Sister Soul (2000)
This song is about reincarnation, about my soul, and where it might have been before it was in my body. I use the female gender to describe my soul. The song is asking questions about who I really am, and when my soul was inside another body, did that person behave like me?
Spell (2001)
This song is about finally bringing a relationship to an end after a long period of frustration, suffering and torment. The song follows the progress of a spell in a stone-circle which finally lays the matter to rest in a thunderstorm. Part of the song is drawn from a real incident, though some of the words actually came to me in a dream.
Samhain Song (2000)
This song is about the three phases of the Triple Goddess – maiden, mother, and crone, and what can be learned from each face of the Goddess. Of the places referred to: Starr Carr is an ancient settlement in Yorkshire – Wetwang is a Viking settlement in Yorkshire – Sunhoney is a Stone Circle in Aberdeenshire. Samhain is the final pagan festival of the year, October 31st- November 1st, the Festival Of The Dead.
Call Upon Everything (2000)
The events of this song actually precede the ones in the song “Spell”. It is about the same situation, focussing on the feelings, frustration and sadness which led to the events of “Spell”.
Sarah’s Song (2000)
This song is about reincarnation – someone of that name joked to some friends that she’d written it. So the name ‘Sarah’s Song’ stuck. It is about reincarnation and entering another body in another life.
Cactus Night (2001)
This is about my days in the desert, staying on and around Indian reservations. It touches on the fact that I kind of ‘escaped’ looking for some answers, but really discovered that everywhere in the world has it’s problems, you can never ‘escape’ from them. I actually did follow a lizard along a dried-up river-bed through the desert heat. I saw and learned a lot from my visit here. This is one of my favourite songs.
The Mysterious Dance Of Jack Wisp (2001)
Although only a short instrumental, this is quite poignant. Wherever I go, wherever I travel, I always seem to end up hearing a story from someone I’m with that I vanished in the middle of the night, leaving my bed sheets/sleeping bag/whatever, unruffled. Where do I go? What do I do? Perhaps in the middle of the night I go to see Jack Wisp …
Nomad (1991)
I wrote this yonks ago, in 1991, and decided then that if I ever made a record, this tune would be on it!! Wow, here it is …
‘Scraper Days (2001)
This song is really self-explanatory, as the lyrics are so clear. It’s about leaving Boston and having to go home to Scotland – leaving behind people you care for, and fearing that you’ll just become a memory, like your photos. Scared that in some way the aeroplane and the distance will take you from one world into another and that you won’t be able to get back. It touches on the effects new people have on your life – the last verse is in Spanish, because Sandra motivated me into learning it, and she changed my life and the way I think about many, many things. I did not want to leave my new friends and return to my job in Scotland at that time. The flight home was very painful for me.
Ormstead Park/Charles River (2001)
I came up with this little tune whilst jamming to myself by the lake at Ormstead Park and on the boardwalk by the Charles River in Boston.
Revere Beach (2001)
I really like this tune. On the CD it blends in perfectly with Ormstead Park. If I play it live I tend to play it straight into ‘Sacred Water’. This tune started off as a song with words, called ‘Angel’, about meeting an angel in the sky. But I eventually left it as an instrumental, and it became ‘Revere Beach’ in tune with the water theme of the album and my memories of that place.
Sacred Water (2002)
This is about going back to Mexico. I wrote it because I wanted to see Mexico with my friend Sandra, who is native to there, and the last time I visited I travelled without her to meet her friends and family. It’s about the power of that place; an ancient land of Aztec gods, temples and history, much of which I have yet to see.
The Graphics
The front cover is lake Colina in Chihuahua, where I prayed for the future whilst throwing a stone into the water with a wish. The lake is scared water to pagans; and probably was to the Mexican Indian people before us; and to emphasise this, on the reverse is a photo of a dry piece of desert, with a cactus plant the only source of moisture. This particular cactus is eaten by local people.
The CD itself shows the figures of various pagan gods and goddesses from places I’ve sung about; Britain, America and Mexico. Many faces, but all part of one ultimate force of nature – let the CD spin and they blur into one …
Live Set Now Includes
The Magician (2002)
An introductory piece, about the magic of the musician.
Humbar (1999)
Humbar (Anglo-Saxon, “Wide River”) is about the gods of the river Humber and the attempts to build a bridge across it.
Hathor (2003)
Taken from a Sumerian text of several thousand years ago, which I put to music, the writer praises the Goddess Hathor for bringing her lover to her.
Pharisee (2003)
This song is about the negative change in a friend, brought about by conversion to religious fundamentalism.
Death To Sophia’s/Urban Latino (2001)
A fusion of two songs about mixed up emotions, and drawing parallels to how the emotional cycle is the same, in the past and the present, home and abroad.
Seat Of Kings (1999)
This song is about night time at Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh.
My Gods & I (2000)
Set to the old folk tune of “The Lowlands Of Holland” this is a song about celebrating the Divine in Nature.
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