Day Thirty-One - Tentsmuir Sky

“Let me feel it, the weight of all the years gone by”

You can hear an audio version of this post here.

Today’s song is Tentsmuir Sky written by Roseanne Reid. I first heard this song (perhaps the newest one I’m looking at this month) when Scottish musician and songwriter Roseanne released it in February 2021. I loved it from the first listen and, particularly as Tentsmuir is very local to us (just over the river in Fife), I sent the Bandcamp link for the song to lots of friends and family (with a ‘Buy this now – it’s ace!’ kind of a message). Tentsmuir is a beautiful place and the song matches it perfectly. It is also on an EP that came a little later (Horticulture). And on that all I have to say is: Buy it now, it’s ace.

I first came across Roseanne sort of by accident (and not at Montrose Folk Club, that was the starting point for this project but I’ve moved a few miles south for this post). It was September 2017 and we were still living in Montrose but our daughter Heather and I came into Dundee for a poetry event at Abertay University and that’s where we heard Roseanne. There are few poetry events in Angus (one reason I organised some when we lived there) so generally you have to go a little further afield to the likes of Aberdeen, St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh to get wordy events. I went through a phase of going to a lot of poetry events (particularly to the St Andrews annual festival StAnza in the noughties, mainly because it wasn’t too far away by train) but by 2017 I had slowed down on that front. To be honest there are very few poetry events that I enjoy as I’m not one for the silent adoration of published poets (reminds me too much of quaker meetings in my youth perhaps) and I’m not 100% into slam culture either. I think that mostly I like poems and poets that fall between the two*. All of this meant I hadn’t been to many poetry events around this time and had well and truly got out of the habit. We had had some family stuff going on too, more life than poetry, but I suppose I thought it was time I made an effort so I persuaded the daughter to come with me into Dundee for this event in 2017. She was applying to study English so I said it would be good for her (like vegetables). She finishes her degree this summer.

The evening in question was a bit of weird night all round for me (I won’t go into all the details here – they are back on a rambly old blog post here if you’re interested) but the best part of it was hearing Roseanne’s voice and her music. I didn’t even know there was going to be music as part of the evening so that was a lovely surprise (I almost always prefer a poetry/music mix, certainly that’s what I always booked when I organised events). The second surprise of the night was that Roseanne was so good! I hadn’t heard of her at that point, knew nothing of her background or her place in the world of music, but her songs were just enchanting and her voice was an engaging mix of confidently smooth but also somehow really on edge (just where I like it). She played maybe six songs, talked about her wife a little and looked just awkward enough to be reassuring (this was much appreciated as I was sitting in the lighting box because the venue made me claustrophobic, pity the poor daughter!). I could see the skill in the poetry that came after (two marvellous and very successful women poets Rachel McCrum and Caroline Bird) but no matter how hard I try I am first and foremost a song and music fan so it was Roseanne’s set that connected with me that night. Someone who can rock a room to another place with just a guitar, a heart full of precious tunes and a voice that soothes and stirs – that, dear readers, is what does it for me. 

Somehow I missed Roseanne’s debut album (2019’s Trails) but I bought a copy recently and it’s gorgeous (there’s a pretty thorough review here). Steve Earle (who she met at his writing workshop in 2014) shows up singing on one track on the album and he is a big supporter of Roseanne’s work (his quote about her, “an outstanding songwriter”, is the first thing you see when you go to her website). We are Steve Earle fans in this house too (and saw him live in Aberdeen in 2009). Teddy Thompson produced Trails and Roseanne has toured with him already and is doing that again in 2022 (right now in fact, dates here). If you want her bio information the best place to get it is probably her own website (here) but I would suggest you listen to her music first. Let the songs tell you who she is. 

When I first heard today’s song Tentsmuir Sky I hadn’t listened to Roseanne’s music for a while. Like many people I sometimes get overloaded with music (so many albums, so many radio shows, another hot new artist on 6 Music every week, another totally classic album that we haven’t listened to for years, another song on a TV show that sends us off down another rabbit hole of another artist we don’t know). We love music but we can’t possibly keep up with it all and sometimes that almost turns it into a chore because we feel we should stay up to date with all our favourites (and others who could be favourites) but we just can’t. At the start of the first lockdown in 2020 I found that, unusually for me, I didn’t want to listen to a lot of music. I was working from home but when not doing that I tried to take myself to somewhere totally different in my head, I think, by listening to audiobooks (the longer, the better) and reading quite a lot (books about train journeys, books about elsewhere and other times).

