At Home On The Earth.

On Sunday Simon and I played at Hennock Country Fayre.  We were allotted a small gazebo by the main barn where people gathered to eat and share food, we brought along our  PA system, our instruments, our songs.  

We have been living at Teign Village close by Hennock for a year now.  Sharing the cherries from our trees with the neighbours, taking on an allotment rotivated and turned for us by a local man, singing at the Strawberry Fair in June and now for the summer shin-dig on the windy hill above the village.

I am participating in a sense of ‘community’ - which I’ve read about for so many years in the pages of Wendell Berry’s essays and poetry books; sharing tools to work on the land – hoes, spades, entertaining at village functions, raising money for a local school, setting up a community shop.  What does this mean to me?  Is it good for me?   It feels good.  It’s starting to feel like home.

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it”

Wendell Berry  (Kentucky farmer, author and poet)

After the Great Hall Dartington

I had a brilliant time singing in the Great Hall Dartington on July 5^th.  It is so liberating to have the chance to sing what I am so passionate about.  My thanks to Kay and Stephen at Ways With Words Literature Festival for having me again.   I have been preparing for New Networks for Nature Conference in the last few weeks. I am launching my new solo album there. I will sing there for the first time the song I have written from interview with Jonathon Porrit who is a big name in environment/ecology and appears on TV, Radio frequently. Jon works alongside Prince Charles with huge cos. like M&S in amazing ways I interviewed him in Bristol at a cafe following the launch of his book The World We Made

He told me about his childhood and I asked him some honest and profound questions so I could get a heart felt response. A song ‘has to go quickly from the heart to the heart’ (Leonard Cohen) . I wrote the song using his words and ideas, sent it to him, he said he loves it and wishes me to contact him when my solo album is beginning to emerge. In fact I’m just about to go and rehearse that song right now. 

I’m writing a new song especially for the conference from my research into the other folk appearing there, Germaine Greer, George Monbiot, Mike Mc Carthy. 

I’ve decided also to sing songs I’ve written with Devon people too.  The more I think about it the more relevant these songs become as society shifts towards caring for the soil and for community(yes it is happening!!  there are signs of regeneration in both fields all over the country) So I shall sing my song about Jack Connabeer again and again.  Jack owned a small farm on the side of Hood Ball.

The hill overlooking Riverford Bridge opposite the well-known organic farm,

Jack Loved the soil and he loved the land and he planted an orchard by Riverford Bridge

And he Married Heather and they and their children looked after the farm

Jack was a celebrated dry-stone waller, Devon hedge layer and speaker of the Devon dialect

I wrote this song with him and after my interviews I returned to him with a first draft which he amended until he was satisfied.  I enjoyed wworking with Jack and miss him-sadly he died about 6 years ago.