Musical indiscretions
I've been playing drums and percussion since childhood and in many rock, jazz and folk bands in the decades since. Between 1994 and 2008 I performed many times with Huddersfield's alt.folk band Bar the Shouting in halls, pubs and festivals throughout Britain, often supporting various environmental, peace or social justice campaigns. Since then I've drummed on a number of albums and annoyed people singing my own songs at open mic nights in the Huddersfield area.
Lyrics and music to
Rocketship Days * Just a Little Time * Inheritance
Your Greatest Day
http://www.irregularrecords.co.uk/unlabelled/ (c)2003 purkis/bartheshouting
My hitchhiking & road trip songs
Although I've played these live plenty of times, recording these is still work in progress ( but they probably work as a performance poem or something!)
Canadian Shield (2013)
Stroking the air in Canada, a freedom and beauty to share
Hitching the north road from Jasper, a hint of grey in her hair
Many years of dreaming through windows
Trying to connect the times of her life
She left her husband and kids for the summer
To find herself in the wild
On a big rig out to Peace River, she says: “I’m Lorna, you must be Jack
I’m taking a tour of the north lands, maybe even Alaska and back;
Where I can sleep out under the Aurora
And the Elias Range cuts the sky
I’ve got a natural kind of politics
But it’s not one for compromise”
Chorus
-
She said: “I can feel this land in my heart
-
I can feel this land in my heart
-
I can feel this land … my Canadian shield.”
Big Jack talked of oil in the forests, clear cut dividends for the land
He said “There’ll be a hole the size of a country
when they’ve taken the tar from the sand.
But I’m driving straight through to McMurray,
the day shift need these gurneys and reels,
so you’ll have to talk to me all night dear, or take a turn at the wheel.”
Chorus
-
He said “I can feel a strength in your heart
-
I can feel a strength in your heart
-
I can feel that strength … my Canadian shield”.
Morning broke down Cold Lake Canyon
Where she’d camped in the dark long ago
The glacial blue of that memory
Now choking in ashen plumes
Jack said “Young Mitch is heading for Dawson, but you might
want to stick around because the Indians will be making their protest,
from gutters and prison cell pounds.”
But Lorna and Mitch headed northwards, singing songs of unions and rights
She said “I want my son to be a doctor, to heal these new neuroses and blights”
Three thousand miles she hitchhiked that summer
Teslin, Haines, Fairbanks at a price
She said “What a marvellous thing is solitude even though these meetings excite”
Chorus
-
She said: “I can feel their strength in my heart
-
I can feel their strength in my heart
-
I can feel their strength in my heart … my Canadian shields.”
Now Big Jack took one too many chances, keeping awake with the loads of our lives
Mitch put his heart in the union, worried less about the time from his wife
And Lorna spread her natural wisdom, seeding hope in fertile young minds
Wrote herself into the road lore of Canada, a traveller ahead of her time.
Chorus
-
And I can feel their land in my heart
-
I can feel their strength in my heart
-
I can feel her strength … my Canadian shield.
By Cairnsmore
(A Solway song)
C There’s light from the spiral arm tonight
F On the old wharf by the Fleet
C We’re both late for the party
F The cargo of our age
Am Has gone with oak and coal and empire
C Gems for the diplomats
F I was looking for a place in history
C Not a memory captured under glass.
Am For those who had loved
C Dug and drank this way
Made their bids for liberty
F You could wish that
Rabbie Burns was here tonight. C
Beneath the hunch of Cairnsmore mountain
The scythe of the seventy five
Recalling red light fever
When I last hitched in these climes
A tenner in the pot at Stranraer
Race their comrades out of sight
All empty trailers swaying to be
Unwed in Gretna
For the night sky lifts a primal lens
To hope and hold and share
As strangers in the thousand star hotel.
Am Cos we’re always on the edge of something C always on the edge of something F always on the edge of something more C
It feels good to recall the prime of the
Old Portpatrick line
A morning’s brief encounters
The steps of the thirty nine
Now Loch Skerrow’s wayside halt
Smells of garlic and gorse
A purple dragonfly motorway
Like this young thumb by Palnure
Backing his way to Newton Stewart
Caught between work and desire.
I get a summit fever urge
To text wish you were here
But the Solway glitters
Where it rose to drown
Margarets Wilson and McLachlan
Tied to the stakes and that
Catholic guilt still abounds
Yet for those whose Covenant is sky
Kites roam the rocky shrines
And governments
Still can’t climb hills.
Cos we’re always on the edge of something, always on the edge of something, always on the edge of something more
(Rap) Once I met a soldier on the road
Damaged by his training and it showed
Crashes and drinking took its toll
But he remembered every word of Eminem
Took them to the church to make amends
A prayer and a tribute
To his son
Now he’s come to Castle Douglas to be free
If she will accept him down on one knee
With his khaki and Yankees hat
Bought from the same charity shop
Gave me the choice of the words
Which would create most of a stir
When the bell rang she raised her head
But the lights changed and we sped
Away …
At the museum stop at Creetown
Some Guides light up the bus
With makeup and laughter
From their phones
Across the aisle a pencil’s busy
Lips pursed with concentration
She says her name’s Iona
Going to be a writer
Behind glass we watch the traffic
Bones moving in the landscape
Hope our words will travel
Like dragonflies in amber.
Cos we’re always on the edge of something always on the edge of something always on the edge of something more.
Steady rolling tempo, in four, with a shuffle. Acapello rap on the middle eight
© J.Purkis 2020
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Lyrics and chords to other songs I play
(about Walter Benjamin)
(about Camille Claudel)
(er ... about John Keats!)
The Visitor (2007)
Picture credits (in order)
*Wikipedia.org 'Peace River'
*'Murray monument, Gatehouse of Fleet' on www.dgwgo.com
*Anthony O Neill, 2010 on geograph.co.uk
*wikipedia page 'Wigton Martyrs'
*Andy Farrington, 2010 on geograph.co.uk