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The Basin Stone

by Gareth Scott

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    Rough shod folk and songwriting from the Upper Calder Valley.
    Six years is a long time to record an Album. There was even some times that I thought this might be a posthumous release... but here it is. 'Enjoy' might not be the right word to commend it to you with - but THANKS! Thanks for taking a copy off my hands...

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1.
Fiddle Wood. 04:42
Oh How sweetly It comes in the late May spring. The rain comes in And it sits all the birds stil to sing For the joy and the dreams of their coming broods. In a Ryburn Valley All in a kingdom to call my own When I climb up to Cottonstones Its like I'd sneaked and I peeped Into a secret garden. Up through Fiddle Wood And the crucible valley floor I'm listening to sound of a summer song Singing 'I will love you, I will love you my whole life long. So starts my Dream, my dream of you Oh to be the one who is in your bedroom And is unbuttoning you. So starts my dream of you Oh to be one who is your bedroom And is unbuttoning you I would love to do. One look upon high I see a coming crisis up there in the clouds Oh this valley soon in full spate Of a wind and it abated for nobody. And all lemon scents Becoming thunder in the blink of an eye Drenching through And surprising your summer whites Oh run on home run on home And we will shelter it through. So starts my dream of you To be the one who is your bedroom And is unbuttoning you..........
2.
Only the heather would flower, where the earth it is sour But the rivers they all did turn Like machines in our valleys and our cloughs Under the moors you'd see all the black roots of trees And it is evidence enough Of why farm walls got left to crumble and to fall How soon we were tied to the loom A drone lost in the factory boom Because the summers came slow And the yields were poor And the movement of men from the famine and wars All in the wake these exiles.. Who were tied up in slavery to textile Here in this England. Because of the 'operative ease' of the Ginny machines Well a mother and her child soon toiled On the factory floor And with 'operative ease' a new ritual of Thieves Gave an eighty hour week A two shillings and sixpence reward. So there are twenty thousand on the moor All to march against The Bill Of The Poor. Seeds of Chartism sown up at the basin Stone Had them pulling out the Plugs down in Todmorden. All in the wake these exiles.. Who were tied up in slavery to textile Here in this England. They cried the time it will come when this Weavers band Will hunger no more down here In our own Fathers land When the factory child will sleep on until day And he smile as he dreams Of his sports and of his friendships and his play Until justice and love holds jubilee We march until our Charter reigns free. All against crushing up bones in a workhouse yard Leaving a poor man and family to starve. All in the wake these exiles.. Who were tied up in slavery to textile Here in this England. All summer long Those Factories rolled on. All wintertime long those factories rolled on Through springtime long, those factories rolled on. Once thes towns they rang with such a clatter and bang But the looms they turn no more Down here, in our valleys and or cloughs And all the townships that thrived they're all gentrified And mortgaged of away to serve of commuter community Once the Mills they rolled all the nights in the hills Theres just the gates left and a hardstanding Because the ritual of thieves moved the labour on To have them turning the loom in a foreign land For the sub-poverty rates they can pay them To tie them up in a bonded wage slavery Where all overtime is mandatory All on top of a ninety hour week. And in conditions so wretched and poor they burn 112 Tazreen Buried 1200 more in Savar.. burn 112 in Tazreen With our ritual incentivising Of the sweatshops there in China Of the sweatshops there in Haiti Its just a race to the bottom we see.... All summer long- those sweatshops roll on All sumnmtertime long, those sweatshops roll on All in a nine storey, Maquiliadora Those sweatshops roll on....
3.
4.
5.
Violetta. 05:07
A fire burns beneath her skin My Violetta lays dying, under angels wings Slow, slowly turns the brain tonight In a perfect fixation of exhausted plight Well I feed you and send you straight up to bed. Tell you tomorrows another day and I need you there.. Slow, slowly turns the brain tonight In a perfect fixation, of exhausted plight Well that was a week so very hard spent Where compassion took such a blow There was none left to lend. Well I feed you and send you straight up to bed And say tomorrows another day.. And I need you there.. You, were always a champion collector fo bruises With your brashness you bashed up confusion With a lazer guided sight you cut down to size.. with the edge of your hand. It just took some explaining for others to understand, A catch up game that we all played to realise that what you said yesterday Or indeed, several yesterdays ago Was becoming now as you said so So, I sit, in the sump, of a waiting room think And I watch the spoiled pushed around the Salford Royal In the constant air-condtioned blow With the old chaps, chatting to themselves Watching weary staff, Catching a once in eight hours ten minute cigarette break and a yoghurt pot perhaps.. Oh it makes it more murderous to know Oh it makes it more murderous to think Things become a din Oh a dense brain mass Till it becomes a blank This weighing up and measuring of scars An assumption here, an obvious accident there All sitting with the self prescribing the withering and the dying. Not too much time to write these words before Ali pushes you back across the floor You're both bored Intolerably so.. And this is how they make you suffer You are numbed down and told to go away In their manner kindest for more tests And a meeting planned for four months hence No surprise upon your face. Just another bruise collected.