Then in February 2021 I somehow came across this song Tentsmuir Sky (on social media I suppose). I had just finished last year’s Fun A Day Dundee project (a lot of writing and thinking about home) and was feeling pretty drained (not NHS worker level of drained, I should point out, more Romantic poet on a chaise longue kind of drained). The title jumped out at me because I’ve been to Tentsmuir various times but I’ve never seen it in a song title before (it’s a forest, with amazing beaches, big enough to get lost in and just a few miles away). I also wrote about it on this blog recently (tales of a long walk with a friend and seeing cows on the beach). There are a lot of beautiful places in this local area (so many!) but it is certainly up there with the best (even if it is in Fife**).

Kinshaldy Beach at Tentsmuir, June 2021

Straightway I went to Bandcamp and listened – and the song is just perfect so I’m not going to say any more about it (but Roseanne will, see below). What I will say is that this is the last post of this series and I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip and the songs. I hope if you have liked the music that you will support as many of the artists as you can in any way you can. I am not the main earner in our household (thank god, we’d starve for sure) but the paid work I do currently involves supporting others in a few different ways (and then a lot of what I earn goes out the same way). I just think we have to support each other as much as we possibly can. 

And here’s Roseanne.

When did you write this song?

I wrote ‘Tentsmuir Sky’ in May 2020. The world was in the grips of Covid and lockdowns, and I was desperate to write new material while I couldn’t do anything else. 

Is there anything else you’d like to share about the writing of this song?

I wrote the song about Tentsmuir forest in Fife. It is somewhere my wife and I spent a lot of time while the world was changing, and it offered us a sort of sanctuary, an escape. When we went exploring there, we didn’t use our phones, didn’t expose ourselves to the relentless news and worrying updates from around the world. All we had was each other, the magic of the forest and a beautiful stillness around us.

I wrote the song at home. It actually started as a completely different idea in terms of the narrative, but the original first verse was scrapped and I wrote this version in full in a couple of days. 

Is it a song you particularly like?

I have nothing but fond memories of writing this song. It encapsulates one of the saving graces of our time during lockdown. During what was a tumultuous and isolating period of time, I feel hope when I listen back to this song now. On a personal level, the writing of any new songs last year felt defiant – a sort of expression of faith while we were all walking through the dark.

What is the song you’ve written that you are most proud of?

The song I’ve written that I’m most proud of is ‘I Love Her So’. Lyrically, it’s actually not the most adventurous I’ve been, but it’s honest and true and I value that just as much. The reasons I’m most proud of it have changed over the years actually – sometimes it catches me by surprise with how much courage it takes to get up on stage by myself and sing openly and obviously about my love for another woman. It was the first song I wrote for my wife and my feelings for her have only grown since I wrote this. So while it isn’t my most technically impressive song – it moves people. Other people can relate to this one and I’m immensely proud of that. 

Could you name me one song by someone else that you wish you’d written?

There’s lots of songs I wish I’d written, but ‘Blues Run The Game’ by Jackson C. Frank is right up there. Obviously his performance is such a big part of its magic, but lyrically it’s just devastating. I can’t imagine a more perfect line than “Living is a gamble baby, loving’s much the same”. I think you understand and appreciate a line like that the older you get and the more of life you experience.

Thanks so much to Roseanne for answering questions about Tentsmuir Sky and songwriting. As was mentioned on Day 26, this another song that connects so well to the place being written about. What a fantastic set of songs this has been!

And that’s it from me for this year’s Fun A Day Dundee. These 31 posts will stay up for you to read whenever you like and if you like them please share them (and the links to the musicians and songs) and make sure to enjoy all this lovely music. Thanks again for reading.

*I was interested to hear the most recent winner of the T.S.Eliot prize, Joelle Taylor, say something in a similar vein in this radio interview  (about 9 minutes in). The presenter asked about “the tension between spoken and written” poetry and Joelle said: “I think it’s where art lies, I think it’s where beauty lies, where uprising lies, where possibility lies, and it’s our job to balance in this tension and to explore it and to excavate it as much as possible.”

**A Michael Marra-inspired bit of gentle local rivalry there – see here (p.s. Methil is in Fife). My post on a Michael Marra song was back on Day 12.

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).