talis_kimberley

As they're unscored and unfolded, they're quite good for bookmarks. Or.. coasters. You could paper a very small room with them - well, one wall, perhaps. Or something.

And I also had far too many of the 'Rapunzel' insert for Archetype Cafe printed - the little four-page comic with artwork by David Morris. Again, coasters, bookmarks or very quirky wallpaper.

They're probably going in the recycling unless anyone is missing theirs or has a really creative use for them.

* * *

In other news, I had a lovely session yesterday with a fiddler friend... hmm, thinking ahead here... and we recorded bassoon parts for two of the Hearth and the Hive tracks on the weekend. Still moving forward with that. Though we did think, early Sunday, that the wind would be too strong and that it would scupper any recording; hurrah for a better-fitting back door with better sound and heat insulation - and a catflap.

Memo to self; when recording; (a) switch off phone, (b) put up 'recording' notice to alert callers, and (c)... take the collar off the cat.

I had a delightfully attentive audience for my short set, particularly including the beekeeper, for whom I was especially pleased to sing the bee song. Turns out he's a folk music fan. Hmmm...

The set was, I think:

The Orchard
Tell the Bees
Gathering Summer In
Fourteen Hundred Hours
Camel
Kitchen Heroes.

Memo to self: remove knitted fingerless mitts before commencing to play. I wandered along to Caravan Caberet at Lower Shaw Farm later in the evening to give them Fourteen Hundred Hours, and hear Kathy S give a very creditable performance of Mich Sampson's 'Father's Honour'.

We've been auditing and editing the vocal takes on the album this week, and reviewing what needs adding. Progress, steadily. Lots of singing into the wardrobe. We've tended to get 'cloth' in around two takes, and then sometimes go for one 'with risks', which occasionally result in happy accidents or extra energy. Going well, really.

I am immensely honoured, and touched, and hold this event entirely due to the many good souls who have been performing this in recent years when I have not been... I'll revive it myself, one of these days, and surprise you all, but in the meantime, truly:

Thank you.

Apart from one glitch - bouzouki string went on me, didn't actually snap, the inside bust and the outside just stretched, so it wouldn't tune, and I hadn't time to faff with it - I had a truly lovely time performing to a very intent crowd, in a gorgeous building, with lovely acoustics. After limping through Appleby Fair I hastily redrew the set in my head, ditching the rest of the bouzouki songs, and what I ended up performing was as follows:

Gathering Summer In (of course! It was a Harvest Supper!)
Appleby Fair
Camel
Tell the Bees (new - went very well. I like to premier a new one most gigs.)
Fourteen Hundred Hours (of course, again - very local.)
When I was a Mermaid (always a pleasure, this one.)
Bag Ladies
The Silver Rain (my setting of a harvest poem I found in a book - it feels like a 'grace' to me.)
Kitchen Heroes (a good opportunity to thank the cooks!)
The Orchard (originally my finisher, and a real trooper of a song)
Rampisham Down (added on a whim, and made a great 'upping the ante' finisher after the Orchard. Had some fun with the scouts by stopping midsong to quiz them about the origins of the line 'ST5401' and romped through the end of the song once they'd correctly identified it was a grid reference. That was a fun bit of schtick.)

All this and I got fed, plus I had my dear  friend A with me doing her first stint as roadie, and she was excellent, and she had fun.

It was completely heartwarming to be at the heart of a village gathering with every generation well represented and active at the event, in a church which was clearly so much more than a museum piece or a shell for an institution. I think time travellers from any of twenty centuries could have walked in and felt they were still among their own people.

Four scratch tracks (Gathering Summer In, Upon Rampisham Down, Tell the Bees, and Ostrich) and some album vocals for The Hearth and the Hive (Vitruvian Man, Ladybird Year, Worlds End), plus a backing vocal besides. That's a good afternoon's work.

One lovely moment when we had a good take in the can already and went for another just for fun - at which point I knew I could take a few risks and try things as they occurred to me; if they didn't work, no great loss. Whooooo... a bunch of it worked.

In the film version, We'd also got a fire lit for tea-in-the-parlour. Sunday High Tea is a bit of a family tradition here. As it was, we ate in the parlour anyway, and the habitual crumble was duly demolished (rhubarb, apple, one last nectarine).

