Home page
News
Albums
History
Musicians
Work in progress
FAQ
Ordering
Contacts
News
Driving to and from our rehearsal down in Kent the other day it was noticeable that autumn is beginning to take hold and the trees are starting to turn from greens to yellows, oranges and reds. Driving home, listening to the Shipping Forecast, the sun was already dropping below the horizon and in only a few weeks the clocks go back and it will be dark on my return journeys. Anyway, less of this tangential musing and more about the music.
Without any impending gigs we are concentrating on working on new songs. In each rehearsal we’ve been looking at the newbies and gradually they have started to take shape. Apart from writing a new song or discovering a traditional song to try out, this is the most creative part of the musical process, working out the instrumentation and the structure of each song, who is singing it, the harmonies, etc. It is also, to me, equally frustrating. Each song develops at its own pace. Some seem to work straight away and are ready to meet an audience at the earliest opportunity. Some go for months on the rehearsal bench before they are ready to venture out. Some never make it and however hard we try they never quite reach optimum velocity to escape the rehearsal room. Of the current crop there are a couple that I think will be ready for the next gig that comes along. Both are original songs.
The first, ‘The Night Hunter’, I wrote during Covid but is the most recent we’ve worked on. It started out as a guitar exercise but ended up as a song about a night encounter in a church crypt. Coincidentally, I have recently started trying out lino printing again after many years and, looking for a subject to practise on, I thought I would attempt illustrating scenes from the song. There’s an example alongside. I find the process of carving lino very relaxing.
The second is ‘Strange are the Ways’, the latest song that I’ve written, which I mentioned back in August and which looks at the customs and festivals of English folklore. The most well-known festival coming up on the 31st of October is Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en means the Eve of Hallowtide (1st and 2nd November). Hallowe’en developed from two closely linked Christian festivals, All Saints (1st November) and All Souls (2nd November). Although these festivals commemorate the dead, most of the supernatural aspect associated with the date these days is a modern invention.
(My thanks in research to the excellent book The English Year by the folklorist Steve Roud.)
All text, images and music samples on this site are copyright © Childe Rolande.
Diary Archive
2025
September
August
Poster for Lucy Anna Martin
(click to watch the video)