Day Twenty-One - The Light on the Shore

“it’s not so cold I do not feel the warmth of your skin”

You can hear an audio version of this post here (and Karine’s answers, in her voice, in a separate file here).

Today’s song is The Light on the Shore written by Karine Polwart. This is one of Karine’s earlier solo songs and you can hear it here. Karine’s answers to my questions about this song are further down the post. The photo at the top of the post is of my copy of the first Spell Songs CD book (2019), more on that later. 

The Light on the Shore is from Faultlines (2004), the first solo album by this Scottish artist, and my goodness, doesn’t 2004 suddenly feel such a long time ago? A live version of the song is also on The Pulling Through EP (I didn’t have this one but a visitor or two to the blog did, see first comment below this post). Karine has had quite a few solo albums of original material since then and worked on numerous collaborative projects. 

As I said in the post on Day 12 about Michael Marra (a songwriter I know Karine admires greatly too), I pretty much love everything this artist has ever written so it was quite hard to pick one song for today. For many songwriters you have a favourite song or album or period of their career but I think Karine’s writing is so good that I really do like all her compositions (and her trad album, 2007’s Fairest Floo’er, and her album of covers-of-Scottish-pop-songs, 2019’s Scottish Songbook). I know I’m not alone in this dedicated fandom – I’ve watched pretty much everything she’s done online in the past couple of Covid years and her events always draw a big crowd. For example, I was in the Zoom audience for an online Live To Your Living Room concert with Karine and Dave Milligan recently with about 600 screens watching (and obviously some of those with more than one human so maybe 1000 people plus assorted pets). For a musician in the folk world it feels like she has a pretty big, and quite international, following. There are lots of reasons for this (the sound of her voice for one*) but also it’s because she has put out so much good music and written many powerful songs that connect with a whole range of listeners. I have a lot of favourite songwriters (who could pick just one?) but she is definitely in that supergroup. She has an admirable curiosity, a thirst for life. This is her most recent release (with Dave Milligan):

This is one of the days when the starting point for the song choice isn’t a direct connection to Montrose Folk Club (I have seen Karine live a few times** but never in Montrose). Club sources (OK, it was MFC overlord Ken Bruce***) inform me that she did play there but before my time in the town (she appeared there with Malinky in something like 1998 and with Gill Bowman in the duo MacAlias some time after that). I think I must have first heard Karine’s music on the radio around 2005 (and it was her solo material). It was most likely on the Radio 2 Folk Show (then presented by Mike Harding) which, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I listened to from 2004 when I started going to the folk club, as much as anything to find out about all the music I didn’t know anything about (which was more or less everything folk-related at that point). Faultlines (2004), produced by Rab Noakes (who we heard from back on Day 6), was championed by that show and it did very well at the Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2005, winning Best Album, Best Original Song (for The Sun’s Coming Over the Hill) and Karine won Best Newcomer too. At the time, like many people, it was The Sun’s Coming Over the Hill that I responded to most. I don’t learn many songs by heart but I did learn that one and sang it Bothy Ballad style (without accompaniment) to myself, to others at a party once, just whenever I felt the urge. The lyrics to The Sun’s Coming Over the Hill are a sign, right in the first album, of Karine’s songwriting skill – the lines (often using deceptively simple phrases) are so packed with significance and everything just in the right place that you wonder ‘how did no one write this before? It’s so perfect’. I had taken part in some excessive consumption myself (some of the subject matter of The Sun’s Coming Over the Hill) and she got the feelings down to a tee. The song also laid out what I think is her underlying philosophy (perhaps in life and in writing) – don’t ignore what’s hard or wrong but also keep looking for what’s right and better.

Karine has put out lots of great solo music since (not a duff track, not a step that isn’t going in an interesting direction) and there have been new creative directions, such as Wind Resistance with Pippa Murphy, a theatre show that threaded together songs, music and spoken word. Other collaborative projects have been plentiful too. There’s been the Songs of Separation, the Darwin Song Project, and of course the magnificent Spell Songs project that was developed as a response to The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, books by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. Spell Songs has already been referred to here on Day 19 (Kris Drever day), is touring very soon and Karine mentions all the other collaborators in her answers later in this post. Kris Drever was on the radio in December 2021 (when the second Spell Songs album Let the Light In was released) and he introduced a song featuring Karine by saying: “She’s pretty special to work with, you know, she’s always fast with ideas and what she’s really great at is taking quite complex ideas and distilling them into something essential.”

Another recent collaboration for Karine is the Hen Hoose production house (established by Tamara Schlesinger/MALKA and featuring work by Tamara as well as Amandah Wilkinson, Beldina Odenyo, Carla J Easton, Elisabeth Elektra, Emma Pollock, Inge Thomson, Jayda, Karine Polwart, Pippa Murphy, Rachael Swinton, Suse Bear and Sarah Hayes). The recent Hen Hoose album is Equaliser and one of the tracks from that is Go Easy by Karine and Susan Bear (hear it here, buy it here). If that song isn’t a mental health/pandemic/modern life anthem, I don’t know what is.