6.
Pharaoh. 04:32
7.
Spring brings a Gladstone bag for your sorrows An apothacary for your heart A tincture of love for you all to swallow To give you knowledge and the strength in arms For all joy, for all joy, Oh joy for all. So when you slumbered in your hibernation Winter it captured a map of your scars But in she runs with her preparations For to soothe, and suffuse any champion collection of bruises And for the first time in a centuary of days Your feet they stamp and your hips they sway In the cold herald that morning has raised up In abyssful bliss to a tune that goes like this.. Come along and look in And you'll see that love is the wonderful measure of all things Come along and look in And you will se that love is the wonderful measure of everything. Of all things.... With one cold echo still winter did holler Only hard truth is the equal to your sorrows And if loss is a measure of love Then without loss known we will be starving our souls So for the first time in a centuary days Your feet they stamp your hips they sway In the cold herald that morning has raised up All in Abyssful bliss.....
8.
Come in lad the outside now is frozen I hold the door wide open for your walker Inside the folks complain of cold Of the door that I opened wide for Arthur Well its such a cold day Outside the Bluebird Cafe Still the old boy is greeted now with laughter And for a bit more taste upon your dinner plate Each salt seller is emptied out and shaken And all those pension day grumbles sweetened up with the crumbles And the best of Peters home made baking. In the window sits a teenage mother Who sits there with her baby daughter Not out of hospital three days The bairn was a surprise she says, And varifocalled eyes, all roll to the skies As she explains her baby's name Well it was a little game that I used to play, she says As I lie in bed my belly growing That names an anagram of an absentee mans name Who left without his baby ever knowing. Well I leaned that stirring up my coffee I learned that staring at my food And it took great guts that conversation Because their inquisition it was rude! And that girls answers were courageous And I know that she never lied, no she never lied.. except maybe to herself. Arthur Old boy you are late today The lasses have gone up to town already You shuffle on to find you usual place.. I cannot watch you eating your spaghetti How could I understand? how that arthritic rheumy old man.. still figured on fancying all the ladies. And all the windows drip steam from the stewing of tea And the bubbling of a Burco boiler Edie is eighty three and she has not ever been.. back home once to Connemara. Well the folk here know each others business And in this fish bowl there are no secrets The route of all those Sowerby Fables Are plotted charted at these tables And I know they never lie, I know that they never lie... except maybe to themselves. Ah, me too. I will be waiting at these tables And shallow falls all the conversation Ah, me too. I will be finishing my dinner breaking With gravy chasing knives and that free advice.. None of which I ever will be taking. Well these old boots they were made for working. And that is what they are going to do. You do it as a daily grind. Till work it walks all over you, till work it walks all over you I hardly ever lie, I hardly ever lie...... except maybe to myeslf, except to myself.
9.
Courage. Bon courage... Bon courage Courage Bon courage Courage Courage Courage......... Bon courage. Do you that? Do you know that....? ...That there is no such thing I have ever seen, as a simple tear. That there is nothing so withering to belief, as final sincerities? Sincerely..... Well it was such a lovely and warm April day But it was almost too much for you to bare Yeah the air it was so hot and still And you could not fill your lungs. It brought on a near panic attack A statement that you later ask me to retract.. and draught after flushing daught of water. SO, we go slow on the zebra crossing- yes the traffic can wait And we make our way over to the Bear cafe where you push your fork around a plate Trying hard to entertain, interest and engage your belly then to make-more than just those bubbling sounds And brew up a reaction of good energy. I am here, thankfull I say and blessed with your ever irridescent presence and company.. Though in truth today! It is no more that a blushed hibakusha or some dust from Pompeii This is before the proposed american therapy, Where One Hundreds it will defeat you and every staircase looks like K2. Downstairs, in the organic food shop.. You finger every saviour elixir courgette.. and you turn to me and say ''its expensive isn't it? being good, oh what encouragement could it give?'' Then you lead me, in a slow turned dance around the store Looking, looking, with a forgetful forceful scrutiny For something to abate the mutiny in your body.. A distraction, a path, a lock, an answer.. In a slow turned dance around the store I see.. in a gardeners hand cream, in a lotion especially designed for dry ear skin, a haunting and a wanting, in all these potions for good health.. and as you kneel down to the bottom shelf Well I look at you and I think, My god girl you've got so small.. you are almost a foetus. Later, when the couch had reclaimed you once again You drew your knees both up and in.. And you beaten by an irradiating tingling. Why? Is there no such, thing I've ever seen, as a simple tear? Is there nothing- so withering to belief, as final sincerity...? Sincerely.

