childe rolande

2011-12-18T22:36:00.005Z

I thought you said we could fix it in the mix? - photo courtesy of Sue Richards

As you can see from the picture, the new album is in the final stages of mixing. "Turn it up" "No, turn it down". As you can see, Alice has the right idea, carry on with her Viking weaving until the rest of the committee have argued themselves to a standstill and then give the casting vote.

For a change the majority of the album comprises traditional songs. Traditional material has always made up a significant part of our repertoire so it seemed appropriate to feature more of it this time. In doing research for the CD notes I realised that my exposure to English traditional song dates back to 1969 and the release of three albums that had a great influence on my musical outlook from then until the present day.

The first was 'Liege and Lief' by Fairport Convention. It marked their move from contemporary American West Coast singer/songwriter material to find a more 'English' sound and in turn set off the folk rock genre. We had already been covering a number of their earlier songs so it was logical to explore the origins of the songs on their ground-breaking album.

The second was 'Anthems in Eden' by Shirley and Dolly Collins. Not only did it feature wonderful songs sung by Shirley in her natural Sussex accent and Dolly's distinctive instrumental settings on portative organ and piano, but it also featured the Early Music Consort lead by David Munro and began my love affair with the sound of medieval instruments and trying to play them!

The third was 'Galleries' by the Young Tradition which introduced me to the more than distinctive voice of Peter Bellamy. This album was released shortly before they broke up but it started off my interest in unaccompanied singing which in turn led to discovering The Watersons and back to the Copper Family. The 'Galleries' album also featured the Early Music Consort.

That's enough for now. So I will conclude by wishing you all, on behalf of everyone in Childe Rolande, a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

Regards - John

2011-10-09T09:50:00.008+01:00

A concert shot courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

We've done some initial mixing of the album and the intention is to get a rough version for everyone in the band to listen to on different systems and to make comments on instrument balance and whether anything needs to be re-recorded or added. At the moment it looks like the album will be twelve tracks with three of them self compositions and the rest traditional although some have new melodies. Bruce will be putting some short clips of some of the 'work in progress' song mixes up on the website for you to listen to in due course.

I am getting near to finishing the shooting for the video of Phaedra and hope to have it uploaded by the end of the year. While on the subject of videos we've had a couple of favourable comments on videos already on YouTube - Film Noir and Shepherds Arise. Thank you to the people concerned. It 's certainly nice to have positive feedback. It makes everything worthwhile.

Regards - John

2011-04-17T11:30:00.008+01:00

Shepherds Arise live at Birling Church March 2011

Well, I have finally finished uploading the video of us performing Shepherds Arise and you can see it by clicking on the link below. Our lingering memory of the concert is that it was bitterly cold in the church that evening - probably you can hear our teeth chattering in the background. In strict rhythm, of course! Nevertheless, we really enjoyed it and we got lots of positive feedback in the days following the concert. Maybe we'll go back again - when it's warmer!

Regards - John

2011-03-27T18:47:00.004+01:00

A still from the forthcoming Phaedra video

Work is coming along well on the new album and the final recording sessions will be taking place over the next few weeks. Alongside the recording over the last few months I have been putting together a video for the song, Phaedra. It's going to take a while before it's ready to go onto YouTube. In the meantime there will shortly be a video uploaded of the live performance of the unaccompanied traditional song, Shepherds Arise, for you to enjoy. Recorded at the recent Birling concert.

Regards - John

2011-03-21T21:50:00.002Z

Behind you! A view from the back line at the Birling concert

The concert at Birling Church on Saturday night was a great success. It was very well attended and raised some much needed money for the fund for the repair of the stone boundary wall. Our thanks to Nick, Rob and Robin for the design and set up of the stage lighting and to everyone else who helped - Sue on the sound desk, Clare for looking after us and Romey for the chocolate cake!

Attention now switches to completing the recording for the new album.

Regards - John

2011-03-12T20:37:00.004Z

Photo courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

The concert at Birling Church is now only a week away. Tickets are £8 (which includes refreshments) - give Dave or Margaret a call on 01732 521022 or 01732 842216 respectively to reserve a seat. The concert starts at 7.30pm. The church is in the centre of Birling at the junction of Ryarsh Road, Bull Road and Snodland Road. For you SatNav folk the address is Birling Church, Snodland Road, Birling, ME19 5 Kent. There is a car park just behind the church. Birling is just north of the M20 at the junction with the A228 for Snodland and then taking Snodland Road westward to Birling.

We will be featuring some of the songs that will be found on our new album which should be nearing completion around Easter.

Hope to see you at the concert.

