My Son David

I’ve had two sessions since my last blog and Anne and I have been working hard on lots of different songs to try out new things. I’ve still been practicing ‘Mary Hamilton’, ‘Rothesay O’ and ‘My Son David’ (a variation of the ballad ‘Edward’) and at the most recent session I tried ‘Thomas Muir of Huntershill’ and ‘Whaur Dae Ye Lie my Faither’. I knew the rather unlikely story of Thomas Muir and had heard the song, which I’d describe as a bit of a brave one to sing, so I had a bash at it and wasn’t too bad but got a few good pointers from Anne. I had to do some research on the story of the massacre in Srebrenica as I wasn’t sure of the background to ‘Whaur Dae Ye Lie’ and I do like to know what I’m singing about. Although it’s a very sad story, I believe its a necessity to know these things in order to connect with and properly convey the song.

I help out a lot with Partick Folk Club and at Friday’s club night I decided to give one of the songs a go live and out of the comfort zone that is my sitting room. I chose ‘My Son David’ and was quite pleased with how I done, although there are still a couple of things I could work on. I emailed the recording over to Anne and she was happy I’d given it a try and said ‘a brave choice and a committed performance and it seemed to capture the audience…….I was so pleased and proud to hear this’. So I’m pretty chuffed with that!

You can hear it here if you would like to listen

My eight year old son, Arran is singing along at the start……evidence that I sing around the house all the time!!