Day Nineteen - I Didn't Try Hard Enough

“The repetition really pulled me through”

You can hear an audio version of this post here.

Today’s song is I Didn’t Try Hard Enough written by Scottish musician Kris Drever (Glasgow based, Orkney born, as it says on his Bandcamp). This song is on his 2016 album If Wishes Were Horses (and you can hear it here). He’s had a couple of releases since that one (and they are all great) but let’s go back in time a little first.

I saw Kris live for the first time in Montrose in 2005 and have since seen him solo and with lots of other people in various different venues. He started out as a guitar player (who did the odd song) but over the years, apparently thanks to an initial nudge towards solo work from John McCusker, Kris has become a really loved and respected solo singer/songwriter (as well as a great guitarist). His guitar playing is both intricate (I got that from someone else’s review) and infectious (that’s my feeling – it’s something about the rhythms he finds, he can turn the saddest song into something that still makes you want to go out dancing). His voice is like no one else’s and to be honest I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. I find it in turns friendly, plaintive, distinctive, pensive. Currently Kris is part of the very popular collaborative Spell Songs project (writing, playing and singing) along with Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Jim Molyneux, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Karine Polwart (and a song from Karine will turn up here in a couple of days). The songs are offshoots from the books The Lost Words and The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris and the second Spell Songs album, Let the Light In, was just released last month (and the collective are touring very soon). Every song on Spell Songs is a treat in every possible way and Kris’s contributions are no exception. I never buy the Spell Songs albums because I know one friend in particular (my two-time cover artist Steph Masterson) will always give me the CDs for Xmas (or the books or whatever else they produce). A beautiful nature artist herself, Steph is definitely one of Spell Songs’ number one fans. Here’s what I got this year:

I might have missed a few from this list but I think I saw Kris:

1. With the band Fine Friday at Montrose Folk Club in March 2005 (bit of an odd night, one of the trio was missing, but still good).
2. As part of the multi-award-winning trio Lau at Montrose Folk Club in January 2006. This band are mesmerising and amazing live – there’s a reason Kris, Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke have won Best Band at the Radio 2 Folk Awards 4 times. Mostly instrumental folk is not high on my favourite things list but this band appeal well outside the genre. I remember going into a total trance during one long accordion section when they played at the club (in a good way) and thinking “I haven’t felt like this since the best days of raving and all I’ve had tonight is a small glass of over-priced wine”. In fact I thought I had seen Lau twice at folk club but my diaries disagree. Maybe I just imagined that.
3. In a duo with banjo player Eamonn Coyne at Montrose Folk Club in February 2007. They were a great act – like Morecambe and Wise with better music. 
4. I thought I’d seen him somewhere as part of the trio Drever, McCusker, Woomble (I certainly bought their album Before the Ruin) but again I can’t find any note of it. Apologies, maybe the album just really reproduces the live experience … and I did see Roddy Woomble with Kate Rusby (and John McCusker) in the Concert Hall at Celtic Connections in 2007 so that might be the confusion.
5. Solo at Montrose Folk Club in 2008. By this point Mark and I knew his 2006 solo album Black Water practically word for word and note for note because we’d played it so much at home.
6. In the band with Eddi Reader at her brilliant show at the 2012 Montrose Music Festival in the Town Hall. You can read more about the Eddi Reader experience (the hardest working band in folk business?) back in the interview with Boo Hewerdine on Day 4.
7. Solo at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen in May 2016. This tour was around the time of the 2016 album If Wishes Were Horses. That album won Kris Best Original Song (for If Wishes Were Horses) at the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and he won singer of the year that time as well (not bad for a guitarist who does the odd song). His most recent solo album is 2020’s Where the World is Thin (which just won an award too – Album of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards).
8. This doesn’t count as ‘seeing him live’ but I did really enjoy the Folk on Foot podcast that Kris featured in from January 2020. Talk a walk around Orkney with him, why don’t you? It’s highly recommended and available wherever you find your podcasts.
9. We did have tickets to see the Spell Songs show in Perth in 2020 but as all the live shows were postponed and then cancelled I watched the Spell Songs concert that was broadcast live (to watch online) from The Natural History Museum in London in April 2021. It was a beautiful thing, proper magical.
10. Just the other day (Monday 17 Jan 2022) I watched an online concert from Glasgow featuring Kris, Euan Burton, Louis Abbott and Rachel Lightbody. He played mostly newer original songs (he has a lot of those these days) but some old favourites too. 

I’ve posted this as a list partly to show the variety of Kris’s work and also to show how his musical career has evolved. As a fan, it’s pretty simple – I’ve loved all his work. All of us, friends and family, really enjoyed the first solo album, 2006’s Black Water, which featured some trad songs, some written by modern songwriters (Sandy Wright*, Boo Hewerdine**, Andy McKay and Phil Gaston) and a tune (Honk Toot) by Kris and Ian Carr. This album for some reason became very much the sound of our festive period 2007 (this was before our daughter was old enough to campaign for more Xmassy music). His album Mark the Hard Earth (2010) featured one of his own songs (the title track Mark the Hard Earth) but then 2016’s If Wishes Were Horses marked quite the change – lots and lots of Kris’s own compositions – and they were so good! There’s a thorough track-by-track review of it here and then another one of the most recent album Where the World is Thin here.

Today’s song comes from If Wishes Were Horses (it’s the opening track) and I think I picked it because, whilst the whole album is great (really great – so new but at the same time familiar, like hanging out with a friend), this song has always really stood out to me. A thing I love in art of any kind is a mixture of honesty, humour and the unexpected and this song has all of those things (and in an interview online Kris said “I think humour is important in songwriting” so I’m not imagining it all). Meaningful sad songs are plentiful in folk (and all folk-adjacent genres) but good songs with more humour are a little harder to come by. This song is playful but hard-hitting too. Though he is open that it is a break-up song I think the theme is so open to all of us (who hasn’t not tried hard enough at something? I think I have a degree in that, possibly two). It is funny and sad, both at the same time. And the choice to just sing “Oh Well, Oh Well” as part of the song is the kind of genius I don’t think many would risk (OK, maybe a Wainwright might, and we’ve talked about one of those already this month back here and here). It’s kind of ridiculous (singing along with the ‘oh well’s especially) and yet that’s a large part of what makes it so unique. I really like it.

I have lots of happy memories of seeing Kris live over the years. One memory that stands out is hearing him sing Michael Marra’s song Hermless once in Montrose (maybe as an encore?). He suggested it should be Scotland’s national anthem and I can see that as time goes on he is entering Marra territory more and more. Like Michael Marra (who of course we talked about back here), his voice is gentle but also firm and they both write a lot about place, history and art (amongst other things). After the online concert two days ago I found myself singing a couple of the songs from the new album like More than You Know and I’ll Always Leave the Light On (Kris does a good line in repeated, catchy choruses). I really look forward to hearing what else he comes up with in the coming years. 

*Sandy Wright was also mentioned back on Day 10. 

**Boo Hewerdine has been mentioned so many times I’m losing track!

This post is part of my Songs That Stick project for 2022’s Fun A Day Dundee (a community arts project that takes place every January). Anyone can take part (you don’t even have to be local to Dundee) and much of the work can be found on Instagram during January (use #FADD2022). There is usually a real-life exhibition later in the year (though this has been online for the past 2 years). The full list of songs I am writing about this year is here. My first post about why I picked this project this time is here.

If you are interested in my Fun A Day Dundee projects for 2020 and 2021 you can start here and here. They are quite different to this one (a short poem and drawings in 2020 and lots of poems and writing in 2021).