Get all 14 Daniel Shaw releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Fish House Blues, Songs With Mossflower, Grapevines & Orchards (selected works with the Aardvarks), Little Boy Blues, Songs with Shaico, In A Dan Key, Little Hill 2, Tides, and 6 more.
1. |
Fish House Blues
04:39
|
|||
From the window of my home
Where I’ve lived for13 Springs
Stands a house all alone
With fields and meadows in rings
-And it’s stood for the best part of a thousand years
While the world all around it has grown in fear
And come the night
We’ll all be singing
And come the night
We’ll all be longing
For the Fish House blues
There’s still an orchard
Where there used to be some vines
They used to fish
In the Lake that’s drained behind
-Kings used to visit with the Monks in a boat
Reeds are still waving but now commoners got the vote
Knights and Landholders
Were written in the book
Jack fingers took the rent
In eels caught to cook
- Doulting Stones standing on the Lyme
Secrets of the Roman Reich buried and left to find (with the pools and the Pike)
Belief builds the stones
And belief pulls them down
It all left its mark
On the brow of this town
- Willows bend and sway in lines left to root
But thatch is now tiled up tooth to tooth
|
||||
2. |
The Glastonbury Canal
05:16
|
|||
Floating Coal, Floating Stone
Dig out the peat down to the bone
Herons fish and Bitterns Boom
Dig out the draft to make more room
Hauling down to Bridies Yard
Sign the paper and stamp your card
From Bristol down to Highbridge wall
Bullied’s climbing tower fall
They All fell under the Spell
Of the Glastonbury Canal
John’s corpse in the Graveyard Sprawled
He never shouted; he never called
Left the company; left the plan
Silted up before it began
Dry canal, no tracks on the line
All roads covered with the grace of time
But we still follow the Roman Roads
By width and length, weight of the load
Now Dead Tracks Lie Parallel
To The Glastonbury Canal
Investments come and money flows
Canals silt up and money goes
Roman roads and Roman Stones
By the hollow way where no one goes
Dry canals and sleepless paths
Used for goods; used by craft
When John Climbed the stairs of the Tower
He had no bread, he had no flour
_
Boats are waiting in dry dock
To line the wallet and turn the lock
Subscription Signed with an honest pound
John was a man down to the ground
Carrying Coal and Loads of Stone
From Bristol City Banks and Loans
Back with Weary all Brick Clay
But nothing flows but the drains today
The Commercial Rationale
Of the Glastonbury Canal
Now I’m walking down paths in the reeds
Fish in the Lake, birds in the trees
Investors jump, finance fails
& Ahab chases the great white whale
He tries to strike but he’ll fail
A black scar in the blubber pale
Cuts through flesh of the land
Lines traced on Glastonbury’s hand
|
||||
3. |
Leatherman
10:05
|
|||
I could be the leatherman
Who worked in Leather town
With Leather hands
Maybe I'll stitch your shoes
Or take up some other muse
Maybe there will be no work
I'll hang my head and stand in cues
Perhaps the grass will grow green
Fat livestock with wide hides
Perhaps the other side more green is seen
Blue to you a sky trial dream
But I could be a leatherman
I could be the Leatherman
Who worked in leather town
With leather hands
Or I could be the minor man
in sheep town: that burnt out land
And the rain falls: the grass grows
Nothing to harvest: Nothing to grow
And we all join up with the merchant man
Ring his tills and shake his hands
Or maybe I'm just a busker man
Giving tourist thrills the best I can
And the rain falls: the grass grows
Nothing to harvest: Nothing to sow
|
||||
4. |
I Won't
03:06
|
|||
I won't disappear in the night
Covering up your pain
Not leave you at a bus station
Alone in the rain
You can know
I won't close the door on you
You can know
I won't open a book on you
I won't change the rules
I won't play the fool
I won't push you out
and Not pull you in again
I won't tell you one thing
Then whisper another
won't betray your trust
Or Judas your brother
I'll not take away things
Or laugh at your Jewels
(they don't belong to me)
Or use words like tools
I'll never let you down
More than you can be let down
I won't steal your crown
When your time comes around
I'll never forget your eyes
When I'm looking through mine
Not spend too much
When all we have is time
|
||||
5. |
Firefox Murmuration
05:38
|
|||
6. |
Ammonite
04:00
|
|||
From Water we came
To water we return
The Marshes Drained
The Peat is burned.
Bleached Shells remain
Soil turns and changed
The Wild and the tamed
Reeds have returned.
Patterns in the rock
The walls of a sea
No heard no flock
No eels for tea.
Hawthorns grow back
Willows grow slack
Walk the Sweet track
Piled up peat stack.
A hill in the sky
A tower in the air
Whistles good bye
To foul and fair
It remains; It’s there:
Ammonite.
|
||||
7. |
Lake Village
02:37
|
|||
8. |
Cider Snakebite
03:19
|
|||
Apples drop in the orchard, thumping to the ground.
They choose their time and make their own sound.
If you’ve tasted it, then you really know:
Never gather apples, fallen in the snow.
Tiny reds on one limb, Golden globes on the other side.
Gnarly lichen branches bent low and wide.
Scrumping through the garden gate, brambles and snakes
Dropping fruit that rots till the wasps awake.
Lying in the Summer hay
Fizzing and fermenting till
The cold embrace of snow comes
And makes nature still.
|
||||
9. |
I Will Bring You Home
03:52
|
|||
You'll find these lyrics appearing in some of my other songs on different albums too...(Mossflower) they have the same theme and were written about the same time
|
||||
10. |
Timber Ships
04:29
|
|||
For 800 years she has swum the seas
From the cool of the North to Pacific warm breeze
But now her cousins don’t call
And the endless song has died
The seas are all empty
Through all the world wide
But her great eye has seen
And her dark mind remembers
Like a fire burning
Down to its final embers
Her children swimming
As the sea birds call
Safe from the storms
And the timber ships tall.
