From the recordings Fade Away (In To The Water) and Onion
Fade Away (Into The Water)
My friend Justin Evans bravely shared some of his poetic endeavours with me well over a year (two?!) ago. I threatened many times to pick up a guitar and put some music around his words (actually I did start a few attempts to compose music to go with his words – but really, 2016 was a basic write off for me until after early November when I began to get my mojo back a bit).
One thing you need to know about Justin is that I have rarely ever met anyone who is as deep a musical anorak as I am. The blessing to this is that it’s also largely about the same type of music! It has been my immense pleasure to be able to discuss, for example, the minutiae of the life and times of Bruce Springsteen, Bowie etc and the beauty of vinyl records in general, their collection, their assimilation into the brain and their importance to life. Justin just gets it.
The lyric here is by Justin and I sat at the piano one Saturday morning in early December ’16 for an hour or so and constructed the chord sequence that I felt worked with the poem. I’m really happy at how it turned out and I like this song a lot. When it came to the vocal it virtually recorded itself. This song was waiting to be plucked out of the ether.
The contents of the poems Justin left with me were deep. I was pained at how my friend must have felt when he was writing some of them. I recognized many facets of his thought process in my own and that of other people I know who have shared similar concepts, acknowledgements, fears, regrets and love. It’s all of us. Justin speaks a universal truth. Having said that, and just to clarify, lots of Justin's work absolutely celebrates life, particularly a deep love of family, another thing we seem to agree strongly on. Evans' kids? Yer ould fella's one of the cool ones.
I hope to do more music to Mr Evans’ written wanderings at some stage in the future. Watch this space!