“You pass through places and places pass through you”
You can hear an audio version of this post here.
Today’s song is The Littlest Birds, written by Samantha Parton and Jolie Holland. It is one of several bird-related and/or bird-referencing songs that will be covered in this project. I first heard The Littlest Birds at Montrose Folk Club in 2010 performed by Scottish band The Bevvy Sisters but it started life as the opening track on Canadian band The Be Good Tanyas’ debut 2000/2001 album Blue Horse (hear that original version here). That album is a mix of original and traditional songs and has a lot of string action – banjos, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, double bass. The two musicians who wrote The Littlest Birds often tour together these days and are both on that early Be Good Tanyas album (also Jolie Holland was in the band briefly back then and is listed on Blue Horse as a special guest). Though they haven’t done much together of late (all very busy with lots of different things it seems), the Be Good Tanyas’ main members are still listed as Samantha Parton, Frazey Ford and Trish Klein. I have some of Frazey Ford’s solo music too and I think maybe I first heard that on the radio show that I’ve listened to for years now (Cerys Matthews Sunday mornings on BBC 6 Music). Cerys knows a thing or two about songs (also loving her new radio series Add To Playlist, presented with Jeffrey Boakye).
In 2010, I had missed a few boats and hadn’t heard of The Be Good Tanyas or Blue Horse so all I had to go on was The Bevvy Sisters’ version of The Littlest Birds (hear them do it live back in 2010). I quite fell in love with the song and rushed to buy the CD the Bevvys had out at the time (2009’s The St James Sessions). One of the Bevvys on that 2009 album is Kaela Rowan who I also saw later at Montrose Folk Club (in 2017 with The Kaela Rowan Band – they were brilliant, really different and interesting). The Bevvys were also great live – another band with three women singing harmonies (it seems I like this kind of band – at least one other has featured in this series already, the Wailin’ Jennys, also Canadian). The Bevvy line up has changed a little since 2010 but I think when I saw them that night they were: Lindsey Black (I knew a cousin of hers locally, so I’m pretty sure about that one), Kaela Rowan and Heather Macleod (she’s still in the band, see here for all the current personnel). Instead of their usual band member David Donnelly my contacts in Montrose assure me that in fact it was percussionist James Mackintosh playing with them that night.
On one of the Bevvys’ more recent albums they do another bird song (Sandy Wright’s Little Bird) and Sandy is a much-loved songwriter in the Scottish folk music scene. There’s a compilation of his songs ‘Songs of Sandy Wright’ that features his own versions and covers by (deep breath – long list): Chris Wood, Inge Thomson and Martin Green, Karine Polwart and Corrina Hewat, Kris Drever, Eddi Reader, Sarah McFayden, Heidi Talbot, Dean Owens, Gramercy Arms and Mascott, William Douglas, Roddy Woomble, Kris Drever and the Islanders, Lori Watson, Boo Hewerdine*, Michelle Burke and Mary Cullen. I first came across Sandy’s work (that I know of) when Kris Drever did two Sandy Wright songs (Steel and Stone and Beads and Feathers) on his first solo album Black Water (2006). I listened to Black Water on repeat for a while (and more Drever content coming up here later on Day 19). Also Kris has one of those watch-from-home concerts on 17th January 2022 (book here).
As for today’s song, its title and refrain caught my ear because I have a ‘little bird’, in a sense, or at least I spend a lot of time with one. Our daughter has Turner Syndrome (TS) which means she is shorter than average (and this was particularly the case when she was in primary school as she wasn’t diagnosed, and therefore treated in any way, till she was 15). TS is a lifelong condition that affects girls and women in lots of different ways (best information on this condition via the Turner Syndrome Support Society) but the shorter stature is one of the obvious features. It meant we all endured a fair bit of ‘why is she/are you so small?’ and other sniffy comments from random strangers, other parents and of course even other kids now and then. It meant we, as parents, got to be pretty fierce defenders of our fledgling and if anyone so much as looked like they were coming towards her in a playground with the wrong attitude we could, and would, be ready with whatever response seemed most appropriate. After diagnosis in 2015, the challenges for all of us increased for a while. There was the future to think about, medical issues, expectations, the end of ‘you’ll grow eventually’ and ‘everything will work itself out’ and instead ‘deal with this load of difficult information’, ‘worry about all these new things’ and ‘try to stop your young person feeling bad about herself in a world that so often seems to only want one kind of human, one kind of outcome’ (that last one is really tough, and ongoing).
So, I know it’s probably not what this song is about but that’s what it meant to me when I heard it Montrose in 2010. At that point, still pre-diagnosis, I regularly tried not to worry about things but I still did worry and I needed to hear that ‘little’ was good and special and maybe even the best (she is the best, after all). The song became, for those years, one of my favourite things. And it still makes me smile, even on a crappy day.
I can’t remember if it was a coincidence or not (or because I’d been playing them The Bevvy Sisters album) but at some point after 2010 a friend gave me a CD copy of The Be Good Tanyas’ Blue Horse. It is a gorgeous album (recorded in a ‘shack’ according to Wikipedia) and I have never really stopped listening to it. By the time I made its acquaintance I had even been attending folk club long enough to actually recognise some of the traditional songs (very exciting!). I knew Lakes of Pontchartrain from Martin Simpson (watch out for him here later in the month), I knew The Coo Coo Bird from Dana and Susan Robinson’s version (likewise) and I think I’d come across Rain and Snow (though I’m not sure how, when or where, as there are a lot of weather references in folk music and I might just be confusing it with something else…). I did already know nineteenth century songwriter North American Stephen Foster’s** Oh, Susanna! But I’m not sure exactly where I knew it from. I might have sung it at school (even growing up in the North of England it’s possible; Foster’s minstrel pieces flew far and wide).
I definitely must have heard James Taylor’s version of Oh Susanna! because there was a cassette of his album Sweet Baby James in our house in the late 1970s (I was born in 1967). I got much of my music via my five older siblings (the oldest was 21 years older than me). There were Beatles 7 inch singles left behind by a sister when she moved out, plus all the albums my brothers owned that I helped myself to when they weren’t around (i.e., most of the time). That James Taylor cassette belonged to the oldest of my two brothers as at some point he had a hippy phase (that I would imagine he now denies). I loved Sweet Baby James (Fire and Rain!) and listened to it a lot at a formative age (though I had forgotten about that till putting all these pieces together). That denim on the cover, that hair (1970s hippy has long been my favourite look). That same brother had a fair bit of Pink Floyd back then as well (I used to sit outside his room and listen to him listening) and there’s a link there too because the Pink Floyd song Jugband Blues is referenced in The Littlest Birds. Song connections in our lives are neverending once you start looking.
Anyway, enough tweeting for now. Tomorrow it’s a bit of a change of sound (and a Northumberland bluesman). Don’t forget to bring your slide guitars…
*Today’s Boo Hewerdine reference (altogether now – “Boo!”).
**Stephen Foster (1826-1864) wrote more than 200 songs, many of them ‘minstrel’ songs. This genre of music has been re-examined in recent times, as you would expect. There’s a 2014 interview with the fabulous Rhiannon Giddens (banjo player, amazing singer and songwriter – I’ll be getting to her later this month), for example, where she mentions Foster songs and how omnipresent they were growing up in the US. In a speech for the International Bluegrass Music Association (here) she even mentions Oh Susanna!
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).
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