2 posts tagged “ilkley”

THE HERMIT

Mountain Ash Band

Research and original concept, music for songs  – Colin Cripps

Lyrics – Ray King       Narration -  Sean Mansley

Featuring Lynda Hardcastle / Alan Rose / Martin Carter / Geoff Bowen / Graham Jones / Kevin slingsby

Job Senior was a hermit. There are many ways of being a hermit. It was only for a short time towards his later years that Job lived on Ilkley Moor away from other people. For most of his life Job was a hermit in a crowd. The facts of his life, as far as they are known, are narrated on this album. The songs are not an attempt at story telling; more a series of glimpses of his world as we imagine it would have been seen by Job at the crisis points of his life.  Yorkshire Tales - The Hermit

For the introduction by Colin Cripps click HERE

Recorded on 13^th / by Look Records, September Sound Studios, Golcar, ,

The tracks need to be listened to in order as there is a narration followed by a song.. For more background on the group click HERE

BIRTH  (Narration)

Narrator – Sean Mansley

Guitar – Colin Cripps

BIRTH (Song)

Vocals – Lynda Hardcastle, Alan Rose, Martin Carter. / Guitar – Colin Cripps

Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones / Drums – Kevin Slingsby

On crimson wings the sun comes up

Across the eastern sky

Who sees the early dawning hour

When some may live and some may die.

Bent on the earth beneath the sky

A new born cry is heard.

The silent sky is split in two

The first eruption of a word.

Your life is started

Your life’s begun.

Be quick, the years wait for no one.

A million things are left undone.

Before the winking of an eye,

Before the setting of the sun

A chance is barely waiting,

A chance is barely anything.

Please know your hour will come, ( too soon, too soon, too soon)

Your time will come.

Mother’s in the kitchen and father’s on the land.

They’ll tell life is only what you’re holding in your hand.

They know the price of hardship, yes they know the coins of sweat.

They know the price that pain affords. They know, they know they know it all and yet

Your baby hands are open

And clutching for a star

But still they stop and warn you

You will never reach that far.

Be quick time’s waiting,

Be quick it slips away.

A lifetime will not leisure

In the measure of today.

JOURNEYS (Narration)

Tune – Goddesses

Narrator – Sean Mansley

Descant Recorder – Lynda Hardcastle

Fiddle – Geoff Bowen

JOURNEYS (Song)

Vocals -  Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones.

Guitars – Colin Cripps, Martin Carter. / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen

Bass Guitar – Graham Jones / Drums - Kevin Slingsby

The long and rolling road

That carries all the way to

Is calling me…Is calling me…

Where the road kisses the skyline

On that rolling green horizon

Is where I’ll be.. Is where I’ll be.

I don’t care if they say I’m ugly

‘Cause I’ll shed my tears alone.

My thoughts they do not haunt me,

I willfind another home.

For I have youth to face tomorrow.                                                                       The Hermit Inn and Restaurant

I am stronger than today.

I am stronger than the strangers

Who are sending me this way.

I am bigger that he whispers

That they send to torment me.

I will reach the furthest star.                                             Hermit Inn (site 2)

I will reach, I will be free.

The long and rolling road

That carries all the way to

It carries me ..It carries me.

The man is young, the sun is old,

It paves the streets of with gold.

Oh let it be that way…

…………..

Tunes;  Rosebud – Pigeon on the gate – Dust in the Lane.

The grey and ugly streets

That slowly stretch away from

Are made of dust…made of dust.

I am hungry, I am thirsty.

Have my soul but give a crust.

My clothes are dirty.

My shoes are full of water

And my mind is full of hate.

I knocked the door of providence

They said I’d come too late.

I thought to stay forever

With the corpses at the gate.

Now the streets of are empty

As the faces stop and stare, and stop and stare.

I’ve no money for the alehouse

So I’ll find no comfort there, no comfort there.

Give me anything for pain.

I am truly so alone, Yes I’m alone.

I will face all the slander.

I am going home again, I’m going home again, I’m going home.

…………….

STONE ON STONE (Narration)

Tune – Leapfrog

Narrator – Sean Mansley

Tenor Recorder – Lynda Hardcastle

Fiddle  - Geoff Bowen

STONE ON STONE ( Song)

Vocals _ Martin Carter / Guitar _ Colin Cripps  /Fiddle – Geoff Bowen

Bass Guitar – Graham Jones

I’ve ostled and I’ve bustled,

I’ve trod the straight and narrow.

I’ve seen the road in yesterday

That stretches through tomorrow.

I’ve reaped and sowed,

I’ve bent and bowed.

I’ve scraped me way alone

But nothing pleases me as much as placing stone on stone.