Even with all this more recent material, I came back to her solo debut Faultlines for this project because it is the album that introduced me to Karine’s work and her work has given me, and many others, so much that’s good in our lives. I went for The Light on the Shore because it’s a song I’ve heard many times but till now I’ve just enjoyed its lulling and haven’t dissected it in any way. It never felt sad to me before (she always sings with the equivalent of a twinkle in the eye somehow) but looking at the lyrics on a page more carefully I see that maybe it is sadder than I had realised. I think that’s another aspect of her work that makes it special – it can be serious and moving but never depressing. Listening to the song again (on its own, away from the rest of the album) the old/bold wording suddenly takes me into Landslide territory (the song written by Stevie Nicks) and then I feel that they are perhaps some kind of sister song for each other (and I love Landslide - both the Fleetwood Mac and The Chicks versions). I see no reason why Karine’s songs can’t be as well known as something like Landslide – a good song is a good song. I think that if we had mainstream radio stations that put less daytime emphasis on things-you-already-know (plus all the bland Bs: Barlow, Blunt, Boyzone) we might all benefit from a wider musical experience. 

As a fan, I’ve enjoyed Karine’s gigs and her albums, but more recently I’ve really enjoyed listening to her talk about writing (at Edinburgh Tradfest and at Aberdeen’s WayWORD, both online in 2021, watch the latter here). In the WayWORD hour (and I would really recommend heading over to give that your attention, it’s full of fascinating discussion) she talks in particular about her eco-writing and about her focus (“the truth is that the space I love to occupy most is the space of story”). She can play down her own playing and singing all she likes (and she does) but I think even she knows her writing has something special going for it. As a writer, she has a mind and a voice that make connections. Even for this low-profile project she got straight to it, recorded her answers as an audio file and sent them over. Listening to her voice as I transcribed them, the care and consideration in every word and thought were so evident (a lesson to us all). The MC at the recent Live to Your Living Room online event referred to Karine as a “thinker” and that was good word choice (I think she even studied philosophy – if so, she’s a very good advert for it). As fans we love her singing voice, we love her tunes and all her creative development, but what we love, as much as anything else, is the thinking heart behind it all. Times can be hard but we listen to that beat and those words and they keep us going, maybe even add more spring to our step.

OK, gushing over. Here’s my transcript of Karine’s answers about her song The Light on the Shore. It wasn’t recorded with broadcast in mind but I’ve been given permission to let you hear the audio file she recorded too (it’s here).

When did you write this song?

I don’t remember exactly but it was some time in the late 1990s, certainly before I gave up my job and became a full-time musician. I recorded this song along with 3 or 4 others, none of which I think made it out into the public domain thereafter, on my first ever demo that I made. I recorded it on a 4-track recorder in the flat in Edinburgh then condensed it down onto a cassette. I sent that demo off with a shoddily made cover to a small independent Scottish record label and they sent me back a really polite ‘thanks but no thanks’ letter, ‘you’re not folkie enough’ was I think the reply that I got. Anyway, I was undaunted but it comes from that period of time in the late 1990s.

I don’t remember exactly what made me write it in truth but my Granny died in 1998 and that may partly have been what sparked this song, just thinking about grief and loss for people who’ve lived for a long time and loved for a long time. But truthfully I don’t remember exactly.

Over and above that demo from the late 1990s that I recorded at home, I recorded it also on the first album Faultlines that came out on Neon Records in 2004.

Do you know any other versions of it?

I’ve heard from lots of people over the years about singing it in clubs and at gigs and I’ve had lots of beautiful emails from people who really care about this song. So I’ve heard by email and in person at gigs from people who’ve played this song at funerals or who associate this song with people that they love in their own lives …

So it’s a song that’s mattered to people and I’m very touched by the stories that I’ve heard from others about it.

Do you still have good feelings about this song?

It’s a song that I think has done a good job. Any song that people can take into their lives like that and that means something to people is a song that is doing a good job, I think, so it’s one of the few songs on Faultlines that I probably could still perform now and not feel (she pauses) ashamed of. There are many songs on that album that I don’t think I’ll ever perform live again – songs like Skater of the Surface, Harder to Walk These Days Than Run, even Only One Way, Azalea Flower, I can’t imagine where I will ever perform those songs again. The only two songs from that first album that have lasted the course are Faultlines itself and Waterlily and to a lesser extent The Sun’s Comin’ Over the Hill, which was also on that album and that I know is also dear to many people and which was a gateway song for me. It’s the song I think that actually in many ways enabled me to have a career at all. So The Light on the Shore stands up relatively well for me as a writer in terms of the songs that are on that first solo album.

Which song that you’ve written are you most proud of?