Regards - John

new video

2010-12-27T17:55:00.002Z

Asleep at the guitar - photo courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

Well, Christmas is over and 2010 is nearly done. Just time to upload a video of a song from our recent concert. The song is 'Ritual' which was on our last album. The live version is a bit faster than the album version and has more menace to it. Don't be frightened!

Regards - John

2010-12-24T20:49:00.003Z

photo courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

Well, the Winter Solstice has past and it's the evening of Christmas Eve and all is quiet and there is just time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year - let's hope it is better than the 'Old' Year.

Rehearsals start in a couple of week's time in preparation for our concert in Birling, near Maidstone in Kent, in March. The two traditional songs I sent demo recordings of to the others seem to have met with approval so we might well try and work them up for the concert.

In between rehearsals we will be recording the final tracks for the new CD and hope to be starting mixing it during February.

So, happy wassailing to one and all and an enjoyable Plough Monday.

Regards - John

2010-11-28T17:05:00.004Z

A shot from the St. George's concert courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

Steady progress is being made on the recording of the new album. I must try and remember where the files are on the computer. You knew where you were with several ten inch square boxes of half inch magnetic tape - or at least the cupboard where they were!

I've just finished putting together a rough edit of the recent concert footage so that the band can see what was going on with all the amazing lighting around us. Thanks again to '10 out of 10' for organising all that. The next stage will be to choose a few of the songs to go on a DVD which will eventually be available for sale. In the meantime I will try and get a song up on the blog for people to listen to.

A few weeks ago, with Alice and Bruce's help, Sue and I hosted a house concert for Susan Enan, an English singer-songwriter now based in the USA, and currently touring the UK following Europe, Canada and USA . It was a great success and it made me think it would be great to be able to an acoustic concert ourselves. It would certainly save on the hours of setting up and taking down that goes with a full PA performance. Mind you there are six of us which will start to fill up your front room before you add in 20-25 audience members. So if you have a large lounge and you would like us to play an intimate concert for you ........

I've also found a couple more traditional songs that might work well for the band. I've prepared a demo of each and I will be sending them to the others for consideration in due course.

Regards - John

2010-10-26T07:12:00.002+01:00

On stage at the St George's concert - a still from our video footage

Well, the St George's concert is over now and went very well by all accounts. The lighting was amazing and our thanks go to all at '10 out of 10' for providing it. Eventually the concert will be available on DVD. In the meantime we are concentrating on completing the new album.

A date for our first concert in 2011 has been confirmed for March 19th and will be at Birling in Kent. More details will be available in the new year.

Regards - John

2010-10-07T07:59:00.003+01:00

What's that down there? - photo courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

Hi - Less than a fortnight now until our concert at St Georges on Saturday 16th October. One more rehearsal to go. The set list has been finalised and I am really looking forward to playing there again. This will be our fifth time. I hope you can come along.

Unfortunately the planned launch of the new CD has been delayed because of the continuing building work at the Salomonjay Studios and recording has been put on hold. Hopefully things will improve in the near future and we are hopeful of having the CD completed early in the new year. I will keep you posted on progress.

Regards - John

2010-07-25T17:11:00.004+01:00

an illustration from the demo video of 'A 1000 Ships'

In the last blog I mentioned that the song about Helen of Troy didn't end up quite like I had intended. Well I did a series of illustrations to go with it when I read the lyrics as a poem for an informal do at Christmas. The drawing above is the characters taking their final bow at the end of the piece. I have animated it against the demo I did of the song and there will be a clip in the 'Work in Progress' section on the web site in due course. I'll probably put the full thing up on the site once we have recorded it for the album with Dave on vocals.

In the same lighter vein as 'A 1000 Ships' I have now finished another song about the exploits of one 'Lucy Anna Martin' and her exploits when kidnapped for ransom by pirates. It has sixteen verses at the moment, so is a bit of a epic piece, lasting some seven minutes. We haven't tried it in rehearsal yet so I don't know how it will change in the transfer from demo to band. Again there will bes a sample in the 'Work in Progress' section.

And Bruce has composed an instrumental piece called 'Warp and Weft' - because the various instrumental lines weave in and out. He composed it on his new iPad whilst on holiday. I'm not sure we'll do it live as Bruce doesn't have that many hands but it will be on the album.

Regards - John

2010-05-12T22:24:00.004+01:00

Live at Hunton Village Hall - a gig in aid of the charity gamBLE

Thank you to everyone who came along to the gig at Hunton Village Hall last weekend. It was a great success and I understand the evening raised enough money to pay for another teacher for a year.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and everything went very well apart from the initial scare when Dave manged to fall off stage before a note had been played. Luckily he wasn't hurt and was able to continue. Take more water with it next time, Dave!