about

Nestled deep in the Calder Valley in rural West Yorkshire is where many of these tales began to formulate. From self-penned material to select English traditional folk song, Gareth Scott's debut outing is a departure from his main project, the well-established and revered shanty group Kimber's men who've released countless albums and toured across the world making them one of the mainstays of the British shanty tradition.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Scott's debut album is a departure from Kimber's Men and solidifies his reputation with his debut album. A collection of original and earthy English traditional folk song with tales such as ‘Two Magicians’ and ‘Death and the Lady’. The former being a popular Steeleye Span interpretation, this takes on a darker, more surreal and ethereal context whilst Death and the Lady is more of a 'solo outing' opposed to the 'full band with percussion, fiddle, border pipes & mandolin of ‘Two Magicians’. Scott explores a 'spiritual' in the track ‘Pharoah’. Unsure of its heritage or author, this 'spiritual' is an Alan Lomax field recording 'Voices of the American South' of Mrs Sydney Carter. Scott's original compositions take an equally potent kinship to the landscape.

The Basin Stone (pictured on the cover) is where radical meetings of the Chartists, Hudsonites and other Socialists groups gathered in the mid 19th century. The eponymous song doesn't focus on the past, instead poignantly tackles a global class struggle from the working-class Yorkshire valleys to the sweatshops in Haiti. 

Violetta; Named for the La Traviata heroine ''The Fallen Woman'' is a tale of the opera of the modern NHS. The trials to get treatments and its simple, maddening mundanity. The NHS is not failing, it is being failed.

Scott isn't your average folk musician, casting a net across further influences than British Folk, Bluebird Conversation has a feel of a smoky back-room piano balled, akin to early Tom Waits. Now gone, The Bluebird Cafe was not just a cafe, but an Old Man's Parliament, an Old Lasses Knitting Club and a good cheap breakfast... A place to get an opinion. Whether you wanted one or not. 

MORNING STAR say:
4 stars
Based in Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, Gareth Scott is a long-time member of the shanty group Kimber’s Men and this debut solo album has been six years in the making.

It has been well worth the wait however and is an interesting mix of traditional and new compositions.

Two Magicians and Death and the Lady have been recorded by many veteran artists but Scott gives them his own distinct smoky style. The Pharaoh is a “spiritual” from an Alan Lomax field recording.

However, his own title track composition gives the best flavour of the album paying tribute to a venue in Todmorden where meetings of the Chartists used to take place. The song takes us through class struggles old and new both in Britain and internationally. Another self-penned track Violetta pays tribute to the NHS.

Plenty of themes here for Star readers to enjoy in this innovative album.


FATEA MAGAZINE say:
A member of shanty outfit Kimber's Men, Scott now branches out for this solo project (though involving fellow band members John Bromley, Neil Kimber and Steve Smith) ,a decidedly more complex and heavier affair of traditional and original songs based around his Yorkshire roots and experience.

Taking its title from the location above Tormorden where the Chartists, Hudsonites and Wesleyans preached and held meetings aimed at advancing the Socialist cause, it opens with 'Fiddlewood', a love song, featuring Simon Chantler and birdsong, before moving to the driving intensity seven-minute title track which uses the setting to talk about oppression of the working class and the global struggle from the factories of Yorkshire to the world's sweatshops with Becky Taylor on whistles.

He subsequently pairs two traditional numbers back to back with 'Two Magicians' featuring urgent, tumbling circular acoustic guitar pattern, puttering percussion, mandolin and duet vocals from Alice Jones and a sombre, medieval stoked 'Death And The Lady' coloured by Michael Beeke's border pipes and recorders.

Returning to self-penned material, co-penned by Smith, taking its name from the heroine of La Traviata, the starkly arranged, Renaisssance courtly-feel balladeering minstrel lament 'Violetta' focuses its attention on the opera that is the NHS, with the frustrating red tape involving treatments and the failure of those who should be supporting it.

Opening with storm field recordings and song starkly unaccompanied by Scott, Jenny Bromley and Agnus Dei, 'Pharoah' is another from the archives, an American spiritual derived from Alan Lomax's Southern Soul Journey Vol 1, returning to a title echo of the opening number with 'In Fiddle Wood', a harmonium drone-based invocation to a friend to find someone to love.

Adopting back room saloon piano a la early Tom Waits, with fingerpicked acopustic and sung inked, gravelly tones, 'Bluebird Conversations' recalls the Bluebird Café, not the one in Nashville, but a former greasy spoon in Sowerby Bridge where Scott used to bunk of to from school and play video games in his lunch break. It ends in a similar establishment with the nine-minute 'The Bear Café Todmorden featuring just Scott on guitar, singing, or speaking more like, about, as he describes it, "a late lunch taken with a beautiful friend" and which ruminates on growing older "when every staircase looks like K2".

