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I have decided to keep you informed as to my progress or lack of it as we move into record mode. I will try to explain how decisions are made and how I arrive at the treatment a song gets.

• Thoughts on the Title: Somewhere Down The Road

In a recent interview I was asked the significance of the title of my new C.D. “Somewhere down The Road.” As most of you will know, this is my usual way of signing off from my newsletters and messages to friends. Some people have written to ask me if this album is indeed my signing off and I am happy to report that on the contrary, nothing could be furthest from my intentions at the moment.

Somewhere Down the Road as a phrase was arrived at after a lot of thought. I will attempt to unravel my thoughts here and start with the implications in this context of “the road.”

My early years and wander lust was often attributed to the family rumour that there is Romany blood in my father's family and rather like John Hurt and his belief in his Irish ancestry, I do hope that it is true but unlike him, I would be more than cautious in researching that history after seeing his devastation that in his case it was not.

Tom Paxton, an old friend states that as musicians, “We do not get paid for playing, that is, and always has been a joy. In fact we are paid for travelling, which is the real hard work.”

Actually I love travelling and only curse airports, motorway jams and bad drivers. The worst aspect of travel is the tiredness one feels after long journeys when all you want to do is get out on stage and convey the love of what you are blessed to do, which is to share your music with energy and care. Thankfully for me my adrenalin always carries me through.

There remains the “road” however and the joy of arriving somewhere on tour is almost equal to leaving the following day for another place. This perpetual movement is a way of cheating the passage of time. My songs are full of references to this e.g. in “Geordie's On the Road” I say...

“I don't know why we're travelling.
Just to keep from standing still”

In “Walk Into The Morning” I say:

“No fixed destination except some vague direction South”

In “The Ferryman” the traveller does not know the reason for his journey and there are many more references to this belief that time can be tricked by moving on.

In "The boy with a Note" I parodied Dylan Thomas's beautiful line;

Time ticked a heaven round the stars
as
Time tricked a haven round the bars

As he attempted to trick time and his own mortality his cigarettes reduced to "little fuses of time".

The phrase “Somewhere Down The Road”. hints at the eternal, for the road never ends and I truly believe the cliché that it is the journey that is important rather than the arriving. At the outset of the song “Somewhere Down The Road”. it is plain that the singer is leaving a situation that he has outgrown and once again time is referred to. In this case with the passing of sand through the hourglass but in an effort to keep HOPE alive he suggests that he might meet up with the other party again.:

“Don't ask where it went
It is my true intent
To give you a call if ever I get back”

This might suggest that the relationship has not ended, hope springs eternal and hope for a meeting or even a reconciliation is left hanging. In a way this is cheating finality and once again suspending time. I believe music has this quality as well. When we listen to music that affects us emotionally, we suspend time again. How often have we been surprised that a length of time has passed while we are listening or how quickly an hour can pass in a matter of minutes. Again time has been given the illusion of being held at bay. This happens during the act of writing and performing or even just paying music. When I bought my first proper guitar at Ivor Mairants Music Centre in London. I was sat in the shop for at least two hours before Ivor himself gently informed me that the shop was about to close and had I made up my mind to buy the guitar? Of course I bought it and I still do not know where those hours went.

Music and song are also part of this journey. No musician can ever learn it all let alone play it all. It is not possible to achieve all aspects of technique over emotion. Again, it is the journey, the gradual acquisition of knowledge, the way streets connect with each other, how notes harmonise why some words work and others do not.

• The hugeness of classical works, the corporate act of forty plus musicians and conductor striving toward a common goal in interpretation of the composer's intent.
• The purity and terror of Robert Johnson expression on one guitar.
• Charlie Parker's exhausting quest for beauty in his tumbling cascades of notes on the saxophone.
• Mozart's seemingly unending gift for flowing melody and voicings.
• Woody Guthrie's adaptations of old folk songs with articulate messages of hope and justice.
• Paul McCartney's melodic genius and exuberance anchored to truly amazing bass paying.
• The clarity and passion of Luke Kelly 's vocal declaiming.
• Dave Swarbrick's devilish mischief and delicacy on the fiddle.
• Django Rhienhardt's stunning virtuosity on guitar (with only two working fingers on his left hand)

The list goes on forever so I will have to stop, but you get the gist of my thinking.

Music and words and their power to involve and move us is truly infinite, and infinity is the cheating of time. After exploring some of these thoughts in the song I realised that I needed to anchor it down a bit so the reference to October and leaves blowing away attempts to remind us how important our seasonal changes are. They mark our year and I truly believe our Northern hemisphere's musical heritage is deeply affected by them both in our folk music and in our classical compositions. It cannot just be coincidence that Vivaldi wrote his most popular piece of music calling it “The Four Seasons”.

We describe music as being “Spring like” or “Summery” “Autumnal or “Wintery” I tried in my song “Autumn” to rationalise why we must wait through the movement of leaves falling and into winter in order to experience the joy of spring again. That although we may not see these changes personally by reason of our own mortality, they will continue forever as long as our world lasts at any rate!

It is a fact that there are less poems and songs about Autumn than all the other seasons and it is an interesting co ncidence that seasons affect our feelings of well being and those that suffer down heartedness through Autumn and Winter are described as suffering from a seasonal depression. Our own physical bodies have their seasons too and in the final verse of Somewhere Down The Road I address the occasion when I visited a friend whose death was imminent in order to say good bye. I do not know what his spiritual beliefs were but I knew that he was aware of mine. At some point I had to leave him and the word “Goodbye” was too final and does not in itself acknowledge that for some believers there is more to come. Somewhere Down The Road as a signing off hints at acknowledging that. I'll see you "Somewhere Down The road" is both a statement of intent and a question asked in hope that meeting up might be possible, without being time or space specific. It's positive and vague enough to be yet another attempt to trick time.

The road goes on, hope and optimism are essential for our well-being and survival, music accompanies us, we are all in this together, as long as it lasts.

See you...
Somewhere down The Road.......

Ralph
16th September 2010

• End

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