Day Twelve - General Grant's Visit to Dundee

“What a precious little song”

You can hear an audio version of this post here.

Also (added Feb 2022) the song written about today was played on BBC 6 Music on 12th January 2022 as part of the Social Recall feature on the Lauren Laverne Breakfast Show. They also played the songs I wrote about on Days 10, 17 and 18. 

Today’s song is General Grant’s Visit to Dundee written by Michael Marra. You can hear a live version of today’s song, complete with informative intro, here. I have been writing about Dundee’s Michael Marra almost as long as I’ve been rambling online because I started my first blog in 2007 and wrote my first words of praise for MM when I saw him live for the second time in 2008. Altogether I saw him at Montrose Folk Club four times (in 2006, 2008, 2009* and 2011). His first official solo release was in 1980 but the first time I saw him I didn’t know his music at all – mainly because he isn’t as well known outside Scotland as he should be. I was totally blown away by the quality of his whole performance (the songwriting, the singing, the playing of keyboard and guitar, the depth and brilliance of really everything he did and said). Some of his work I barely even understood at first (some of the Dundee words and place names, for example), but I knew it was genius from that first time in 2006. He was something like your favourite teacher, your favourite comedian and, of course, your favourite singer and musician all rolled into one. There are a lot of musical geniuses (some very widely known, some less so) and we all have our favourites. Michael is definitely one of mine and I love his music and his mind, much in the way I love, say, Gil Scott Heron’s. I think they had much in common in terms of a talent for saying what needs to be said in a way that just sounds so bloody amazing and like no one else. They were both equally good at complex political material and more direct songs about feelings (compare and contrast Michael’s All Will Be Well with Gil’s I’ll Take Care of You – to me, they are like variations on a theme). Another link is that Michael Marra wrote a song (The Flight of the Heron) about Gil Scott Heron’s Dad (Gil Heron, 1922-2008) who played football for Celtic. Michael more often gets compared to Tom Waits and I can see why but, in my list of favourites, Michael is a bit nearer the top than old Tom (although I suppose I’ve never seen Tom Waits live, particularly not in a Montrose ‘party’ suite, to be able to make a totally fair comparison). 

I have been taking photos of CDs from my collection to use for most of this project but when I went looking for my Michael Marra albums they were nowhere to be found. I am such a devotee that I guess I must have learned that one of my friends hadn’t heard Michael’s music and insisted they borrow the CDs. I should have copies of Posted Sober (2000), Quintet EP (2007), Chaso Theory (no idea of the date for that one) and Silence EP (2003) so if anyone has those, please let me know! As well as famously resting his keyboard on an ironing board during some gigs, Michael also sold his own CDs at events around the times I saw him (the compilation, Chaso Theory, for example). That album is one that is not on Spotify (where you can hear pretty much all his other albums). Hard copies of his releases can be hard to find (to buy) and they can be pretty expensive (CDs of 1991’s On Stolen Stationery and 1993’s Candy Philosophy both £50 just now on Ebay). As I couldn’t find my own CDs to check sleeve notes, thanks to Michael Marra expert Michael Craig and Montrose Folk Clubber Gary Anderson for helping out with some of the info for this post. Michael Craig is such an expert he gets a mention in the brilliant 2017 book Michael Marra: Arrest This Moment written by novelist James Robertson (Robertson was a friend and neighbour of the Marras so it’s a really special and detailed publication).

Whilst Michael Marra was a great live performer, I have heard (and read in Robertson’s book) that he found that side of music challenging at times and that songwriting was where his heart lay (he is often quoted as saying “I didn't want my name in lights, I wanted it in brackets”). Michael wrote in many different genres and styles but General Grant’s Visit To Dundee, perhaps on purpose given the North American subject, is in a particularly Randy Newman vein (and it was dedicated to Newman, according to someone else’s CD’s sleeve notes). Michael was a Randy Newman fan and mentioned him in an interview here and there (Newman has already been mentioned in this project on Day 2 by Pete Livingstone and will be cropping up again as he has been an influence on many with his intelligent, individual songs). This song, General Grant’s Visit To Dundee, was first on Michael’s album Gaels Blue (1985, rereleased on CD in 1992) and then on the live album High Sobriety – live at the Bonar Hall (2000) and then on the mysterious Chaso Theory. On the latter, sleeve notes tell us, via Michael Craig, that Gary Clark of the band Danny Wilson and Lloyd Anderson did the backing vocals for today’s track.

Michael’s own songwriting was so good that I could have picked any of his songs for this project and in fact it felt kind of wrong to single one out. He tackled all kinds of subjects and always came out on top so that is why in the end I just picked General Grant’s Visit to Dundee because it is one of his songs about Dundee (there are a few of them). This one, whilst ostensibly about an official visit to the city by a former US president in 1877, seems to me to be far more of a love song to the city (the “mighty little old town”) and all of its citizens than just another history song. It is a “charming little” song whilst at the same time hinting at the reality of life for many who have to turn out to welcome the guest (“the well-trained little orphans”). Michael Marra was born in Dundee in 1952 and has come to represent very much the best of the city (indeed the best of all of us everywhere). This great, but at the same time very ordinary, man (that’s how he wanted it I think – not one for grand divisions) died in 2012 at the age of only 60 (read one of many obituaries here). I didn’t really know him but it still felt like a member of the family had died when he left us so I can only imagine what people who had known him  or really were his family were feeling. It was a huge loss.

