Category: Music

If my last song, Hand-me-down Parade, was an attempt at some kind of emotional catharsis then this new song, The Last Laugh is on the Clown, is perhaps the sequel to that, but equally ineffective in improving my mental health, in so many ways.

The Last Laugh is on the Clown

Head bowed in the darkness, the pain we cannot bear
Downtrodden, feeling weak, no words can heal despair
Into the depths we’re falling, we feel we cannot share
Misled by the misery and no one is left to care

The last laugh is on the clown
His breaking heart, the failing art, the untruths that drag him down
Yet they take his task to town
Head in hands, he’s crying, hopes the tears will let him drown

Though the cynic’s smile it lingers just a little bit too long
Shed the darkness. Walk that mile, tear apart the rights from wrong
And yet we know that it’s just the blind that newly see
Grant us now our second sight, then we’ll be truly free

The last laugh is on the clown
His breaking heart, the failing art, the untruths that drag him down

And from the depths awakens the thought that they’d care
Light breaks through the sorrow that we bear
The rushing waters drown the pain that we never really share
As the tide turns on our midden plain we must declare:

The last laugh was on the clown
The breaking heart, the failing art, the untruths that brought him down
and they took his task to town
Hand in hand, they’re walking on the fear beyond them now

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Words, music, recording, and production – David Bradley
Vocals, guitars, bass, keys, percussion – David Bradley

With “spiritualisation” from Clive-upon-Sea and a nudge to extend my guitar solo.

More pseudo-proggie nonsense from the Sciencebass studio of dB/. This time with far too many overdubs, awfully bad percussion, but a great guitar solo, and some weird stream-of-consciousness lyrics about trying to break through grief…or something…

Basic chord progression is Asus4 – C(add9) – D- Em7, but in second verse opens up to some Lifesonesque chords: Asus2(fr5, open E and B) – Cmaj7 (fr8, open E and B) – Em (fr6, open E string) – E7sus4 (fr5, open E and B).

It can be quite cathartic writing a song when a parent dies. This is my tribute to Dad who died in October. Maybe there’s a little Gerry Rafferty in here, a dash of ELO, there’s probably no Roy Orbison nor Buddy Holly in it, except in spirit, perhaps.*

Inevitably, it’s a song about life and death and legacy and the sea…but so are almost all my other songs, except the Xmas ones…but even then…

Hand-me-down Parade

Wait a week, see what comes into your head
Give it time for inspiration to seep through instead
I don’t know that they’ll hold up a light to you, unpaid
I’ve got no answers, I’m on the hand-me-down parade

Did you see the waves, they rushed to crown the shore?
There were no lives to save they settled with an open score
Hand me down the things always left unsaid
Give us this very day, our daily bread, our daily bread

Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down I’m tired I think I can concede that
you shine the light , I’ll play a while on this side
Until it’s time for me to hand it down, hand it down

I’ve been trying to take a picture in the shade
Why won’t you hand me down what I have made? What have I made?
’cause I’m on a mission to separate the right from wrong
But, I just don’t feel I need to write another highway song

Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down untied I think I can concede that
you shine a light , I’ll stay ’cause you are by my side
Until it’s time for me to hand it down

Did you hope to turn the tide, that washed you on the shore?
You saved the souls, the brave, who lingered on that open score
Hand me down the words…better left unsaid
Take it back today, our daily bread, our daily bread

Hand me down exactly what it is I needed
Hand me down tongue-tied I think I can concede that
you hold the light, I’ll stay a while on the inside
Until it’s time for me to hand it down, hand it down, hand it down

*To be honest, there’s probably more U2, RHCPs, James Taylor and David Bowie in this, but they wouldn’t have been on his top 20 playlist I don’t think…

UPDATE: This was BS. I’ve re-sequenced my album so that the tracks are now in the order in which they were written and recorded, with the most recent one as track one and so on…makes much more sense…you can listen in reverse, obvs, and hear the evolution of what I was thinking musically over the last couple of years.

Back in the days before streaming, when the order of tracks on an album was essentially set in vinyl at the press, there was an important job to be done once everything was mixed and ready to go – sequencing.

The order of songs on my latest album – Genre Fluid – was a bit haphazard, so I prompted an LLM with the current order and asked it to assess the songs and sequence them for me. I also asked it to tell me which song I should use to showcase the album, choose the single, you might say.

