New Song: Storm from the North

I'm in quite a lot of danger of turning into a folkie with this one...

So as I hinted at last night, I have a new set of lyrics, called Storm from the North. The idea for the song came to me last night while watching my old friend and former bandmate Emma Simpson play a few songs on an acoustic guitar at Katies. Somehow, I managed to analogise Crashpoint as a ship, one of the old pirate ships built out of wood. Crashpoint obviously broke up as the members went their seperate ways, like parts of the ship getting old, worn and falling off, and even though we tried to make repairs by getting new members in, in the end the damage was done; the ship became a wreck, and the individual members little more than driftwood, that may end up either as something else, or cast of as waste.

The driftwood analogy is particularly appropriate because there's been a lot of different things going on with the former members of Crashpoint. Cj's been trying his hand drumming for various different people, it's not always worked out well for him though. Similar story with Luke. Rich has been going around different bands as well but I wonder if he'll ever really find what he's looking for. J, as far as I know, has abandoned music completely. I've been going around a few different bands, with limited success, and been doing my own acoustic shows because I can't hold it together. I've barely spoken to Emma since Crashpoint but seeing her play last night reminded me yet again that we're all just floating around trying to make something of doing what we enjoy...

So the lyrics to the song are all based on this shipwreck analogy, the Storm from the North being the collective set of circumstances that eventually forced us to call it a day. There's quite a Dire Straits-style storytelling nature to it, which I quite like because I always wanted to write a song as good as Telegraph Road. It starts with the ship being built, (getting the band together,) being sailed around various different places (gigging!) being weathered and eroded (the damage we were doing to Emma's voice and J's departure) and sailing on through shallow and rocky waters (when the band was basically over and we were only keeping it together for it's own sake.)  It ends with the idea that even though we're all pieces of driftwood now and we'll almost certainly never be a ship (or band) again, it's important to remember each other and what we managed to achieve before the end.

Musically the chords are nothing to write home about, but I'm changing time signatures quite a lot in this from a 6/8 ballad to a 4/4 stomper, and back to 6/8 for the sad bit at the end. I'm thinking of putting a tin whistle solo in there as well. Yes, I have one, and yes, I can play it a bit. In fact I could hear it working with a whole folk group set-up, with violins and bodhrans and everything... but one thing at a time. When will we hear it live? Hopefully soon, though my record for new songs this year hasn't been 100% and I'd really rather not screw this one up. I'll play it when I play it, but I doubt that will be before March.

I hear there's a new video of me on Youtube, must check that out...