That’s a really difficult question and it changes quite a lot. There are songs that are very dear to me and which I’ve never got tired of. They would include songs like Terminal Star from Scribbled in Chalk, Daisy, Tinsel Show, King of Birds ... there’s lots of songs that I still feel glad to have written. I think in recent years perhaps the song that’s had the greatest impact on people is possibly The Lost Words Blessing which I wrote in collaboration with my Spell Songs band mates. That’s a project which involves Julie Fowlis, Kris Drever, Seckou Keita, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux and Rachel Newton and it’s based on the writing and artwork of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. The Lost Words Blessing has had a really profound emotional impact on lots of people because it connects to the contemporary climate crisis and it’s a song that walks the line of hope and despondency which I think is the line that we are walking right now as humans so I think I can say that that’s the one I feel very proud to have been a part of writing that song.

Can you name one song that you wish you’d written?

Gosh. I would be happy to have written any of Paul Simon’s songs because I think he’s a genius, as is Joni Mitchell. Gosh, one song that I wish I’d written … that is a really hard question. If I could pick one by a more contemporary artist, one of my peers, that would be Anaïs Mitchell who’s from Vermont in the US. She is an incredible writer. There’s a song of hers called Shepherd which sounds like an old folk song, it’s from her album Young Man in America and it’s a song that has the quality of a very, very old song but is actually a new one and I think she manages in a devastatingly sad tale to talk about some of the great issues of our time – capitalism, and the pressure of work and poverty and its impact on people. I think it’s an absolutely devastating song. I first heard it whilst standing in a field at Cambridge Folk Festival. She was playing just by herself, acoustic guitar, and I wept openly in the audience for that gig, it packed such a punch. So, Anaïs Mitchell’s Shepherd is a work of deceptive simplicity and genius.

Thanks to Karine for answering questions about her song. Tomorrow we head south to hear Belinda O’Hooley talk about a blackbird she used to know. See you then!

*On Karine’s voice (and hoping not to make her too uncomfortable if she reads this): I think there’s something of the lullabye to a lot of her singing. I think it’s possible that adults need lullabyes just as much as children do (perhaps especially if we didn’t get them when we were young) and, for me, Karine’s voice has that kind of energy. To be clear, I don’t want to stereotype her as any kind of ‘mother singer’ (fathers can sing lullabyes too after all), and of course it’s hard to know where the sound of the voice ends and the content begins. Maybe it’s also that she is such a committed storyteller and that her voice tells us so much that we need to hear. It warns us, soothes us, encourages us, and it stands up to bullies (see I Burn But I Am Not Consumed, her song for Donald Trump – live at Celtic Connections in 2017). I’m sure she might point to ‘better’ singers but for lullabyes (surely the most important songs of all) we don’t want ‘best’, we want honest and true. 

Also on lullabyes, my Mum was a great (single) parent but she almost never sang so the music I found as a child came from records, TV and radio (songs from Disney and from Oliver, 7 inch Beatles singles left behind by older siblings). However in 2000 when our daughter was born I found I just had to sing to her (I don’t have much range but I can manage a few notes and I mean well). I suddenly couldn’t think of many songs by heart so she got one from my childhood that just appeared in my head (Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head). When I was growing up in the 1970s we watched Butch and Sundance whenever it was on TV but Raindrops is a cheerful song so I’ve no regrets on that score. Then the film Brother Where Art Thou came out in 2000 as well so that gave us a new lullabye (Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby/Go to Sleep Little Baby a bit of a weird one if you listen to the lyrics – but down comes the cradle, and all that…).

** For anyone who’s interested I saw Karine live:

• Apr 2007 with her trio at the Woodlands, Dundee (more about Out of the Woods events back here). The trio these days is Karine, Steven Polwart and Inge Thomson (whose solo material is also fantastic). Was it the same trio in 2007? Looking at YouTube videos from that year I would guess that it was.
• June 2008 again at the Woodlands, Dundee with Pauline Meikleham/Hynd, playing with Kim Edgar, and as part of the trio Grace, Hewatt, Polwart. More Kim Edgar coming up on Day 28.
• Nov 2012 with the Karine Polwart trio at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen.
• Jan 2017 (a 50^th birthday treat for me) as part of the brilliant Celtic Connections launch event with the Karine Polwart trio (also on that bill were Cara Dillon, Aziza Brahim, Rachel Sermanni/Adam Holmes, Declan O’Rourke and Laura Marling). And yes, that was the show KP opened with I Burn But I Am Not Consumed. It was electrifying and something, I imagine, like hearing Adrian Mitchell read his Vietnam poem To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies) in the Albert Hall in 1965. 
• I had tickets for Wind Resistance in Perth in 2018 but couldn’t make it so my daughter and friend went and gave my ticket to someone else (there were hopeful people hanging about by the box office … it flew off quickly). 

***Many folk clubs are run by committee but for some time now the Montrose one has been run by one man called Ken Bruce (not the Radio 2 DJ – less Popmaster, more Folkmaster).

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).