“Little bird sing your stories to me”
You can hear an audio version of this post here.
Today’s song is Little Bird by Scottish musician and singer/songwriter Gary Anderson (who more recently records and performs under the name Kinnaber Junction). The song is on Gary’s 2012 album Hair o’ the Dog (hear it here). There are a lot of songs called Little Bird in the world (how many can you think of?) so it was a bold move to go with that title. Even with all the stiff competition* I think this is my favourite Little Bird song.
Gary is somebody that I definitely do know through Montrose Folk Club as he lives just outside the town and has been a regular attender at the club for some years. He’s been in the audience, he’s been the MC, he’s done the sound, played in the floor spots and played in the guest spot too. The first time I heard him play and sing, however, was when he was still in the Montrose band Heidrum. Heidrum were well known in the town (and beyond) for playing lively, popular sets filled with particularly Celtic anthems (a lot of Pogues energy, quite a lot of Guinness energy). They were a fundamental part of the Montrose Music Festival too, especially in its early days, and their Sunday afternoon gig at the festival (in the George!) was always one of the busiest events of the weekend. Montrose Music Festival (MoFest) started in 2008 as mainly free gigs in all the pubs and venues in town and some live music in the High Street. It was a lot of fun getting to visit places you’d maybe not been before (every pub in town, golf clubs, the Legion, everywhere!) but as it grew the big name and large-scale outdoor events seemed to take the focus. It was always a great May Bank Holiday weekend though and the sun always seemed to shine as the whole town came out and literally danced in the street (or at least it felt that way). I have a particularly happy memory of being out on one of the sunny Sunday evenings and hearing the sound of amazing guitarist Sandy Tweeddale spilling out over Montrose’s beautiful high street (he was playing upstairs in the old Carlton Hotel and the window was open). I’ve seen Sandy several times at the folk club and elsewhere (he appears under a few guises, Blues’n’Trouble is a common one) and he is a great player. We moved away from Montrose in 2018 and MoFest seemed to disappear about the same time but I don’t think there’s any connection. There’s another link here too because Sandy plays on Gary’s most recent Kinnaber Junction album Looking at the Tracks (2017). You might also notice the name Rhona Macfarlane on the sleeve notes for that album (Rhona will be making an appearance here on Day 29).
I can’t remember if it was a MoFest event or not but at some point I saw Heidrum at the Black Abbot in Borrowfield/Montrose and at that time Gary was still in the band. He didn’t do all the vocals but when he sang, full of focus and drive, I remember thinking his voice had a good dose of what I would call the Proclaimer effect (it’s hard for those of you who don’t live in Scotland to know how huge and loved the Proclaimers’ music is here). I remember talking to Gary after the Heidrum gig that day and I think I even asked him if he ever did solo gigs (not that the band weren’t great**, they were, but I just felt I hadn’t heard as much from him as he had to give).
Some time later I saw that Gary was singing solo at local events (and further afield). He became a fixture at Montrose Folk Club and he very much still is. He plays a mixture of his own songs, some Burns now and then, and songs by all his favourite contemporary writers (some of whom are in my list this month). Gary has put out several albums (first as Gary Anderson, more recently as Kinnaber Junction) and, though he still has a non-singing and dancing day job, music is a big focus for him. Because they were kind enough to let me read poems in the floor spot section of the Montrose Folk Club for a good few years I’d often mention that if anyone wanted to use any of the poems for songs they would be very welcome to do that. Luckily for me, Gary actually listened and made songs out of 4 of my poems (Auchmithie Road, The Angus Adoption Song, Michael Marra’s Visit to the Links Hotel and Xmas Number 1). You can hear the song Auchmithie Road in a set here, about eight and a half minutes in. I mention this less as an advert and more as a disclaimer (yes, I do like him more because of it – most of us who write want our words to go somewhere). His album Lochside Reflections (2010) has two of those songs.