Was that Summer's Last Hurrah, then? Because it truly feels like Autumn today. I'm knitting new red alpaca mitts for P as fast as I can (given that I'm adapting the pattern furiously on the fly) and my shawl is My Friend.

Cat curled up asleep on patchwork cushion on rocking chair in kitchen = domestic bliss.

Wishing you all a peaceful and candlesome Autumn.

*As opposed to my oft-spoken maxim: 'But I can't dance in the wardrobe!' or 'Sed in vestibularum non possum saltare!'

I say 'aspects of tearoom', because the owner didn't plan to run a tearoom, only she can't be expected to sit mending lovely old clothes for the shop all day and not have a pot of tea handy, and where there's tea, then there's, you know, cake, and if she's having tea and cake, then she's going to share with her favourite customers, isn't she? So she'd better have more teapots and multiple cakes. Oh look, a tea room.

And she always, *always* wears a hat. Sometimes it's a bowler, sometimes a grey half-topper, sometimes it's a tricorne; if she's feeling frivolous it's a feathery fascinator. Those days she breaks out the carnival masks as well...

I find I'm writing songs slightly differently as a result. Usually the lyric arrives first, and will generally be completed within days, if not the same day, if not the same hour. However, whereas I used to begin with melody attached to at least some of the songs, the music now seems to wait for me. What I now get with a new lyric - bear with me here - is a sense of the feeling I'd get having just heard the tune I don't have yet.

My task is then to define what music creates that set of sensations. I'm having all sorts of fun with finding out how to get the melody to go where it should, but by a route which isn't necessarily obvious; satisfying, yes, predictable, no.

Along the way I've been learning which guitar chord feels most like spinning yarn, how to open the trapdoor at the bottom of a song, and when to throw bar lines out the window.

The Orchard:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y205F8fX-OY

Celebrating fruit trees of all kinds and especially the noble Apple.

Fourteen Hundred Hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWuJ3HicgSY

Inspired by and indeed written at Wootton Bassett at a Repatriation during the Summer. I posted the lyric to this a couple of months ago here.

My thanks to David Pike for putting these up.

I sang:

The Orchard
Gathering Summer In
Fourteen Hundred Hours
Camel
KItchen Heroes

Queen of Spindles
Rampisham Down
Bag Ladies

The observant among you will spot the debutant song: Queen of Spindles had its first outing, although I won't necessarily always stop in the middle to flesh out the story in prose while waiting for the next line! Still, it's done, and I'm glad of it.

And it's a jolly good hat, too.

I got the chance to debut three this weekend, at a lovely and laid-back gig on Sunday for a local nature reserve. As I was entertainment during the picnic, I hadn't made a formal set list, but I think what I ended up doing was as follows:

Appleby Fair
Jack Hare
Gathering Summer In (new)
Fourteen Hundred Hours
The Orchard (new)

Kitchen Heroes
Rampisham Down (new)
Wolf at Your Door
Camel
Bag Ladies

It was a fine and friendly place to be, and there was cake and there was tea. I'm hoping to firm up a gig at a new orchard on Apple Day in October - that'll be the Orchard coming out again, then! I knew it was a good one.

This week I've two open mic events I'm hoping to make as well. I have a couple more debuts I'd like to get out of the way...

I had an email from Lady Mondegreen - US-based female band of much talent and quirkiness of which I am an honorary member - telling me about a place called 'Cafe Archetypus'. It's not quite Archetype Cafe, but it looks like someone's got the right idea. The little grotto tables are particularly nice.

I have bought a new hat; it's a very good hat, and I expect to wear it at gigs, though I'm not yet sure what with. I've also been invited to join a morris troupe, after joining in at a 'have-a-go' session at a local country fair. I blame the hat, myself - it's that sort of a hat.

I'm not going to post every song I write here as a lyric, for numerous reasons including that not all lyrics read well without their music. This, however, the amalgam of two lovely days last week both involving a kitchenful of harvest-goods (from two gardens, one allotment, *and* the wild), begs to be shared, as it is so utterly seasonal. 

I wish you all good harvests, whether fruit, songs, or more nebulous gatherings. And isn't 'gathering' just a beautiful word?