Here’s the list of songs in the original order

The LLM came back with this:

Crafting a compelling listening order for an album involves balancing different styles, tempos, and moods to create a cohesive and engaging experience. Given your diverse track list, here’s a suggested sequence that aims to create a smooth flow while highlighting the uniqueness of each song:

This sequence aims to balance introspective and energetic tracks, keeping the album dynamic and engaging from start to finish.

This is what it had to say about the choice of single:

Choosing the showcase track depends on what you want to highlight—whether it’s a standout in terms of composition, vocal performance, or overall impact. Given your track list, here’s a recommendation based on different strengths:

I opted to showcase my most recently written and recorded song – Fake it till you make it. Seems apt.

I pulled a few royalty-free loops together in my home studio software. I then came up with an idea for the lyrics and asked ChatGPT to generate something from the idea. It’s offering was awful, but one or two words it mentioned gave me some inspiration.

Over the course of a morning, I pulled together a complete lyric and ad libbed a melody over the track I’d built. With the loops, it started out as a kind of accidental Meat Loaf pastiche, but gradually morphed into something sounding a bit more like what we might call The Runaway Stones but with your man Elton rocking on piano…as I replaced the guitar and bass loops with my own rhythm and lead guitar parts played on my Tele and a new bass line on my Yamaha bass. The song was thus a hybrid of live guitar, bass, and vocals, but with some nice drum and piano loops in my studio software.

The lyrics seemed to be about somebody always on the run, but also in need of constant validation and desperate to make it. They’re not autobiographical, honestly. With such lyrics, the vocal needed a bit more grit and gravel than I can muster with my voice having never been a smoker, so I had a look around for some novel processing plugins and found a nice AI app that offered to take your clean, dry (no effects or processing) vocal and make it sound like someone else singing. I opted for a character the system offered called Blake, who in the faux photo they assigned to those settings was long-haired, swarthy, and looked just like the character in my song.

I ran my vocal through the system and downloaded the output. It sounded very authentic, like the country rock singer I could never be. I pulled the track into the mix. I kept my original vocal with my voice, but used the Blake track to double my vocal at a lower level and panned slightly across the stereo field. So, it’s all the same notes and nuance as I’d sung, but with this country rock voice underpinning my lead vocal, at a lower volume and with a bit of EQ. The result is like having an American brother from another mother singing alongside me. Blake is probably about a fifth of the vocal sound you hear but without him, my voice sounds more Phil Collins than Billy Rae Cyrus.

Fake it till you make it

You’ve been living on the wrong side of town,
Where the whispers and the shadows meet,
They say the law’s been asking around,
But you’re faster on your feet…

With a restless heart and a guilty mind,
You packed up what you should,
Told your girl you’d be hard to find,
You’d stay if you only could

Run it, gun it, break with the news
I’m the mover whatever I choose
Fake it, take it, shake off the blues
I’ve got to make it or I lose

The highway stretches dusk to the dawn,
Driving through your deepest fears,
‘cross every mile, you’re leaving no mark,
But you just can’t outrun the years

In every town, there’s a story that’s told,
Of the loner who had to pay,
But you’re not about to fit that mould,
You’re shooting through, you’re never going to stay

Hum it, pun it, break from the booze
I’m a faker when I’m about to lose
Shake it, oh flake it, go fuck the muse
I’ve got to take it or I lose

A tale of stolen lands and ancestors

Never Grows Old

I’m riding through the sacred lands
Where they’ll take you down and they’ll break your hands
Riding in the shotgun fire
Where the trees are scorched by the funeral pyre

Tell me now, do you know what’s on the inside?
Beyond the world, we can run but we cannot hide
Tell me now, can you feel the flames drawing your breath
from your very bones with a spirit that never grows old, never grows old?

I’m blowing ash to the wind
Where they’ll cut you down and they’ll bury your sins
Screaming for the life and times
Of a medicine man with his tainted signs

Kicking up the dust again
When they shake you down and say “Amen!”
Listen to the spirits cry as they pick it up with their eagle eyes

Tell me now, do you know what’s on the inside?
Beyond the world, we can run but we cannot hide
Tell me now, can you feel the flames drawing your breath
from your very bones with a spirit that never grows old, never grows old?

I’m blowing ash to the wind
I’m riding through the sacred lands
Kicking up the dust again
Shake me down and say “Amen!”

Shake me down and say “Amen!”
Shake me down, Shake me down
The spirit never grows old
Never grows old, never grows old

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Something of a 70s southern rocker heading from near sweet home Alabama all the way back to early 90s Madchester by way of Willowdale

Caught the last day of the Ely Folk Festival 2024, with Jez Lowe, Boo Hewerdine, Brooks Williams, Eddie Reader, Rusty Shackle and others performing.

