“Build a fire, watch it burn”
Today’s song is Lay My Heart written by Rachel Sermanni. This song was released in 2017 (hear it and buy it here) but I first heard it last year (in January 2021) when it was used for the final part of the online Celtic Connections music festival. I’ve mentioned this festival a few times this month already – it’s annual, in Glasgow, and something like the Scottish mothership for players and fans of folk, acoustic and all associated music. Last year Lay My Heart was the soundtrack to a montage that looked back at the festival, all of which had been online. It was a very emotional segment as people all over the world remembered what we had shared, watched and listened to over the previous few weeks. You can still see that montage below (and spot a few of the songwriters from my choices this month in there too). Lay My Heart was a perfect choice for that final broadcast (full details of players on the song on the Bandcamp page too). I listened to the song on repeat for days after and it became another new favourite song. You can have a lot of favourite songs – I have hundreds, if not thousands, by this point. How on earth do we fit them all in our heads, I sometimes wonder?
In fact, permit me a folk club-related aside here. In 2006 I saw a singer-songwriter called Kieran Halpin* at Montrose Folk Club. I can’t say he was one of my favourites but something he said stuck in my mind. He talked about how loving children is like having a jacket that just keeps getting more pockets. You think you have no more love to give but then, lo!, when a child arrives another pocket (full of love) appears like magic. I think someone else, another songwriter, had said this to him but I can’t remember who. We have one child so I haven’t personally tested this theory but certainly it does work for songs. Sometimes I think I don’t have room in my mind/ears/heart for more music and then, lo!, another pocket of space appears! So it was with today’s song.
There isn’t a link to my Montrose Folk Club visits for Lay My Heart (it seems I am all out of those links). I don’t think Rachel Sermanni has played there, in fact I don’t know if she plays folk clubs at all particularly. She is a Scottish singer-songwriter, a musician, and somewhere online I read “The music of Folk-Noir Balladeer, Rachel Sermanni, has the flesh of Folk but, if you were to cut the skin, you’d find it pumped with contemporary, genre blended blood” (I thought I’d read it on her website but can’t see it there now). It is common to use the word ‘artist’ for musicians and for Rachel this word seems exactly right. She’s been putting out music for about a decade and it is textured, careful, interesting, dreamy. I’ve only seen her perform live once but I have friends who are big fans and who have pretty much followed her around the country applauding. One of those friends has always looked at me a bit confused when they’ve suggested I join them on one of these trips and I’ve said no for one reason or another (distance, family responsibilities, nervous dog that can’t be left alone, just general weariness). I think their confusion went along the lines of ‘but this is the most beautiful music, are you mad, why don’t you want to come?’ And now I’ve listened to her songs I can see their point (Breathe Easy on her first album Under Mountains is another lovely one, likewise Old Ladies Lament, Banks Are Broken and This Love on Tied to the Moon and that’s just my favourites so far).
The time I did see her live was as part of the launch show for Celtic Connections 2017 (I mentioned this event already back here). The tickets were a 50th birthday present (for me) and all we knew was that Laura Marling was headlining (and all 3 of us in the family love her albums). There were some amazing surprises though because other artists on the bill were Rachel Sermanni and Adam Holmes, Cara Dillon, Aziza Brahim, Declan O’Rourke and, one of my absolute faves, the Karine Polwart Trio (and this was the event where KP premiered I Burn But I Am Not Consumed – so, so good). It was a great night. Well worth getting old for.
I know the pandemic has been (and continues to be) super tough on people who rely on live events for their income and so I have done my best to support all my favourite artists by buying albums (as directly from them as possible), buying tickets to online shows, donating what I can when there’s a donate option for online festivals and so on. Once it was announced in late 2020 that 2021’s Celtic Connections would all be online we bought a pass and got ready for some great music (at home) last January. We’ve been to the in-person Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow a few times and we’ve always loved it but, what with cost and overnight stays, January weather and all that, when we do go there we get to, at most, a couple of shows. This time we would binge!