* * *

GATHERING SUMMER IN

  Plum tree harvest: crumble, cake

Fruit to stew and fruit to bake.

Borrowed sacring – candle’s lit

Hestia won’t mind a bit.

Cardy cold, not coat cold yet

Sky is bright but the earth is wet.

Seasons turn, Autumn begin –

Gathering Summer in.

Hazel in her ragged skirts;

Chestnut and her velvet purse

Elderberry dark and fine

Cordial and warming wine

Dusky sloes and pumpkin-lantern-time...

Rosehip syrup, scent of red

Bottling what the roses bled.

Onions drying in the warm.

Tassels on the yellow corn.

Plum tree harvest: crumble, jam

Thankful? Oh, indeed I am!

Seasons turn, Autumn begin –

Gathering Summer, gathering Summer in.

I picked a time and a place, and snook into the Swallow Barn between the Wessex Morris Men. I started, as I so often do, with Appleby Fair, followed by Camel, Jack Hare, Fourteen Hundred Hours, and KItchen Heroes. That was all there was time for then, although I reprised Appleby Fair in the cafe later by request.

I'm hoping to go back there and perform on a slightly more formal basis at some point... nature, environmentalism and the English countryside - why yes, I'll sing about that. What a nice trip. And did I mention the cake?

I really will have to record this myself soon - I swear, this song's popularity is based almost entirely on the fact that other people - especially Seanan McGuire! - perform it. I used to sing it everywhere when it was new to me - I sang it on BBC Radio Bristol once, as part of the Festival of the Sea, into a hand-held mic as the reporter used his other hand to hold his coat open in an attempt to cut down on the wind noise. It was a very blowy day. I sang it the first time I was Guest at a convention - Dracon, in Bristol, 1992 I think? Goodness.

It fell into my lap, this selkie song. I had a migraine at the time, and I'd gone to bed. The couplets started forming in my head and arranging themselves into verses, and I had to call for my housemate to grab paper and pen and let me dictate the lyric to him in its entirety. Once that was done, I could at last roll over in the dark and try to sleep off the headache.

Remembering that, it occurs to me that I haven't had a migraine for ages. I wonder if leaving black tea for the delights of Redbush has anything to do with that?

Well. I'm trying to find a slight rearrangement of 'Still Catch...' since the way I used to do it all those many years ago feels to me as it could do with updating a little... if I succeed in this plan, I'll have my webmaster tuck it under a star somewhere.

In the meantime, I'm hugely grateful to all the people who've made this song as popular as it still seems to be. Peggie nomination for the little selkie. Golly.

I've been having a busy time of it - between a delightful gig at Chiseldon to help launch a community nature area, more songwriting, and a bunch of recording sessions, things have been happening faster than I can blog them.

I'll talk more about the gig over on the forum at my recently-revamped site (www.talis.net), but I will just mention that "14:00 Hours" has now been gigged, and was well-received.

I've had fun with old lyrics jumping up at me and announcing their music - in one current case, three years after the words and an abortive attempt at a melody that was quickly abandoned. I'm likely to be bringing "Queen of Spindles" into the set with all possible haste, and I must thank harpist, songwriter and fellow-knitter Gwen Knighton for putting the phrase into my head all that time ago. Take the story of the seven swans and add spiders, marinade for three years, stir with a bouzouki, remove bouzouki and add guitar, and serve fresh. I'm a bit excited about this one.

And yesterday I put down a couple of scratch tracks in the morning, and we spent the afternoon recording cellist Cathy Oliver for a couple of songs for "The Hearth and the Hive". She was a delight to work with and we're all very pleased with the results.

Today I am catching up... how's your world this sunny morning?

A word from my Webmaster:

“Everyone on the Marchwood Media team would like to invite you along to the grand opening of the new Talis Kimberley website at http://www.talis.net.

Whilst we can only offer you a virtual glass of wine and a vol-au-vent, we‘d be delighted if you would make yourself a cup of tea and come and have a look at the shiny new site. There’s lots to look at and explore: YouTube clips of Talis singing, an email list to sign up to and a forum to join and chat in, as well as lyrics, audio and a place to buy Talis merchandise.