The reason I’ve chosen Little Bird for this project is that I think it shows a lighter side to Gary’s work and I think it’s something he’s better at than he might realise. I think that singer/songwriters (and particularly those who go to folk clubs) often concentrate more on the serious and/or sad songs (in particular political/protest songs – something I’ve written about earlier particularly on Day 7 and a little on Day 4). That’s all very well (I love serious and sad songs***) but, speaking from the audience, I think we need all the angles and that’s why I really like Little Bird. It’s an upbeat number, joyous and hopeful without being sickly sweet, and it really gives the feel of the simple sight that is a little bird just hopping about. Another song of Gary’s I really like is his Scottish independence anthem An Independent State of Mind. But he can tell you about that himself. Here he is answering my questions about Little Bird.
When did you write this song?
I wrote it while on holiday in Durrisdeer near Dumfries in Aug 2011.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about the writing of this song?
The song was written differently to most of my songs. Normally I decide the subject matter I'm about to write about first and I’ll work on the melody, chords and lyrics all at the same time. With ‘Little Bird’ I was just sitting messing around on my guitar and I came up with the chords which became the verse. I liked them and wanted to put some lyrics to them. I looked out the window and there was a spuggie (sparrow) hopping around the path outside so I started singing to it, wondering what it was doing, where it had been, what it had seen etc. I then came up with a chorus and pretty much wrote the whole thing in the one sitting. Although it was not in my mind at all when I wrote it, I think subconsciously it was written about our kids growing up and heading off to uni and making their own way in the world.
Who performed and/or recorded it first? What year was that?
Like pretty much all my songs it will have first been performed at Montrose Folk Club as a floor spot probably fairly soon after I returned from holiday. I then recorded it for my 2012 album ‘Hair o’ the Dog’.
Any other versions of it you know of?
As far as I'm aware no one has covered the song however after putting the Kinnaber Junction band together we included ‘Little Bird’ in our set list (probably around 2018). I remember thinking it felt really strange playing with a full band arrangement after playing solo for 7 years.
Is it a song you particularly like/have good feelings about?
It is a song I’ve always enjoyed playing and it does seem to go down well with audiences.
Have your feelings about the song changed over the years?
Not really, I still enjoy playing it and it does have a different feel to the majority of my songs. Coincidently I wrote a song called ‘Breaking Down’ for my 2017 album ‘Looking at the Tracks’ and it is probably closest in feel to ‘Little Bird’ and was written in the same way, i.e. chord progression first and everything else fell in to place from there.
What is the song you’ve written that you are most proud of?
Oh, impossible one (which is your favourite child?). If I had to pick one it would probably be ‘Superhero’ or ‘Independent State of Mind’ or .... or .......
Could you name me one song by someone else that you wish you’d written?
‘Torn Screen Door’ by David Francey. It is just so perfectly concise. Before I heard this song every one I wrote would have to be at least 4 mins long. ‘Torn Screen Door’ comes in around 1 min 40 secs. After hearing it I took another look at ‘Turning Tides’ from the ‘Hair o’ the Dog’ album and decided to strip it right back and sing it unaccompanied. It came in almost exactly the same length as ‘Torn Screen Door’ and I feel is a far better song for it.
Thanks to Gary for answering those questions. It’s down to the Borders tomorrow for a word or two from Karine Polwart (one of my absolute faves!). See you then.
*In my library I’ve got Little Bird songs by Laura Marling, Coaltown Daisies and Cera Impala and in the wider world I see Goldfrapp, The Beach Boys, The White Stripes, SL, Lisa Hannigan, Ed Sheeran and Annie Lennox. I must inform you that, despite his position in the charts and ubiquitous nature, I don’t even know what the Ed Sheeran Little Bird sounds like. I’m sure it’s grand, I’ve just got lots of other things to listen to.
**A few years later we saw a different line-up of Heidrum at a Hogmanay event in Hillside, near Montrose. They were brilliant – one of my favourite Hogmanays since we’ve been here. I believe I danced on a table.
*** I should say that I do like sad and/or hard-hitting songs (check some of the other songs I’ve chosen this month) but as someone whose father actually did kill himself with a razor blade I have a special place in my hell for anyone who ever uses the phrase “this will make you want to reach for the razor blades” (or any variation on that theme) when introducing a song. A presenter once said it on Radio 2 and I emailed him to say ‘please don’t do that, it can ruin someone’s day to be reminded of that in a flippant comment’. I didn’t get a reply.
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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