And I’d have to say I found last January’s Celtic Connections festival really special. I know online events are generally talked about as less than ‘the real thing’ (and many people have been extremely glad that at least some of this year’s Celtic Connections have been in-person live events) but online events can have their own kind of joy (for some of the audience anyway). I’ve attended lots of events online in the past 2 years that I wouldn’t have managed to get to in-person (some music events but also book festivals, poetry festivals, talks, conferences). There can be all kinds of restrictions to getting to things elsewhere and everyone has their own versions of what’s difficult or just downright impossible. For me I’m still quite (specifically) claustrophobic (after pretty severe anxiety issues in my younger years) so certain venues just feel out of bounds or at least so uncomfortable that I won’t enjoy the event if I go (I can’t relax without a back door exit, make of that what you will). Also I think attending online can make some audiences a little more open to trying new things. Certainly we watched gigs last January that I wouldn’t have bought in-Glasgow tickets for (though I might in future). I am firmly in the #KeepFestivalsHybrid camp.
Last year we enjoyed lots of Celtic Connections events from our sitting room but one of my favourites was The Roaming Roots Revue. Rachel Sermanni was part of it and I saw in that show how she can build an atmosphere and dominate a mood (you can still hear her brilliant version of an Elbow track in that show here). Curated by Roddy Hart and the Lonesome Fire, the Revue is a regular feature of the festival but this was the first one I’d seen (sadly it was one of the cancelled shows this year). Last year’s Revue was brilliant – a great mix of songs and some lovely surprises**. It was only a month or so before that I had been introduced to Roddy Hart’s radio show (Tues nights, BBC Radio Scotland, 10-12 – apologies that it took me so long to find it). I first listened when Kim Edgar (see Day 28) was a guest on their ‘Me In 3’ segment and I fell for the show straightaway. It has interesting music choices and is a really sumptuous, mostly chilled listen.
Anyway, back to today’s song. At the end of the weeks of amazing music last January we watched the closing event, a little sad that it was all over and that our sitting room would go back to being just a room, instead of a window and an ear to the rhythms of the rest of the world. The closing event was really moving and the montage of moments from the previous few weeks (with Rachel’s beautiful, hypnotic song accompanying them) was a lovely way to say goodbye. Straight after I went and bought Lay My Heart on Bandcamp and have listened to it over the year. I suggest you buy a copy too because (a) it’s amazing and (b) half of all proceeds will go to The BIG Project, a charity dedicated to empowering children and young people to build a BIG future, whatever their background or circumstances.
Just recently I also bought Rachel’s album, 2019’s So It Turns (and it is literally all good). Rachel has a really distinctive voice and it’s such thoughtful music. There is a great range to her songwriting (though I fear she might not often pass my father-out-law’s ’appy songs test – see Day 1). But Lay My Heart is a great place to start if you don’t know her work. In times of trouble (with pandemic fatigue of one sort or another) this song certainly opened a door for me last year, maybe even a floodgate. And since then we’ve taken on another year of all this weight and here we are now, not knowing what will come next, how much lighter or heavier it might get. We all have our ways of coping and for me it’s memories and photos, songs and sights, scribbling and stories. Pockets of peace.
It’s the last day (and the last song) here tomorrow and we’re going to be looking up high to the skies. See you then!
*I went to see what Kieran was up to these days and found that he died in October 2020. You can read about him here. The song about pockets is called The Bigger Picture and is on his 2005 album A Box of Words and Tunes.
**In case you’re interested I found this online piece which ends by summing up the 2021 Roaming Roots Revue: ‘The apt theme for the concert was hope and inspiration, and Roddy charged his guests to select a song which reflected this. Lau, joined by Rachel Sermanni, opted for Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World and the Brewis brothers of Field Music covered Money’s Too Tight to Mention. Ricky Ross contributed a great rendition of There’s Gold in Them Hills before the ensemble gave us a rocking version of The Traveling Wilburys’ End of the Line. Everybody Has Got To Live by Arthur Lee was the soulful contribution from Dumfries singer songwriter Beldina Odenyo Onassis, while Strathspey’s own Rachel Sermanni selected Elbow’s One Day Like This. Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil joined in with a superb rendition of Machines. The set proved to be a thoroughly entertaining and uplifting event.’
It was very sad to hear that Beldina, mentioned in the extract above and who used the name Heir of the Cursed, died a few months ago.
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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