A homecoming song by the terrific Canadian band: Po' Girl

This is a piece Phil wrote quite a few years ago - we decided to put it in the collection because it hasn't lost its relevance, and Tess really likes it!

A favourite Old Time song backed by banjo and fiddle. The lyrics are slightly altered to mention Whitlock, Phil's good friend from Atlanta, Georgia, who sadly passed away a few years ago. Rising Appachia, a fabulous American band and friends of Phil's, put that line in to celebrate Whit, so we followed suit. Whit was a fine musician, artist and lovely man, loved by all.

An instrumental tune Phil wrote for one of his solo albums to which we have added lyrics for this version. Halcyon is an old word which refers to kingfishers. We often see them by the river in our beautiful Yorkshire town.

We love this song. Gillian Welch is amazing. It's a lovely, sparse arrangement.

Irvin Berlin was an incredibly prolific songwriter from the early part of the 20th century.
Should you want more information about this interesting composer you might want to visit his Wiki page: click here.

Phil says: "We were sitting in our easy chairs, watching the world go by us. So goes this first line of this song because that was exactly what I was doing when he wrote those words into my phone! The rest of the song seemed to fall out of the sky - it was done and dusted in a morning. Unusual for a slow coach like me.""

Phil: I've been lucky enough to go to America for a couple of weeks every year over 25 years. I have made some lovely friends. One time we went to Mount Airy to an Old Time festival, then to Mars Hill, a baptist university where my friends were running classes. On the way south to Atlanta we stopped at Elizabeth's beautiful house in the mountains in North Carolina. There were a few of us there and many songs and tunes were played, all the time hummingbirds whizzed past us to and fro a feeder. The whole thing was magical.

Phil: This is a well known tune which, I believe, goes back to the 1760's. I took some fragments of lyrics I'd found and added words of my own to make this an anti-war song.
Apparently soldiers in the Napoleonic war would take morphine and self mutilate to escape the battle field.

Phil wrote this to celebrate the discovery of evolution (the work of Charles Darwin and others). It mustn't be seen as anti-religion, or anti-anything! It's pro-science! The scratchy fiddle and banjo provide a fitting backdrop.