Now attention transfers to recording songs for the new CD which we intend will be ready for sale at our next planned gig at St George's on 16th October.

Regards - John

2010-04-11T19:53:00.006+01:00

Who says we never look happy? - photo courtesy of Sue Richards

Regular rehearsals now, preparing for our return concert at Hunton Village Hall on May 8th. We are trying out some new material to add to some old favourites for the concert. Once the concert is over we will be starting recording the new songs for the new CD which we intend to have ready for October to coincide with our concert at St George's on the 16th. No pressure!

Once a CD is finished I always think I will never be able to write anything new ever again and that I've used up every piece of inspiration. Then when I'm least expecting it, an idea pops up and there's a germ of a new song that nags away until I have some words and music more or less sorted out. I find the next stage is to record a demo of the song to see how it hangs together. That gets chopped and rearranged to get the overall structure sounding right- verses, chorus, fills etc. The words then get changed once I try and sing them and find out that they don't scan properly or there's nowhere to take a breath! When the demo is reasonably settled it gets sent to the rest of the band and hopefully to rehearsal where it gets refined again in performance.

Usually the music comes first and then the hard work, for me, is writing the words. So it is a surprise to me that I've just finished a new song that, at the moment, runs to sixteen verses - usually I have trouble getting two or three verses together. The rest of the band haven't heard it yet so a lot of it may end up on the cutting room floor before it gets to the CD.

Regards - John

2010-01-31T21:54:00.004Z

Asleep at my post - caught in mid dream - photo courtesy of Sue Richards

Our first full rehearsal of 2010 coming up next weekend and I am trying to get new things together to work on. We had a 'vocals only' rehearsal a week or so ago and tried out a few new things. When I say 'new' I mean new to the current line up - two of the pieces were done at various times in the band's dim and distant past. The songs I am thinking about are the Agincourt Carol and the Swinton May Song. They are both traditional songs so some might argue that 'new' is a totally the wrong word to use - but you know what I mean. We did the Agincourt Carol back in the 70s as an unaccompanied piece. I picked it up from the Young Tradition 'Galleries' album, although they do it with an early music ensemble behind them. It's got tricky harmonies with staggered timings so it's a challenge and we'll see how it develops. The May Song is a simpler song altogether and was sung by carollers going round the village to various houses in the hope of food, drink and/or money. It's from the singing of the Watersons.

I've needed a rest from writing so I've looked afresh at traditional songs for 'new' material for the band. Another song I am looking at introducing to rehearsal is 'The Blacksmith'. There are various recorded versions of this and several tunes, the most common being the one adapted and used for 'He who would valiant be'. The recording I like the best is by Shirley and Dolly Collins on their 'Anthems in Eden' album. The trouble is that the backing -Dolly playing portative organ - is so distinctive and woven across the melody that using the tune Shirly sings I would feel that one would be obliged to repectfully copy the intricate backing. I therefore decided to use my own tune to avoid such difficult decisions. It is based on a harmony I was singing to 'He who would valiant be' whilst walking round the house. It's sad isn't it? I really must get out more......

Regards - John

2010-01-23T18:17:00.005Z

Alice on the bowed psaltery at rehearsal - picture courtesy of Sue Richards

A belated happy New Year to everyone. My first blog of 2010. I must start with an apology to all those who have been trying to email us or order things through the website. Apparently our webhosters have screwed things up which resulted in nothing getting through to us at all. Luckily Bob in California alerted me and I am hoping that things are sorted out very shortly.

Moving on to gig news - we can confirm that our annual concert at St. George's will take place on Saturday 16th October 2010. It is my intention that we will have a new CD available by then as well. We are also returning to Hunton in Kent for another concert, hopefully in May, but we have yet to have the date confirmed. As soon as we know I'll post it up on the blog.

We have started rehearsals again after the bad weather and will be working hard on the new material over the coming months and should be starting recording around Easter time.

Bye for now.

Regards - John

2009-12-23T16:39:00.008Z

another 'in concert' shot courtesy of Ian Gilchrist

Well, first of all I must apologise for the time it has taken for me to get round to adding a new blog. Also being new to this blogging game I hadn't checked back to see if anyone had added comments to previous blogs. So apologies to Duncan Saunders who, back in August, kindly informed us that the site was down. Luckily we had realised ourselves that it was down and it was up again quickly. But thank you Duncan.