As for Dundee, when we moved to Scotland from West Yorkshire in 2002 we moved to somewhere further north in Angus, passing by the ‘City of Discovery’ as we went. My partner Mark worked in Dundee from 2002 onwards but my responsibilities were closer to home, in and around the Angus metropolises of Arbroath and Montrose, so I didn’t really get to know the ‘village city’ of Dundee until later (and then we moved here, finally, in 2018). This meant that in a way Michael Marra was my introduction to Dundee (or at least a good part of it). At his gigs he talked about the people, the places, the history, the relationships between Dundee and Fife, between Dundee and Aberdeen – much of it with humour, all of it with heart. He sang of Grace Kelly at a Dundee football ground (that really happened) and Frida Kahlo in a pub on Dundee’s Perth Road (I don’t think that did…) and he wove art and sport and current affairs and pretty much any subject you could think of into his songs. The spoken introductions to his songs were so good that I never minded that he repeated them (which he did, every time I saw him, I guess that was a hint that he wasn’t quite as relaxed on stage as he seemed). If I’m honest, when some musicians do this I switch off a bit (or it can even put me off seeing them multiple times, as in ‘I don’t think I can stand that story again!’) but that wasn’t the case with Michael. His introductions were works of art, beautiful gentle monologues that often told you more than you realised at the time, that hid jokes and nuggets of truth and they were all delivered with impeccable timing. He was a brilliant storyteller. He also collaborated often with the poet Liz Lochhead and she picked two pieces of Marra magic in her Desert Island Discs in 2017.

Michael had a chance for wider fame in the very early 1980s (a move to London, a major label opportunity, and his first album The Midas Touch came out on Polydor in 1980). He gave it a go but it wasn’t really for him. As already mentioned, his drive wasn’t to be a big star and he certainly didn’t want to be told how he should sound. The record company wanted music that was more widely accessible (less about Dundee, less the sound of Dundee) so he returned north and kept his career (and his life) where he wanted it. From what I can see he had a good and busy life – much creativity (with visual art as well as music), many projects and collaborations (particularly at the Dundee Rep theatre) and huge amounts of love. And my goodness, the songs! In 2021 a mural of Michael Marra (by artist Michael Corr) went up in Lochee (the part of Dundee where Marra grew up) and with every year that goes by the power of his music and memory grows stronger. Every December in Dundee there is a concert (on or offline, pandemics depending) where family, friends and other artists sing Michael’s songs and every year the breadth of his talent and output is more obvious as the songs are brought to life again and again. There wasn’t one of these concerts in December 2021 but a bigger anniversary one is planned for what would have been Michael’s 70^th year in December 2022. 

As for ‘big names’, in 2014 Loudon Wainwright III covered Michael’s very popular song Hermless, which again is about very ordinary people and ordinary Dundee life. The two songwriters were friends and Loudon recorded the song translated as Harmless. That recording was played again recently on Loudon’s radio interview with Ricky Ross. For me the star attraction of that song is Michael’s very particular Dundee pronunciation of ‘library’ – but it was a nice idea and a welcome tribute. This year also saw a gorgeous cover of Michael’s song Heaven’s Hound on Karine Polwart and Dave Milligan’s recent album Still As Your Sleeping. Heaven’s Hound is from Michael’s last recording Houseroom, 2012, that he made with The Hazey Janes (a band consisting of both of his children, Alice and Matthew, as well as Liam Brennan and Andrew Mitchell, who records and plays solo as Andrew Wasylyk). Also on BBC Radio Scotland in November 2021 a full programme of Michael Marra’s music** went out on the Iain Anderson show (and what an amazing collection it was). All of this activity, I’m glad to say, means that Michael Marra’s songs won’t be going quiet any time soon. The songs, the precious songs, will keep his place, for sure.

Tomorrow, we’re heading back over the Atlantic for a song, not by, but about Woody Guthrie. See you then.

*I also saw him (and more excitingly was on the bill with him) for a benefit at The Apex Hotel in Dundee in 2009. I have written a couple of poems about him too. I won’t distract from the subject with them here but they are all available on request. One was made into a song by Gary Anderson (who records now as Kinnaber Junction). Another song by Gary will be along on Day 20.

**I particularly enjoyed hearing Annie Grace’s version of Take Me Out Drinking Tonight (Michael's original title When These Shoes Were New) again on this show. I have her 2004 album (also called Take Me Out Drinking Tonight), bought I think when I saw her in a trio with Karine Polwart and Corrina Hewat in Dundee in 2008 (at Pauline Meikleham’s Out of the Woods night, already mentioned back at Day 9). Support that night was from Kim Edgar (and she’ll be showing up here towards the end of the month too). It’s a family affair.

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).