They lay dormant for decades until a chance meeting in 2018 between his wife Christine and an old friend of Trevor’s called John Armstrong led to the tapes being rediscovered. This led to the songs being compiled into an album by Basin Rock records and released in December 2022 as Fireside Stories, Hebden Bridge circa 1971-1974.

Photo by Christine Beales.

I first heard of the forthcoming release in November when I read an interview with Christine Beales in The Guardian. Then last week on a Facebook folk music group I read somebody singing the praises of this new album, saying it was a ‘lost classic’, which is a claim I have heard many times before. I decided to order the CD which arrived a couple of days ago, and I have been listening to it on this dark rainy afternoon. It is an attractive looking CD with monochrome photos of the area taken by Charlie Meecham in 1969/70. 

Listening to the music I must say I am very impressed with his deftness on the acoustic guitar. It created a nice peaceful atmosphere in my kitchen today. I read that Trevor was inspired by the likes of James Taylor, Chet Atkins, and Django Reinhardt. The names that sprang to mind when I first heard him were Bert Jansch and Jackson C. Frank, but I don’t even play the guitar, so others might think differently. I especially liked the fingerpicking of the opening track Marion Belle which is a seafaring yarn about a ship ‘sailing into hell’. It shows a flair for story telling in his lyrics. Tell Me Now is a similar type of song which tells the tale of young John who was hanged after an affair with the mayor’s daughter. It sounds like a traditional English folk song, but the sleeve notes say that all the tracks were written by Trevor, apart from Braziliana written by Dave Evans. Metropolis is a song about the loneliness of moving to a big city. Considering that these recordings were made during the ages 18 to 21 I think Trevor’s voice sounds very mature for his age, apart from some tracks where he sings in a higher register which I don’t think is so successful. For me, the outstanding track is Then I’ll Take You Home which I have shared below, so you can judge for yourself. To my ears it is very reminiscent of  Ralph McTell. If every song was as good as this one, I would say that it is a great album, rather than just enjoyable. In Hebden Bridge at the time, many of the hippie element had become followers of the guru Maharaj Ji and his Divine Light Mission. Trevor looked on this with disdain as shown in the lyrics and was contemptuous of charlatan mystics. The lyrics also show that he would rather have some beer than smoke pot. The bluesy last track Fireside Story made me think of John Martyn.

Later in the 70s Trevor formed a prog-rock group called Havana Lake who released one album called Concrete Valley in 1977 which didn’t have much success probably due to punk rock exploding onto the scene. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it wasn’t re-released soon. Sadly, Trevor died suddenly in 1987 from sepsis at the early age of 33, leaving Christine and a daughter Lydia who was only eight months old at the time. It must be wonderful for Lydia to see her father finally get the recognition he deserved. I am glad I bought this album. I don’t think it is the greatest thing I have ever heard, but the guitar playing is excellent. If you like the sound of folky bluesy acoustic guitar songs, you might enjoy it as well.

Hebden Bridge Today.