One for considered rather than light listening and, given the lengthy of most of the tracks, unlikely to get a great deal of airplay on time-limited folk shows, but undeniably worth your seeking out.

Mike Davies

SHREWSBURY FOLK FESTIVAL.
Compere Owen Lewis says:
Shrewsbury has always shown an interest in the work of Kimber’s Men. They have been known here ever since those fun days during Shrewsbury Folk Festival when crammed into the Bird In Hand they would sing the night away with their infectious and powerful shanties. So it is always interesting to see what they are up to and if there is any news I ought to bring you. Well across my desk arrived Gareth Scott’s new album, ‘The Basin Stone.’

As far away from his shanty singing as he could possibly be, Gareth has brought to us a new sound, strident, powerful and as enduring as the granite in his beloved Calderdale. ‘The Basin Stone’ brings a complexity of sound so much more mature than one might expect from a first album. With some remarkable musical backing Gareth doesn’t so much sing and play a few songs for you he takes you on a journey through his Yorkshire home and shares a love befitting of the great poet that he is. Songwriter/Poet? He is both and each hand crafted song has a uniqueness that will mark this out as an important and seminal album.

With a vocal reminiscent of Dick Gaughan crossed with Vin Garbutt, Gareth sings his way through his life’s experience, his observations and emotions. With old friends around him like John Bromley, Neil Kimber and Steve Smith, (all from Kimber’s Men:) Alice Jones, Roger Burnett and Simon Chantler Jenny Bromley and Andy Greaves and more, this is a strong album and surrounded by such talent one would imagine something a little more top drawer than other CD’s that one has reviewed over the last ten years.

This is not an album that gives you tracks to whistle as you walk around the supermarket, the best way to listen to and actually hear this album is in a quiet room with minimal interruptions; so one can submerge oneself into the sound scape that Gareth is very cleverly creating. It is a serious piece of work and for that it holds an increased appeal for those who want to think a little more about what they are hearing.

There is a ruggedness about this album. It is a reflection on Gareth’s Yorkshire; a Yorkshire that belongs in the woods and dales, valleys and hills, a Yorkshire that has shaped and created our history and consequently ourselves. It is about a Yorkshire steeped in history, myth and folklore. It is the Yorkshire that has seen a struggle for bread and seen riots and protests. It is a Yorkshire alive with beauty and freedom. All of this comes from Gareth’s tracks and his writing. An album that has taken six years to create had better be good, luckily this one is.

One is of the mind that Gareth would like the listener to think and to understand. He has no axe to grind and no vitriol to spread, these are just the feelings and notes of a 21st Century Yorkshireman.

As for the production of the album the friends and professionals he has used on each track have brought so much more in the way of riches. Be it Simon Chantler’s Fiddles on Fiddlewood, or Roger Burnett’s incredible percussion in The Basin Stone, it might be Christopher Smith’s in drums in Violetta or Mr.John Wilson’s piano in Bluebird Conversations there is some delightful musical moments and phrases from all the artists and it seems not only do they understand this music they so beautifully and stylishly all add a little something extra something, something a little bit magical.

The harmonies are something that this reviewer was thrilled with. Pharaoh is a fine example of this with Jenny Bromley and Agnus Dei providing second vocals and harmonies. It is so powerful and understated making it even more appealing.

Gareth has written all the tracks apart from The Two Magicians and Death and The Lady. With Roger Burnett’s percussion creating the heartbeat, Gareth is joined by Mike Beeke’s Border Pipes and Recorders, Second Vocal Alice Jones, Andy Greaves on Mandolin and Simon Chantler’s fiddles. The combination of the two tracks is a master stroke, as the songs belong together. They add to the mysticism of the area and a reminder of where we have all come from. It was these songs that intrigued and maybe even scared our forebears. Great treatment of the songs and Gareth’s voice is so well suited to the effect he is looking for. Excellent.

This is an album that needed making. It is an important piece of work. It is cerebral and sublime and if this is the calibre of song and poetry that falls from Gareth’s pen, one hopes his pen has plenty of ink. It is a shame that due to social distancing it will be hard for Gareth to tour and promote his album. So he has put it all on Bandcamp the whole album is available for listening to then one has the choice of buying a download or the CD.

Gareth Scott is a name that will become much wider known. Festival organisers and folk clubs cannot ignore this man and his unique style will become as recognisable as many of the great voices that have gone before us.

This is a four star review.

Owen J.Lewis

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released August 1, 2020

Recorded by Steve Smith.

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Gareth Scott Todmorden, UK

Rough shod folk and songwriting from the Upper Calder Valley.

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