So I’ve released a new single, and it’s available to hear and buy at various locations:
So this is my new single… it’s a new version of the classic “Oak and Ash and Thorn” – with a verse taken out and verse added in.
You can listen/buy the single on Bandcamp
https://michellelaverick.bandcamp.com/track/oak-and-ash-and-thorn-single
and there’s a version on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/michelle-laverick/oak-and-ash-and-thorn
As well as a video copy on youtube:
https://youtu.be/TIYSzzA4WFI
So this is a song that many, many, many folk musicians have recorded – I know of the Unthanks and Long Johns versions – and if you are looking for a long history of the song as ever, “Mainly Norfolk” has an excellent summary:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/peter.bellamy/songs/atreesong.html
The song first became a song when Peter Bellamy recorded it in 1970, and it started its life as A Tree Song, a poem from Rudyard Kipling’s 1906 book Puck of Pook’s Hill. The Unthanks version appears on Folk Police Recordings from 2010 – Oak, Ash, Thorn. It’s a modern reinterpretation of Bellamy’s LP and is very good
https://www.discogs.com/release/7098129-Various-Oak-Ash-Thorn
I think the song was initially intended to be a rousing wassail song – and that’s how it was delivered by the Goblin Band at Folk East last year. I’d have to say I really enjoyed the energy and puckish passion the Goblins put into their performance. As ever, there is room for many interpretations and voices – long may that remain so. In my head, I often have a particular version as being “definitive”, and the Unthanks version is close to that for me. In my case although I love puckishness in performance, I don’t think I’m personally very puckish.
Even when Kipling wrote these lines, I sensed that that period was already long gone. A way of life and traditions was lost amid a period often called “Olde England”. Some might say a nostalgic or romanticised vision of “merrie old England” (a world of ye olde shoppe beloved of tourists) that overlooks the crushing poverty that most working rural people experience – some of our oldest traditions involve going door to door – performing to get money or food from the local gentry. Anyway, I’m no folklorist, so I’m probably a way off beam – I’ll say no more – save to say these were thoughts going through my head as I worked on my version. So rather than it being a joyful song of bacchanalian revelry – I was going for something much darker.
To my modern ears, I heard something different. Firstly, I’m playing in the minor key of Gm, which gives an air of sadness and darkness around the track, influencing my interpretation. A song that regretfully remembers the past. For that reason, I put the song in the past tense – to try to enforce a sense of the times passed rather than anything to do with the past — the loss of rural areas by mass industrialisation and urbanisation. For the guitarists out there – I’m tuned down two stops from standard tuning – it takes the attack of strings – and adds a mellowness to the tone, which I quite like. So the Am I play on the 5th fret – is actually a Gm. It’s tuning I used on “Gone Tomorrow”, a Lennon-style ode to Paul McCartney that I did as part of a songwrighting challenge – I got the idea from learning that McCartney’s Yesterday was recorded two steps down on a guitar. And if it’s good enough for a Beatle, it’s good enough for yours truly.
Secondly, and most importantly to me – when I hear “Oak and Ash and Thorn”, I hear an environmental protest song. As I write, the fires are raging in Los Angeles – one vision I have is our modern life being swiftly and unexpectedly swept away by ecological catastrophes, forcing people to come together for survival. To be clear, I don’t wish or welcome this – and think it could be easily avoided. So, that impacted my vocal delivery. I wanted it to sound angry, like a protest song. That was especially in part about the priests and meeting at night to “conjuring Summer in”. In my head, the “priests” become the false prophets who tell us the world cannot and should not be changed – and the meeting at night is like an illegal political gathering – so it’s important the “priests” don’t find. Clearly, something magical – pre-Christian is going on here – and folks need to be quiet about their subversion and sedition!
I had made changes to the words – In the end, I removed a verse – this one:
Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever Aeneas began;
Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,
When Brut was an outlaw man;
Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town
(From which was London born);
Witness hereby the ancientry
Of Oak and Ash and Thorn!
I’ve never really liked the verse – I think it’s a bit clunky. In Kipling’s time, it wasn’t unusual to include classical references (Aeneas appears in Virgil’s Aeneid, an epic poem that, in essence, explains how Rome was founded and thus the start of the Roman Empire). I’m not sure why this is the case. But I think writers needed to show that what they were doing was highbrow or high art – or maybe just flash off their classical education!
Removing the verse created the space I needed to add a new verse. That’s right, I think I can match Kipling. Seriously, now it’s a folk song – it’s ripe for being modified and changed for whatever purposes we like. I’ve noticed people like Frankie Archer enjoy modifying the endings of songs or the words to a song. And that gave me the encouragement and license (if any is needed) to have a go myself.
So my new verse ends the song with:
The Holly stands in the winter lands,
With crimson berries bright,
And Birch, so pale, tells the olden tale
Of the fading Northern light.
But when the frost is set, and the snow is wet,
And the fire crackles ’til morn,
the strength we will find in branches intertwined,
Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn
So in spite of all the darkness and eerie feeling, I love to put into my music – the “protest” element is about saying that although those times are past – they could be discovered again – in the world of solidarity and community.
A word about the music and artwork. The single was recorded at Ben Haynes Studio, with Ben providing piano, bass, and scratchy violin, while the guitar and vocals were recorded live, with the harmonium added afterwards. Nina Eggens provided the artwork. I met Nina by social networking – she’s a musician AND an artist (and business coach) – aren’t these multi-talented people amazing? Well, being uni-talented myself, I’m always impressed by folks who have talents in multiples.