Having been a while since I last checked the blog I now notice we have two more followers - so welcome to Frenchy48 and Bob Goolsby - Hello to you both! My New Year's resolution is to try and update the blog every week or two as we start into 2010.

One reason for the lack of attention to the blog is that we are having some buiding work done here at Salomonjay Studios and although it started in March it still isn't finished. Hopefully, it will be early in 2010 and we will then have more space - an additional area with hard surfaces that will give us different options when we are next recording. My intention is to start on the new CD as soon as the builders have gone and that it will be ready in the Autumn of 2010.

I mentioned back in July about writing a song about Helen of Troy. The intention was to write quite a serious song about the futility of war. In the end it morphed into a comic retelling of the legend but in modern times and set to a jazzy nightclub backing. As I've said before you start writing one song and then it takes over and goes its own way. You just have to hang on. I've also finished a piece about a Siren - based on the legend of Lorelei. For some reason it has ended up in 5/4 and 6/4 timing which has got Derek all excited - or is that annoyed?

We've had a couple of rehearsals in the last couple of months to try out the new songs. Luckily, Dave and Bruce have both got over long term hand injuries that stopped them playing and Ed is slowly recovering from a broken ankle from skiing earlier in the year, so we should be entering the New Year fully fit and raring to go.

It just leaves me to wish you all best wishes for Christmas and a happy and musical New Year.

Regards - John

The new term begins

2009-07-29T07:47:00.007+01:00

Ed strumming it large at the 2007 charity garden gig - photo by Bruce

Everyone is now back from their holidays and we are starting the new term by taking part in an outdoor charity event organised by Ed's choir group to raise money for the Brigitte Trust.

http://www.brigittetrust.org/

As I write this the summer rain is falling but I hope by the time of the gig in the middle of August that we'll all be basking in the sun and enjoying ourselves and lots of money will be raised for this worthwhile charity.

Best wishes - John

Film Noir (Yesterday's News)

2009-07-18T12:54:00.004+01:00

Well, I've finally managed to finish off the video for Film Noir and upload it to YouTube. After a bit of help from my computer consultant, I seem to have been able to link the video on YouTube back to the blog. So, if you click on the 'Share' below it should play OK.

I had problems and couldn't get the correct aspect ratio uploading straight to the blog, which is why I've gone via YouTube. And then the audio was overloading so I had to go back to the original material and start all over again.

Phew, I think I'll lie down for a bit now. Regards - John

Share

2009-07-15T20:53:00.009+01:00

Picture of Ziggy (aka Mr Ratty)

in performance on top of the PA speaker at the Hunton concert.

Luckily the cack-handed guitarist didn't get in the way too much.

Photo courtesy of Dave's sister, Kathy.

Well into summer now and members of the band have either been on, are on, or are going on their holidays. I've no idea where they are at the moment. Hopefully everyone will be back in time for when we are next planning to get together, in August. After that we will start making plans for our next concerts and recording. Echoes of school-days - the beginning of a new term.

I've got some ideas for new things to do and, although I hadn't planned to, I have even started working on some ideas for new songs. Early days yet and they may come to nothing, of course. One of them is sort of about Helen of Troy. I think. Who knows what it might end up being about. I often find I start writing about one thing and then it goes off on its own in a different direction. I just go along for the ride. Having started it I noticed that some time ago we'd booked to see Troilus and Cressida and later on Helen, at the Globe over the next few weeks. Hopefully that might give me some inspiration as to how to finish it.

Bye for now. John

2009-05-18T19:20:00.003+01:00

A shot from our concert at Hunton Village Hall on Saturday.

Thank you to all of you who came to the concert on Saturday and in so doing helped to raise money for the charity, GamBLE. There was a good turn out for our first performance in Hunton. I'm not sure how much was raised but we think it will be enough to pay for one or two more teachers for the school for a year. So well done.

The gig went very well and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We were able to try out a few new songs in public for the first time and they went down well so we'll add them to the repertoire for future gigs. Lowlands Low and John Barleycorn were completely new songs; Our Captain Cried and Long Last were old songs that we've brought out of storage.

So now it's back to looking at new material for future rehearsal and recording.

Regards - John

2009-05-06T22:40:00.005+01:00

A shot of Derek from our St. George's concert

I realise it has been a long time since I last wrote something here so first of all I must apologise if you've been checking the site and not found anything new to read. My intention was to write something every couple of weeks but things have been rather hectic recently with the builders being here since late February and the place being in turmoil most of the time. I hope to do better in the future.