Begone the song that others sing

In many voices loud.

I’ll sing me song and build along

Where no one else has ploughed.

Their voices strangle

In their throats

As years outstrip the bone

But my song is spelled in solid words, spelled out in

Stone on stone, stone on stone.

Stone on stone the walls go up

Beneath the massive hand

But sickles sweep the years away

While still the old stone stands

So here beneath the harvest moon

I build the big stones strong

And I think the things I’m building will outlive the sickle’s song.

Stone on Stone, stone on stone.

……………………….

A LONG WINTER (Narration)

Tune – Cliffs of Duneen

Narrator – Sean Mansley

Whistle – Alan Rose

A LONG WINTER (Song)

Vocals – Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter /Guitar – Colin Cripps

Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones /Drums – Kevin Slingsby

Mary old dear draw closer

The night wind is blowing and shaking our stack.

I know that you’re older; I know your age

But none that I know can turn the hands back.

We had our share of hardship Mary.

Soon you’ll leave me too.

Though you’re old your heart is warmer by the fire.

We’ll see this long, long winter through.

Together mary, inside our house

We two are living close as one.

The years have robbed us, stripped our eyes

And to the night have taken and gone.

Count years away my Mary

For the wind is growing colder.

We may see a better time

Before we get much older.

Mary, Mary you can’t answer.

Are you gone away forever?

Are you gone?....

Are you gone?....

Are you gone?....

…………………..

WHO KNOWS (Narration)

Tune – Greenland Man’s Tune

Narrator - Sean Mansley

Fiddle – Geoff Bowen

WHO KNOWS (Song)

Vocals – Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones.

Guitar – Colin Cripps / Fiddle -  Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar -  Graham Jones

Drums – Kevin Slingsby

Who knows, who knows

What time has done to me?

Who shows, who shows

The things that I can’t see>

I wander home,

My house is broken down,

My money is lost

My life is scattered to the ground.

Who comes today

To rob me of my time?

I’d go insane

But still I hope the sun will shine.

Again. Who knows…

There’s little left to trust.

The tables never turned.

Who knows, who knows

Why all I touch just turns to dust?

I tried, I tried

But life’s an enemy.

I’ve trod the road.

They all lead back to me.

………………

I’LL SING FOR ME SUPPER (Narration)

Tune -  Drive the Cold Winter Away

Narrator – Sean Mansley

Whistle – Alan Rose

Descant Recorder – Geoff Bowen

Treble recorder - Graham Jones

Tenor recorder – Lynda Hardcastle.

I’LL SING FOR ME SUPPER (Song)

Vocals _ Lynda Hardcastle, Alan Rose, Martin Carter, Graham Jones /

Guitar  - Colin Cripps / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Bass Guitar – Graham Jones

Drums – Kevin Slingsby

I’ll sing for me supper

I’ll sing for me beer.

I’ll sing for you who heartily cheer.

You never will admit me

Not one into your door

But I’ll carry on singing

And then I’ll sing some more.

Now take my advice all you young men and true

Though you frown and you scwl for the want of a sou

Don’t wed and old widow with money galore

Nor love a young and a pretty maid who’ll always keep you poor.

Instrumental tune: Shooting

…………………….

THE OUTCAST (Narration)

Tune – Scollay’s Reel

Narrator - Sean Mansley

Treble recorder – Lynda Hardcastle

THE OUTCAST (Song)

Vocals -  Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle, Martin Carter, Graham Jones

Guitars – Coin Cripps, Martin Carter / Fiddle – Geoff Bowen / Drums -  Kevin Slingsby

If time has done me bad, then in this moment I’m not bitter

Or full with songs of hatred to the brim

Please think nothing of my anger in the days when I was younger still

I’m lonely now and breath my last.

Love me now – Oh love the Outcast.

The world was mine in bigger ways: my stones stand on the skyline.

The wind avoids the shadow of my walls.

I did my share of working and had my fill of learning.

I know that I am dying but I hear a baby crying

Far away across the moorland

Of my dreaming and my slowly closing eyes…

REBIRTH

Vocals – Martin Carter, Alan Rose, Lynda Hardcastle / Guitar – Colin Cripps,

Fiddle _ Geoff Bowen / Drums – Kevin Slingsby

On silver wings the sun goes down

Beneath the western sky

And sees this softly closing hour

When some may live and some may die.

Bent on the earth beneath the sky

A new born cry is heard.

The silent star is split in two

The first eruption of a word.

Your life is started.

Your life’s begun.

END................................

English Birds is an instrumental tht never made it to the final album, kindly sent to us by Colin Cripps.

