- Lyrics by an Australian poet called Henry Lawson. Shout out to the cambridge troubadour Banjo Nick for introducing us (check him on youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ALsqSDKqrU)
- We made the Bouzouki sound like an Oud (or something you’d pull out of a tree in the Congo) with our old cardboard-through-strings trick
- This is a new song and we haven’t actually played it live yet
lyrics
And they heard the tent-poles clatter,
And the fly in twain was torn –
'Tis the soiled rag of a tatter
The tent where I was born.
What matters it, I wonder?
Brick or stone or calico? –
Or a bush you were born under,
When it happened long ago?
And my beds were camp beds and tramp beds and damp beds,
And my beds were dry beds on drought-stricken ground,
Hard beds and soft beds, and wide beds and narrow –
For my beds were strange beds the wide world round.
And the old hag seemed to ponder
('Twas my mother told me so),
And she said that I would wander
Where but few would think to go.
"He will fly the haunts of tailors,
He will cross the ocean wide,
For his fathers, they were sailors
All on his good father's side."
Behind me, before me, Oh! my roads are stormy
The thunder of skies and the sea's sullen sound,
The coaster or liner, the English or foreign,
The state-room or steerage the wide world round.
And the old hag she seemed troubled
As she bent above the bed,
"He will dream things and he'll see things
To come true when he is dead.
He will see things all too plainly,
And his fellows will deride,
For his mothers they were gipsies
All on his good mother's side."
And my dreams are strange dreams, are day dreams, are grey dreams,
And my dreams are wild dreams, and old dreams and new;
They haunt me and daunt me with fears of the morrow –
My brothers they doubt me – but my dreams come true.
I have stood by Table Mountain
On the Lion at Capetown,
And I watched the sunset fading
From the roads that I marked down,
And I looked out with my brothers
From the heights behind Bombay,
Gazing north and west and eastward,
Over roads I'll tread some day.
For my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways,
And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low;
I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not,
And restless and lost on a road that I know.
credits
from Simeon's Song,
released December 7, 2018
Written and arranged by Roger O'Shea.
We -- St. Simeon and the Stylites -- are a band.
We make noises with stringed and thumpable instruments.
Variously and on different occasions these have included; Guitar, Bouzouki, Upright bass, Drums (various), Keys (organ,piano etc.) and on the odd occasion a duo of fiddles...more
Cermony's Ross John Farrar experiments with synths, bass, & percussion to make music similar to that from the '80s homemade tape scene. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 30, 2023
The Besnard Lakes return with their first new LP in four years, full of the same mystery and wonder on which they have built their name. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 30, 2020
Brighton quartet Zooni round out their slick, ultra-rhythmic art rock vision with smart lyrics and ever-shifting dynamics. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 7, 2020