There’s lots more to follow in the run up to Talis’ s forthcoming schedule at DuckCon, the recording of her new album “The Hearth and the Hive”, and her new gig schedule, so please do revisit and check around for new items (hint: we’ve hidden some things for you to discover!)

Mine’s a Rose Pouchong, white no sugar...”

I spent yesterday evening in Surrey, singing round a firepit and renewing old friendships, rediscovering one of my lost tribes (well, they were there all along, perhaps I was lost) admiring a wonderful garden and being introduced to chickens.

I debuted 'Camel', and also sang: 'When I was a Mermaid', 'Wolf at Your Door', 'Kitchen Heroes', 'Head of a Pin', 'Appleby Fair', 'Jack Hare', and 'Red Riding'. I made new friends, ate lovely food, and had a guerilla pun war on the way home.

I am more grateful than I can say for friends who have maintained an interest in, and support and encouragement for my music, even when songwriting and performing were furthest from my mind. A and K, thank you for keeping faith with me all these years.

Astrolabes and tin whistles, by the way. Just 'cos.

This week I've also been pounced by a lyric which represents the viewpoint of the Romano-British NIMBY, I've resolved to read some work by local writer Richard Jefferies, and I've had the melody for the second song in my Chicago diptych come and introduce itself very nicely.

This entry was brought to you by carrot cake and Redbush tea.

It should be available on iplayer. I don't believe that's internationally available, which is a shame.

Oh, and thinking of 'Romeo and Juliet' got me humming other bits from that album, chiefly 'Tunnel of Love', a firm favourite of mine. Points for whomever spots which song of mine pretty much uses the same storyline - as I realised years after writing it!

"...I got a keepsake, and a kiss..." Ah, OK, there are two songs which could both fit that bill. That single phrase points to the other. But it's not one I ever gigged much, so I'm not expecting anyone to get both. Double points and a mention in the Friday omnibus if you do.

In other news, 'Bringing Them Home' now has a steady tune. I seem to be in a pattern of writing lyrics that later develop melody - that's alright, I don't mind that at all, and it's huge fun playing random things on the guitar and seeing what note scome out of my mouth at the same time.

This is, I should reassure you, in a room where there is nobody but me to hear the noises I make. I'm told next door's dog will howl if he doesn't like what he hears - E next door tells me he howls if she sings, but he doesn't seem to mind me, even at my noodly-experimenty-randomest.

I'm learning some things about melodies, though - right now I'm very taken with inverting the contrast between the verse and chorus; normally, the chorus is the big shape, and the verse the lesser. Two recent songs of mine have busy verses and still, intense choruses, which in both cases, work rather well. I'm playing too with the empty spaces between the words... I feel that they leave implied whatever the listener extrapolates from the last line or so of lyric, and what remains unsaid (or unsung) is thus expressed... by not singing it at all.

Off I went along the road with armsful of instruments and props, and dressed in the most absurdly colourful skirt I have ever owned. (I'm sure some of you out there could give it a run for its money - you know who you are!) We settled ourselves in the courtyard and arranged props here and there. JS set up tripods and looked at light levels. Then the children came through to the classroom after their lunch. They were so funny - they'd stop and stare and pause mid-sentence, and although I'm a familiar figure around the village to many of them, this was exciting stuff. Their poor teacher finally got them into the classroom, but asked if I'd pop in at the end to talk to them, as they were so interested to know what was happening.

Once we'd had a good play with all the props and instruments, and I'd sat this way and that way and we'd done all we wanted, I popped in to the classroom and did a little show for the kids - I talked them through all the props (including my Doll-dressed-as-me, some very big knitting, and a drop spindle) and gave them a couple of songs with the bouzouki. It was wonderful to see their response to the music, right up close to them. I was only surprised that more of them didn't know 'Donkey Riding'... (after that I sang them my own 'Jack Hare' - oh! Did you hear the programme on BBC radio 4 last week about the book behind that? Wow...)

Much fun. I exchanged grins with my pal S's daughter, A. When I spoke next to S, I asked her if A had mentioned that I'd been in her classroom dressed up and all. Apparently she had said something about it, but S had got the distinct impression that 'whatever I'd done and worn was clearly, in A's view, normal for me'.

Ah. Right.