Colin also provided a couple of other tracks that were played live after the Hermit project as part of another project. The other two tracks here are a couple of nos from their next project 'wind over the borderland'.

The Patient's Song and Leading Lady Thanks to Colin Cripps for these and his Mountain Ash Band introduction which is on another post here

16 The Patient's Song

Mountain Ash Band

In another post we have the 1975 album by the Mountain Ash Band, a concept album based on Job

Senior - a Hermit on The Ilkley Moors. Colin Cripps, who reasearched and played on the album has sent me cd versions of the song and this introduction. This limited edition of The Hermit became a cult album, hard to get hold of and despite Colin's misgivings about the album expressed here, it's still an excellent album and moving story in my opinion.

To LISTEN  to THE HERMIT click HERE
For more background on the group click HERE

Colin Cripps is author of Popular Music in 20th C (which takes you from Blues to Two Tone with musical exercises and background for use with music departments in schools and colleges)

Introduction to The Hermit  by Colin Cripps - May 2007

From 1971 to 1974 I had had a life 'on the edge' in . Politically, I was running a community newspaper - The Willenhall Estate News - and organising rent strikes because of the state of the city's housing stock. I felt passionately about the situation In Northern and was under Special Branch Surveillance as a result. I was part of the squatter's movement in the city and was living in Ivy Walk (now tarquin Way!) with every drug dealer, racist and prostitute as a neighbour. I was doing a lot of grass and a few trips and i had a relationship that was gradually and painfully coming apart. Above all I was a guitar player/songwriter without a band or a voice. I was burnt out and desperate to make a change that would get my life back into shape. 

In 1974 the opportunity presented itself to make a new start up in Yorkshire

in a kind of small scale 'commune' in Addingham on the side of Ilkley Moor. The setting was idyllic but unfortunately not enough to save my marriage and I ended up living in a box-room in the house of Geoff Bowen, the fiddle player in the Mountain Ash band - which, at the time, was a caileidh band I was playing in as well as having a line-up that was a regular feature on the local folk-club scene with ex-wife Lynda as part of the set-up. 

I was attracted to the local folk story of the Hermit I suppose because it had resonances for my own situation at the time: I certainly could not claim that a centrally-heated box-room was anything like living under a dry stone wall on the moors but I guess i felt, like Job Senior, that an important part of me had died, that I was alone and and that I needed a rebirth. When Ray King, a friend from Willenhall, visited I told him the folk tale and he tuned in immediately and came up with a great set of lyrics. They had no verse and chorus structure because Ray was a poet not a songwriter, but there was enough to work with.

The track 'A Long Winter' was one that came from the kind of magical happening that comes once a life time. I was staying with some friends in a place called White Wells, halfway up the side of Ilkley Moor. I had been struggling with what to do with the lyrics to 'Long Winter' for a couple of weeks. I remember having an unsettled night and waking up early one morning before anyone else was up. I went outside with my acoustic and, where normally there was Ilkley, now there was just a floor of mist filling the whole valley. It came just up to my feet and i felt like i could walk all the way to Blubberhouses Moor on it. It was transcendent! I sat down with the guitar and the song came out whole, first go, complete, perfect, without any conscious thought or control. You have to treasure times like those.

Recording the album was a problematic affair. Martin Carter and Graham Jones were professionals on the folk circuit at the time and were good enough to make space to rehearse the piece but I was looking for a Richard Thompson feel that I never quite achieved: in retrospect that was because i couldn't play the guitar like him, especially not on a Zenta Telecaster copy! We recorded the whole thing in a converted church studio in with a guy who did the sound for ITV variety programmes on the desk. We could afford so little studio time and worked solidly over endless hours for two days: one day to record everything and the next to do any overdubs and mix-down. By the time it came to record the vocals we were already exhausted and by mixing time I had no ears left for nuance and no time to re-record anything.

We performed the piece in its entirety at as a multi-media

event ( we had slides! ) and managed not only to sell the place out but also to lose money. Nonetheless the whole thing seems to have been universally loved, both album and event, and lives on despite itself. I am proud of the songs and proud that we managed to record it despite the personal dynamics. It's a piece of music i keep coming back to thinking that I wish i could re-record it to sound the way it did in my head but the Mountain Ash band is scattered to the four winds and could probably not even co-exist inside a room together nowadays. Sean Mansley, the narrator, is sadly long since deceased and I have no idea what has happened to Ray King, poet extraordinaire; he was a reprobate of the best kind and I am so glad he passed through my life!

I am eternally flattered that people still want to listen to The Hermit and forever sad that I cannot bear to put it on my CD player...

Colin

(The lyrics and audio are in another post on here.)