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A Few Simple VersesOctober 12, 2006 James Keelaghan's newest, A Few Simple Verses, was due out at the end of June. I didn't order it, even though I'd heard James sing several cuts from the CD at Passim on April 30 -- "Harvest Train," and "My Bonnie Light Horseman," and Ewan MacColl's "Sweet Thames, Flow Softly" -- and loved them all. June segued into July. I still didn't order it; I was too broke. July into August: Still didn't order; too broke and too busy, a bad combination. Then I heard "My Blood" on the radio. "My Blood" is a Keelaghan–Jez Lowe co-write and co-perform. It's compelling and it's brilliant and it's on A Few Simple Verses. I proceeded almost immediately to the Festival Distribution website, my favorite source for all CDs Canadian, and did my overdue duty. So, at long last, A Few Simple Verses. Word has been out for a couple of years that Keelaghan was working on "a traditional album" of songs from his tradition -- songs he grew up with, songs that have resonance. Six of these ten songs are traditional by any definition: they've been passed down and around and no longer have any songwriter's name attached. "Trad." could proudly claim any of the other four as well, and all ten fit seamlessly into the Keelaghan repertoire. They tell stories. They steady your step when you're walking and set your foot to tapping when you're sitting still. They're lyrical and poignant and they have choruses that slip into your memory and won't let go. This is all to the good, because in other respects as well they're characteristic Keelaghan: their protagonists get dumped, fail to find gold, turn criminal and get caught, and lose their best friends to natural disasters and their lovers to war, age, and the sea. They leave home in search of work; if they're lucky they find it, and if they're really lucky they get to go home again. The sunniest songs on A Few Simple Verses have horses in them, lots of horses. The first track, "Jackson & Jane," concerns a steeplechase in County Monaghan. Hugh Jackson's the rider and Jane is the horse. Jane gets to talk (you don't want to underestimate or otherwise mess with the women in any Keelaghan song) -- from her phrasing as well as her speed it's obvious she's very well bred -- and she confounds Jackson's opponents and carries the day. I love this song. Allie, the horse with whom I share my life and a significant chunk of my earnings, notes that "bay" can be substituted for "gray" without harm to rhythm or rhyme. "Galway Races" is a merry glimpse of utopia: eating and dancing and betting on the horses,
It features Oscar Lopez on guitar and Hugh McMillan on upright bass and octave mandolin. No denomination's heaven gets any better than that. With a repertoire like his, James Keelaghan might be forgiven for singing his own songs exclusively, but he doesn't, either in concert or on recordings. A Few Simple Verses showcases his abilities as an interpreter. The man has an actor's ability to slip into a character and make it compellingly real to the listener. I've heard both "Bonnie Light Horseman" and "The Constant Lovers" covered by various capable singers over the years but never paid much attention to either. Well, that's not entirely true: for years I thought the chorus of "Constant Lovers" went "O my love is gone / It's you I adore," which doesn't suggest constancy at all. Performing "Bonnie Light Horseman" last April, Keelaghan introduced it as an antiwar song. Which of course it is: why didn't I hear it before? Because no previous version had conjured the scene so clearly: Napoleon marshalling his armies and aiming his cannon all for the sake of glorious victory, and slaying "my light horseman / On the way comin' hame" without knowing or caring who died. In "Constant Lovers," the slayer is the sea. The risk of melodrama, even silliness, is high when any beautiful woman casts herself off a cliff to join her drowned lover in the deep, but Keelaghan's version is a heartbreaker: he's wholly in the character of the passerby who offers life -- in the form of marriage, gold and silver, and a coach and six -- but seems to understand when the young woman chooses her dead beloved. As he does, so do we. Beware these actors: they'll open your heart to stories you'd rather laugh off. Note, however, that in George Callaghan's wonderful sketches, the female half of the constant couple bears a certain resemblance to Annie, the fair blacksmith's daughter who dumped raftsman Haggerty. (Speaking of Callaghan's drawings, does anyone else think the image of Napoleon bears a certain resemblance to General Keelaghan?) Having grown up west of one Boston and currently living about 90 miles due south of it, I was primed for "The Boston Burglar," who opens his cautionary tale by claiming "I was born and raised in Boston / A place you all know well." Convicted and "sent to Charlestown" -- which is a bona fide part of the Boston I know, though it isn't home to any penitentiary -- the burglar is put on "an eastbound train." Any train eastbound from Boston, Massachusetts, would shortly fall into the ocean, and the same is true of the Boston in Lincolnshire, though the ride would be a little longer. Perhaps this Boston was in Canada? I turned off my inner GPS and gave in to the folk process. No question in my mind: the Boston Burglar is first cousin to the unfortunate title character in "Henry's Down Fall" on Home, who was transported to Australia for poaching in the squire's park. Be warned, young men; don't go midnight rambling, and if you do, don't get caught. Like all Keelaghan's previous recordings, A Few Simple Verses is arranged so that each song has intriguing conversations with those on either side of it. The triumph of "Jackson & Jane" is followed by the poignant "Farewell to the Gold," and lest one fear that all searches for gold lead to loss and despair, along comes Don Somers's "Harvest Train," in which the singer is leaving "the land of the golden pelt" (Prince Edward Island) for far Saskatchewan, fully expecting to return home "with pockets lined with the gold I'll find in the fields of the golden grain." I'm sure he's going to make it. If the two songs were reversed, I'd be less optimistic. After jilted "Jack Haggerty" comes Ewan MacColl's gorgeous "Sweet Thames Flow Softly" of successful courtship and requited love -- which also ends, eventually, in loss. My favorite juxtaposition comes at the end, where "Constant Lovers" is followed by "My Blood." Just when I've almost convinced myself that following one's lover to death in the deep makes some kind of sense, along comes "My Blood," in which Irish emigrés
Keelaghan has traveled this terrain before: in "Abraham" (on My Skies) the singer walks the Plains of Abraham with the farmer whose name they bear and wonders near the end "Will my children learn to find a way to bridge the distance I have not / To learn the scars of history are sometimes best forgot." Holding on and letting go is a major theme running through Keelaghan's work. Which course to take? The decision is rarely easy, the options never painless, but the question sure has kicked up a lot of great songs.
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