Well, it's nearly Saturday 16th May and our concert at Hunton Village Hall in aid of GamBLE. Tickets are limited but I understand there are still a few available so give the box office a call on 01622 814027 and talk to Clare or Derek if you want to come along. We are booked to go into the rehearsal studio on Friday for our last rehearsal before the gig. We've added a few new songs to the repertoire since the November concerts so there will be some first time live performances to add to some old favourites at Hunton.

Once the concert is over I hope to have time to finish off the video for Film Noir and to get it up on the website for all to see. I've finished all the studio and evening location shooting with Joceline who kindly helped out for this video and who was featured dancing in the Arabesque video. All I need to do now is add in the band and do the final edit. For those that are interested I am adding a still from the video so far.

Still from Film Noir

Anyway for now it's back to practicing for the Hunton gig. Now how does that song go?

Best wishes - John

2009-02-15T09:25:00.009Z

A picture from our St. George's concert last November

I don't know where the time goes, we are already half way through February. Next Saturday sees our first rehearsal of the year in preparation for our concert in Hunton in May. It will be good to get playing together again. Apart from going over the songs we did at our last concerts we will be looking at some new songs to add to the repertoire for our forthcoming gigs and possibly for our next album.

Having thought I wouldn't be ready to write anything for a while I find I have a couple of new ideas in development. The most recent tune I came up with suggested a fairly traditional theme for the words - "As I walked out one May morning..." sort of thing. The next thing would be to think of a story to tell. Something about pirate gold came to mind. Also the phrase "lowlands low" kept coming into my mind as I hummed through the verses. I decided to google 'lowlands low' and see what came up - the last resort when you get stuck - in my case the first resort.

This brought up a number of tradition song lyrics and in particular the song "Edwin in the Lowlands Low" which had been recorded by various people such as Martin Carthy, Steeleye Span and my hero, Peter Bellamy under the varying titles of "Young Emma", "Edwin" and "Edmund in the Lowlands" respectively. The subject matter covers gold, young lovers, cruel parents, murder and insanity and no happy ending for any of the protaganists - so just right for a Childe Rolande song and we can say it's not our fault as it is traditional. As with most traditional songs there are many variants of the song lyrics. I have chosen the version from the 'Penguin Book of English Folk Songs' as the starting point for our interpretation. I thought to call it "Lowlands Low".

John

2009-01-09T17:48:00.004Z

A close up of Dave from the St. George's Concert

Well here we are in 2009 and things are starting to move again. We can now confirm our first concert date of the New Year. It will be on Saturday 16th May at Hunton Village Hall, Kent and will be in aid of the charity GamBLE with which Derek is heavily involved building and more importantly training teachers and running a school in Farato in The Gambia. If you want more information try the web site http://www.gam-ble.co.uk/. Please come along and support the charity. Put the date in your diaries and we'll give you more details about times and how to get there nearer the concert.

John

2008-12-19T19:40:00.006Z

A picture of Alice and Derek from our recent concert at the end of November.

I'm still trying to find out how this blog thingy works and I notice that you can insert a video as well as pictures so in preparation for when I've completed the video of 'Film Noir' I thought I would try this feature out to see how it works. At the moment we only have one video of a song so it will have to be that - Arabesque - so apologies if you've already watched it having visited the website. Here goes....

Dropping in the video file with the 'Add Video' icon didn't seem to work so I've copied in the HTML code to link to the YouTube site. I'll have to do some more research.....

Taking a rest from trying to write new material I've been looking at some traditional songs for the band to have a go at when we get together again in the New Year. One that I've been working on is 'John Barleycorn' which is a well known song from the tradition. I've got an idea for an arrangement so we'll see how it goes down with the rest of the band at the next rehearsal.

All that's left is to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a very musical New Year!

John

2008-12-12T22:33:00.008Z

A picture of Bruce from the recent concert - because it's his Birthday today! Many Happy Returns!

Thanks to Ed we've now got a PayPal account and thanks to Ed and Bruce we've got the merchandise ordering pages set up on the website. So now it's easy for people to buy CDs and T-shirts from us without having to wait until we do the next concert. We've already had some orders so the system is working OK.

A quiet time for the band at the moment so I've started working on a video of 'Film Noir' for posting up on the website and You Tube - hopefully early next year.

John

2008-12-06T19:13:00.000Z

Two weeks since our gig at St.George's and we got together last night to look at some of the video footage taken on the night and to exchange some of the feedback we have each got from members of the audience and comparing it to the concert at the beginning of November. The presentation was better as we had the benefit of all the lighting which Nick had designed and the overall sound was better thanks to the acoustics of the hall.

Considering it was the first time the audience would have heard the new songs which accounted for about half of the set list everything went very well and was enthusiastically received by those present.

John