Eddie Reader

Brooks Williams

As with guitars, you can never have too many songs, surely? My modern period of writing and recording began around April 2012, although I’d done a lot of noodling guitar instrumentals with beats and synths for many years before that going way back into my teens.

But, this modern period which started in my 40s when I co-established an Arts Night happening got me writing and recording on a more regular and frequent basis. Some of the early stuff is lost to my old SoundCloud page. That said, I could probably resurrect those files if there was a demand. There were also dozens of cover versions, some of which are still on my Youtube and Spotify etc.

Anyway, my recorded musical output, as opposed to the live stuff I do solo, with C5 the band, with bigMouth/TyrannoChorus choir, and in various collaborations with Barbara, Patrick, Liz, and several others is mainly found on my BandCamp pages.

Genre Fluid (2023) – 8 tracks – 32’28”
Lifelines (2022) – 8 tracks – 31’22”
After the Lockdown (2021) – 14 tracks – 63’36”
Lockdown (2020) – 14 tracks – 61’50”
Bridge of Sighs (2019) – 17 tracks – 71’36”
The Sea Refuses No River (2018) – 11 tracks – 44’36”
Who is Really Fooling Who? (2017) – 9 tracks – 33’55”
Detail is a Devil (2017) – 13 tracks – 53’53”
In Transition (2016) – 15 tracks – 64’03”
Push the Button (2015) – 15 tracks – 65’14”
If at first… (2014) – 25 tracks – 98’13”

Total 149 tracks, 11h30m

The chronology of these various collections may be slightly skewed in places, where I shuffled songs from one collection to another over the years. There was at one point an EP called Bait and Switch (2016) and another called Life, Love, Lonicera(2016). The songs from those were spread around the playlists from around that time to make the whole collection more balanced. “Push the Button”, “Wild Honeysuckle” and “Burning Out” ended up on the Push the Button album. “Escape to the Stars”, “The Silent Spring”, “Bait and Switch”, and “White Line Warrior” ended up on the Detail is a Devil album.

I should perhaps adjust the playlists to balance the album lengths properly but there are natural gaps between the songwriting periods of the last 12 years. Anyway, I am now awaiting a new playlist from Clive-upon-Sea who is working his way through all 150 songs, all eleven and a half hours of my music to pull together an Essential Dave Bradley collection.

My most recent song is out now for streaming and download via BandCamp. I’ve already talked about how it came to be and alluded to the origins of the title in the engraving on young English poet John Keats’ headstone – Here Lies One Whose Name was writ in Water

With this song History Written on the Water I tried to weave a tapestry of imagery and metaphor, exploring themes of secrets, betrayal, faithlessness, loss, and the relentless passage of time.

Secrets and Betrayal: My lyrics refer to secrets, suggesting that there are hidden truths that have been concealed or obscured. Lines like “The secret’s out, they could’ve lied” and “A candle snuffed from sacred view” imply a sense of betrayal or deception, the allusion to candles hinting at faithlessness.

Metaphorical Imagery: By design or accident, there are numerous metaphors, in particular the history being written on the water, suggesting an impermanence and fluidity of events and the idea that our actions leave no indelible mark on the world. They say history is a lesson to learn, but so often we inore it.

Nature Imagery: Many of my songs talk of the sea, water, tides, often symbolizing loss, death, the passage of time, the inevitability of change, and the depths of the human condition. The mention of “crushing waves beneath the endless skies” hopefully conjures a sense of overwhelming force and vastness.

Contract and Binding: The reference to contracts signed between the lines and the (legal) eagle’s talons tightly binding perhaps suggest a sense of entrapment or obligation, perhaps implying that choices made in the past have lasting consequences.

Yearning for Redemption: The repeated references to finding one’s way back home and reclaiming secrets beneath the waves suggest a longing for redemption or reconciliation. There is a sense of urgency and determination in lines like “No more time left to roam” and “Promise me that you’ll be fine.”

Desolation and Loss: The imagery of “empty bed” and “world gone dark” conveys a sense of desolation and loss, hinting at the aftermath of betrayal or abandonment.

Turning Point: The line “The turnaround is where it ought to be” suggests a moment of realization or reckoning, where the protagonist comes to terms with their circumstances and resolves to move forward. A turnaround, of course, being a musical term for a point in a song where the chord progression or melody flips from the expected to something unexpected but nevertheless satisfying.

