Threads and Yarns

Threads and Yarns

Yarns – Songs telling a story

Threads – Themes woven into a song.

Rosie has always loved narrative songs that are emotionally charged and those with a powerful political message. This album has several titles that fit this description and her voice has the power and quality to deliver them with great success. She recorded a previous album at WildGoose studios, A Basket of Oysters, and has been encouraged by people to record another. So here it is. A mix of some of her favourite traditional ballads plus songs written by her late husband, old friends and others. A lot of the songs are beautifully accompanied on guitar by Jeff Gillett and Joe Sartin and on cello by Gill Redmond and fiddle by Steven Faux.

Rosie grew up in Derbyshire where she started singing in folk clubs as a teenager. Moving to the west country as a student, she became a regular performer in clubs and festivals in Bath, Bristol and beyond, either solo or with Pete MacGregor and various other musicians.

 

Click to hear samples of the album

Songs

 1 The Shearman.  (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar, Steven Faux fiddle, Jill Redmond cello & Bryony McGinty vocal harmonies)

Words Mick Ryan and tune traditional adapted by Mick Ryan for his story in song The Innocent.  The story of the life and tragic death of Thomas Helliker, an apprentice shearman in the woollen industry. He was hanged on his 19^th birthday on 22 March 1803 on false accusation for setting fire to Littleton Mill, near Trowbridge in Wiltshire when shearing frames were introduced to carry out the work of the shearmen.

2 Barbara Ellen.   (Rosie)

(Roud 54, Child 84).  A popular of ballad. Barbara gets a raw deal in most versions for rejecting William but it’s her choice.  He’s clearly using moral blackmail on his death bed, yet he spurned her by drinking toasts to other women in the ale house. We might recognise this today as manipulative and coercive behaviour!

3 Why?  (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar, Steven Faux fiddle, Jill Redmond cello & Bryony McGinty vocal harmonies)

Written by Mick Ryan from The Innocent but it could relate to any of those who suffer unfairly at the hands of others either through false accusation, prejudice, natural or manmade disaster and war. It speaks to and for a society in which we should never be afraid question why. I love the melody and sparse lyrics.

4 The Bloody Gardener.   (Rosie with Jill Redmond cello)

(Roud 1700).  Collected by Maud Karpeles in 1929 from Mrs May McCabe in Conception Bay, Newfoundland.  This is closer to A L (Bert) Lloyd’s version which I was asked to sing to celebrate the life of feminist novelist Angela Carter. Biographies of Angela who sang, played concertina and ran a Bristol folk club in in the 1960s with her then husband Paul Carter rarely mention her love of the great traditional ballads that inspired her and of which she made an intense study.

5 Men Bugger Off. (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar)

Written by Mike Danver Scott.  A contemporary song but the theme of the plight of women deserted by their men is ages old. Women are often surprised that this song was written by a man because it so perfectly describes, but with great humour, the situation in which many find themselves. Though few might advocate such drastic action as castration!

6 Myrtle. (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar & Jill Redmond cello)

Written by the late Bristolian songwriter and brilliant wordsmith Mike Danver Scott.  Based on a real person he knew as a child who taught him reading, his catechism and a love of words. It’s a truly fond portrait of a wonderfully eccentric woman.

7 Needle and Thread. (Rosie)

Written by Bristolian songwriter Henry Clements. It speaks movingly of the cruelty and futility of war.

8 Queen of Hearts. (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar & Jill Redmond cello)

(Roud 3195). A popular broadside with many collected variants.  The words here are based on one collected by Rev Sabine Baring-Gould after somewhat bizarrely hearing it sung by a Navvy on a train from Tavistock to Yelverton. I’ve changed it slightly and added a floating penultimate verse.

9 The Game of All Fours. (Rosie with Joe Sartin Guitar)

(Roud 232).  A well-known traditional song of which there are many recorded versions. A card game All Fours does exist but there is clearly has a double meaning here. I like the fact that the woman is obviously enjoying the fun.

10 Sarah Collins.  (Rosie)

From Henderson’s Victorian Street Ballads, a copy of which I chanced to find in the British Museum Reading Rooms (subsequently the British Library) when I was a student researching for my dissertation on an unrelated subject. There was no tune, but I think this traditional one is a perfect fit.

11 St James Infirmary. (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar)

(Roud 2).  From the American tradition but with roots firmly planted in the English tradition such as The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime. I’ve made it a woman’s song in which the woman, unlike in many other versions, is not made to take the blame for the man’s death. After all it takes two to tango!

12 Banks of Green Willow. (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar, Steven Faux fiddle & Jill Redmond cello)

(Roud 172, Child 24). Based on the words collected by Alfred Williams during the First World War from George Grubb an agricultural worker in Gloucestershire. It is more sympathetic than most versions to the sea captain who shows some remorse for drowning his Annie. Alas too late!! Childbirth prior to modern medicine was risky and painful so perhaps she knew death was inevitable. The lovely melody that inspired his orchestral piece of the same name was collected by George Butterworth in 1907 from Mr & Mrs Cranstone in Billingshurst, Sussex.

13 Carriden.  (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar & Bryony McGinty vocal harmonies)

Written by my late husband Pete MacGregor. Memories of his teenage years in Bo’ness, West Lothian, Scotland and his first love whose name he can’t quite remember!     

14 The Desert Rat.  (Rosie with Jeff Gillett guitar & Bryony McGinty vocal harmonies)

Based on the traditional Scottish version of ‘The Trooper and the Maid’ (Roud 162. Child 299) by Pete MacGregor.  The coda derived from a verse in ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ (Roud 41. Child 58) using a tune more often associated with ‘The House Carpenter’ and ending with the Scottish lament Flowers of the Forest.  Pete crafted this as a tribute to his uncle Thomas R Jackson, a radio operator in tanks during the North Africa campaign and invasion of Sicily. He returned with his regiment for the D-Day landings only to be shot by a German sniper near Vire in northern France.

15 Bread and Roses. (Rosie with Joe Sartin guitar)

Words written in 1911 by the American poet James Oppenheim (1882 – 1932) inspired by the women textile workers during the Lawrence, Massachusetts pivotal garment workers’ strike of 1910.

Tune by singer, songwriter and political activist Mimi Farina (1945 – 2001), the sister of Joan Baez.