Saturday 22 January 2022

Day Twenty-Two - Blackbird


 
“We are just a break in the waves
     We are just a feather in the storm”


You can hear an audio version of this post here.


Today’s song is Blackbird written by Belinda O’Hooley. It is on the album The Bairns (2007) by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (hear the song here). Belinda was in the band when that album was recorded, before they changed their name to The Unthanks. I did see the Winterset at Stonehaven Folk Festival in summer of 2008 but Belinda wasn’t in the line-up by that point (as you’ll see from her answers below). The band did a short set that night as it was a 3-header gig (with Barbara Dickson and Ian Bruce) but I think they did do Blackbird (though I can’t be sure, we had Yorkshire friends visiting and it was all a bit hectic). Below is a photo from the sleeve notes of The Bairns (L-R, Niopha Keegan, Rachel Unthank, Becky Unthank, Belinda O’Hooley).




What I do remember is that Blackbird was the song I kept coming back to on The Bairns and, whilst I really like The Beatles’ Blackbird, I like this song every tweet as much. Belinda is a very talented songwriter (as well as being a fab-u-lous pianist – as evidenced on this track and other tracks on The Bairns like I Wish). She has Irish family, mentioned in the sleeve notes to Whitethorn (the other track she wrote on The Bairns), but I think it would be fair to say she is a proud Yorkshire artist too.




Cut to a few years later – 2010 in fact – when a long-term friend gave me a copy of the first album by the duo O’Hooley and Tidow (otherwise known as Belinda and Heidi). The album was Silent June and my friend (Andy) had studied with Belinda in Huddersfield some time earlier and thought I would like their new music. He was so right – Silent June* is a brilliant album and I still love it (such moving songs, such inventive and powerful piano playing, the voices of these two women just perfectly entwined). I would pick a favourite track from Silent June (maybe Too Old To Dream, Hidden from the Sun, All Stand in Line …) but to be honest they are all so good, with most of them on this album written by the duo. Belinda had played piano in residential homes, I seem to remember her saying, and that is quite a theme in this album (old age, memory, old music, connections). It is all beautifully done, so full of thought and care.


Silent June also has one of the best Xmas songs ever, I think, this one an O’Hooley solo composition called One More Xmas (it’s here – get through that without crying if you can!). My Mum had died in May 2010 so the timing of this was pretty close to home but that just made me love it all the more. Belinda’s writing is so emotional (and I say that as a good thing) that it feels like her songs just pick your heart up and, as she might say, chuck it somewhere (sometimes into the sky, sometimes against a wall). She has so much to say (and so many different sounds to make on the piano) and she is particularly good at writing from viewpoints that have been too often overlooked. Together with Heidi (her partner in duo and everything else) she has gone from strength to strength. They also send out very entertaining email newsletters and have a fantastic sense of style (no one looks better in a waistcoat).




The duo have put out excellent album after excellent album (nearly all on the label No Masters, which seems totally right). They write and record funny songs, emotional songs, political songs, lovely covers and a song of theirs has even been used as a TV theme (Gentleman Jack from 2012’s The Fragile was used for the 2019 BBC series). You can peruse all their music for sale here. They have built up a real following for their live shows and I saw them when they played at Montrose Folk Club in December 2012. It was an excellent, unforgettable night. The pair can pull off pure cabaret, pure delight, and pure shock and awe – they have you laughing one minute and wailing and/or holding your breath the next – and it made for such a great end of term, a real celebration. They have been nominated for Best Duo at the silly old Radio 2 Folk Awards but, as far as I know, never won (though Belinda was on the awards show a few years back playing the piano for Rufus Wainwright, I think). This is pure nonsense – no offence to other duos but they should win every year (and in fact in my head they do). Like many of my favourites, they are part of the folk scene but at the same time they are so much more than that too. They are just really great musicians with all sorts going on in their songs and sounds. Belinda also has two solo albums (very different to the duo recordings) which are 2005’s Music is my Silence and 2019’s Inversions. Inversions is so powerful and wonderfully played – I just bought a copy and would urge you to do the same. Plus Belinda is touring the solo material this year in Feb/March 2022. You will see from the cover of Inversions at top of the post (and other album covers and song titles) that the bird content didn’t end at Blackbird (Inversions has the tracks The Swallow’s Tail and HawkwardSilent June has Flight of the Petrel).



Anyway, here’s Belinda answering my questions about Blackbird and songwriting. 



When did you write this song?


I wrote ‘Blackbird’ sometime in 2006. I was sat looking out of my studio window and there was a blackbird who had been singing the same tune repeatedly for some days. I started to wonder what he was singing about. It then started to become lyrics in my mind, all about why we sing; for joy, sadness, love ending etc and that singing is something vital.

 

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


I sang the first verse to Becky Unthank, never thinking that it would get under her skin and that she would want to record it. When the album The Bairns was released in August 2007, it quickly became the favourite song of audiences on tour, with many people telling us that their children particularly loved it.

 

Who performed and/or recorded it first? What year was that? 


It was recorded by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset in Haltwhistle in January 2007. I played a Yamaha U3 piano in a makeshift studio that was created specifically for us at some holiday cottages there. Becky sang the tune. Later in 2007, Niopha Keegan (who replaced the very lovely Jackie Oates on viola), played a beautiful instrumental in the middle of it. I composed and arranged the strings for the song which Niopha kindly transcribed to music.

 

Any other versions of it you know of? 


I don’t know any other versions of the song.

 

Is it a song you particularly like/have good feelings about? 


I have complicated feelings about the song. When I left the band at the end of 2007, things had been very difficult for some time, and leaving seemed like the only solution. I have no regrets about this but that song does remind me of a very troubled time. I remember being at Larmer Tree Festival many years later, and hearing The Unthanks perform it on the main stage. Again, I felt so much mixed emotion, from pride to deep sadness.

 

Have your feelings about the song changed over the years? 


I recently started performing solo shows as Heidi takes time out to look after our little boy Flynn. I occasionally sing Blackbird, and I feel like I’m slowly reclaiming my song after such a long time.

 

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


Two Mothers - I wrote this with Heidi in 2014 about the Child Migration Scheme and it is also a lullaby to the adopted. It was written as part of Jackie Oates’s Lullabies Project as she needed a lullaby from a mother’s perspective. It has taken on a whole new meaning to us now that we have our Flynn.

 

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


Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Incredible lyrics meet inspired piano arrangement and chord voicing, meet incredible recording. It is my favourite song of all time and inspires me to break music rules and explore colour through chords.




Thanks to Belinda for those answers (and if anyone remembers back here I asked which of our songwriters had picked an Elton John song for the last question – well, now you know!). Back tomorrow for some talking about … rain.



*Looking at the sleeve notes for Silent June I see that a songwriter featured here next week (Chumbawamba’s Boff Whalley) is credited with the album design (with photography by Casey Orr, who once photographed my DJ duo partner and me back in the mists of time). Yorkshire connections from long 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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