History Written on the Water is hopefully a poignant exploration of human experience, using imagery and metaphor to convey themes of secrecy, betrayal, redemption, and the passage of time. In it, I reflect on some of the complexities of life, maybe the transient impact of our actions on the world around us.

You can download or stream my latest song from BandCamp.

TL:DR – I’ve written a new song. It’s now on BandCamp and FREE to the first 200 people to download.

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John Keats’ headstone in the Cemitero Acattolico famously has the line:

Here Lies One Whose Name was writ in Water

I’d misremembered this or maybe misread it somewhere as history as ephemeral information easily lost, never really solid in the first place, history written on water. Apparently, it was much earlier though, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play Philaster, 1611: ‘All your better deeds Shall be in water writ, but this in Marble.’ Longfellow quoted Keats’ epitaph in his ode to the ‘young English poet’.

As is my wont, I wrote a few words around this phrase, trying to make a new song. I had a little chord progression that involved two-finger open chords up and down the neck, but fundamentally the progression was Em-C-Am-B. I recorded a demo with the rough words a couple of days before my birthday, but it didn’t really gel. It was sparse, fragile, spare…could’ve been a nice song, perhaps sung by someone else.

I was going to ditch it. But, come Friday evening with an empty house, I went back to basics with those open chords and just played them as I would normally have done at the first positions on guitar with a couple of little tweaks. It was a bit too high for me to sing the melody I’d come up with comfortably, so I stuck a capo on the third fret and dropped my voice to fit.  There are still some high bits, thank goodness for Melodyne assisting me with the accuracy of the upper harmonies.

I worked up my lyrics over the evening and came up with a way to make a chorus work, chopping up the evolving chord progression of the verse and making it a more basic rock pattern. Then a bridge with a spot of modulation, a key change, to open things up and take it back into a final chorus.

So, with lyrics tweaked, three sections in, I ran a 1+1 vocal and guitar, added a second acoustic guitar with a bit of distortion, did a pseudo-mandolin section, tapped along with a MIDI keyboard to add some percussion, and then played a bit of bass. To finish it off, I recorded a fake classical ending using the chords from the verses and pitch-shifted it up an octave to make it sound like a musical box, all very silly, but just an esoteric finale for fun. Some glockenspiel on the MIDI keyboard and a bit of MIDI keyboard for sax too…

It was all quite complex by now and the drums sounded crap. I redid those on cajon a few days later and still it sounded crap. In stepped my friend Dave Oliffe of Giant Audio Studio with whom I’ve been co-producing Cluce-upon-Sea’s latest album. Dave is a fabulous drummer and made an easy job of playing along to my track with the original percussion muted. The final mix is now on the Dave Bradley BandCamp page. There’s a lot going on lyrically and musically in this tune, do give it a couple of listens.

History written on the water

The secret’s out, they could’ve lied
The silent treatment terrified
The missing link, the dimmest spark
The wording just a little too dark

It was always written in ascorbic ink
Unread terms that make you think
A contract signed between the lines
The Eagle’s talons tightly bind

I had to find my way back home
No more time left to roam
My grand designs lost on the breeze
The faithless falling to their knees

CHORUS
Time and tide they wait for no man
Empty promises in disguise
Shallow seas will claim your secrets
Crushing waves beneath the endless skies

CHORUS COUNTERMELODY
They won’t wait for you
Promise me that you’ll be fine
Won’t you just reclaim your secret
Beneath the waves, there’s a better view

The secret’s out, they could’ve told you
A candle snuffed from sacred view
A world gone dark your plans unmade
An empty bed the price that’s paid

It was always written in ascorbic ink
All terms unread won’t make you think
A contract signed between the lines
The Eagle’s talons tightly bind

You’re history written in the water
The turnaround is where it ought to be
Unholy ground that nothing saves
The words unread, far beneath the waves

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Some of the lyrics are deliberate cliches, like the whole “time and tide” refrain because I often allude to the sea in my music. Ascorbic ink, in case you couldn’t see right through that was an allusion to invisible ink made from lemon juice. Originally, it was the (legal) Eagle’s hidden talons. I think the closing “You’re history” was originally “Your history”, but then I thought it could also mean “you are history”, meaning “you’re finished”.

To be honest, I’ve no idea what the song is about, secrets, plans gone wrong, contracts, lawyers, faith, the sea, drowning? Maybe subconsciously I’ve written a song about The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.