Davie Robertson will be well known to people around the Edinburgh and
East Lothian folk scene. And completely unknown to almost everyone
else, as he never tours, never goes to folk festivals, never headlines
concerts, rarely goes to anywhere beyond cycling range of Longniddry,
and, in his late 50s, has just released his first recording, a solo CD
from Greentrax of his own songs (CDTRAX254).
On the insert, after sarcastically dismissing most of the other labels
you might think of putting on him, he describes himself as a "Composer
of Scots Songs". Which over-modestly forgets he's one hell of a
*performer* of them, not just with his own material as here, but also
such traditional ballads as "Two Brothers", "Johnny of Braidislee" or
"Clerk Colven", which he often sings to his own smallpipe accompaniment.
Perhaps we'll get a companion CD of this material someday. Meanwhile,
his own songs are among the most often sung of recent pieces in the
Scots tradition and for the first time singers have a way of learning
them the way he conceived them without having to follow him round pubs
in East Lothian to do it.
They show the full range of what the Scots tradition can do. There
has been nobody comparable since Matt McGinn; Brian McNeill is his
closest living parallel, but Robertson's idiom sticks closer to the
blunt language and melodic simplicity of the oldest Scots songs still
in the repertoire. The first verse of the opening song on the CD
hits you with a text that outgrosses Robert Fergusson, to a tune
Fergusson would have known, "Maggie Lauder":
There's nuthin brands a man in life as plainly as his hanky,
A gentleman's is nice an clean but mines is ayeways manky.
Wi gairden sile and engine ile, an dauds o nasal mucus,
An the wipins o ma fingers off o sliders bought at Luca's.
and typically sets the song locally, Luca's being the celebrated ice
cream parlour in Musselburgh. And there are intense love songs like
"Late in the Day"; a wild exaggeration of the blokey-drinking-song
genre in "A Drinkin Man"; a wonderful satire on the Iraq war with "The
Chimp and the Poodle"; one of Scotland's most-sung folk-club anthems
in "The Star o the Bar"; a send-up of tartan-shortbread-tin songmaking
in "Anthem for Scotland"; and, in "Cauld Comfort Tae Me", a song that
hits me so hard in such a personal spot I can't bring myself to talk
about it. There aren't songs you can listen to with half an ear while
doing something else.
There is one serious problem with the CD, though. It was all done
in the studio, and to anyone who's heard Davie in a pub session or a
live concert you'll know a whole human dimension of his performance
is missing here. I don't know how this could have happened - didn't
anyone listen to it and realize "shit, this sounds like a man in a
rubber room recording his confession for a televised show trial from
a dictatorship"? But meanwhile it *does* give you the songs the way
he wrote them, and after listening to it you *will* want to learn some.
Davie is a regular at the Musselburgh session, on the first Monday of
the month (see my website). I have no commercial interest in this -
in fact I think Davie would probably have given me a copy for free but
I insisted on paying for it.
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Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> * homepage for my CD-ROMs of Scottish
traditional music; free stuff on food intolerance, music and Mac logic fonts.
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