Will my son’s son ever see a whale?
Once he could have walked
On a cetacean’s tail
From the mainland down to Nantucket beach
Now the bleached bones lie white
Deep out of thought and reach.
|
||||
11. |
Silver Children
04:11
|
|||
Dredging again, keeping halls free of mud
the sea smell of scoop reeds stacked
brings back the Cary river, where I grew chasing eels
between pith prisms piled and packed
Obsidian Skin, wraps gulping gills
round reflex jaw with Purple Blood
the dead head drops, with staring eyes
skinned knees cracking brown mud
Silent and secret sea, in forgotten breeding grounds
Swim the cold silver monsters
they dwell and dream in the depths
dreaming of the silver children
Swimming across streams to the stars
dreaming of the silver children
Swimming across streams to the stars
Dredging again: Seaweed Smell
Mud Flooded Kitchens and halls
Prisms of Pith piled
Scooped Reeds Stacked
brown mud knees And wriggling monsters
Flipping fins, gulping gills
Opinel knife: purple blood
Dead severed head With staring eyes
obsidian skin Wraps tiny teeth in reflex jaw
Silent and secret sea
forgotten breeding patch
giant cold silver monsters
dwell and dream in the depths
Dreaming of silver children
swimming across streams of the stars
|
||||
12. |
Dark Room
05:09
|
|||
Alfie Galpin - Background Vocal loop?
|
||||
13. |
There's No Choice Now
03:27
|
|||
14. |
The Apiarist
06:12
|
|||
Stealing Sweet Honey with smoke
Do the Bees love the thief
If she brings icing treats
When the flowers don’t give what they need?
A soft white slab melting in the morning dew
Giving sugar gifts to the queen
While we take treasured gifts from her daughters
Lapping the sweet pools under the rough palace.
And the Apiarist takes what she needs.
Does a hive leave a ghost
When a Princess births a new host?
Does her dance leave a mark
Between cells of chewed bark?
Does She whisper to Valentine
Dusting pollen from Columbines
Or heather from the hills behind:
The secret flowers that they find.
But the Apiarist takes what she needs.
|
||||
15. |
The Severn Serpent
08:16
|
|||
The Great Eel Chases the Bore
down the tidal Funnel.
Glass Eels Return from spawning in Caribbean Seas
To Swim the tidal scoop
up the Severn;
then the Brue
to lie and hide in ditches
Sliding up muddy banks
to find their way to wetland;
Lurking to places to hide
and slide
and become yellow;
Dragging bellies
over drowned roots
and Ramshorn snails
To slyly lie
hidden from Herons,
Bitterns, Great Egrets and Otters,
Till Twenty Years pass
and the Silver
returns to the Sea
The tide reaches inland with its powerful fingers
But the Serpent tastes Mud, Hides and Lingers
We turn our backs
to the estuarine blankness,
the bleak muddy sands.
Did glass eel fishermen live here
before Sixteen Sixteen's wave
washed away Brean?
To leave sad Dunes
and bare
Heath Meadows
Till train and canal
connected the Celts
with the Iron Steen Ships moored
Avoiding mud banks
Or away to France
and Grand tours.
Now Ghosts of Inns
Rot by Pale Arcades
as punters submarine through Gloucestershire tunnels,
And the parish church lists
like a steamship stuck
on a mud bank.
The tide reaches inland with its powerful fingers
But the Serpent tastes Mud, Hides and Lingers
In the Brown churning waters
The Serpent Slides
with the tide
Pulling Nudd's chariot:
The Chthonic Lord of the Mine
and the deep Brine.
Did She swim the Severn inland
to the Omphalos of Oxford
to find A Roman Wyrm entombed?
Locked in fierce embrace
with a Celtic Red Beast
Re-entombed by Gwyn in Emry's
Halls to wait for Vortigern.
Now it's our turn
as they fly free
And a Plague falls on all our Houses.
The tide reaches inland with its powerful fingers
But the Serpent tastes Mud, Hides and Lingers
|
||||
16. |
Pill Box Blues
03:34
|
|||
Sat in a Box on the Somerset Levels
Staring out of the Concrete bevels
Taking turns with the wooden Gun
In the box in the rain; in the box in the sun.
The Rota moves on until
My turn now to unlock and fill
Ammunition tin with Horlick and Rum
Keeping me warm till my shift is done.
Moonlit night out on the drain
With Ramshorn snails swimming in the rain
The Rhine spawns mobs of gurgling toads
While Cows rub the concrete with their nose.
I sight the fish house dark and dim
Between a nail and the gunstock trim
There will be no tanks rolling in tonight:
Meare will be safe till the dawning light.
Ironside Sealion, GHQ Line
To Highbridge and the Taunton Stop Line
I'll rest my old bones in the pillbox Night
Till the boys come home from the fight
Boxes on Stop Line Green
Slowly sinking in the Rhyne
Steel and Concrete cracks with time
But we all took turns and held the line.
We place the Poppies around the cross
To remember the fallen, remember the lost
Steel and concrete cracks with time
But we took turns to hold the line.
|
Daniel Shaw Glastonbury, UK
Daniel Shaw based in Glastonbury & S.W.area.
Past work includes performances with the poet Laureate,
Simon Armitage; & performances in Europe, Tennessee, Kolkatta and the Uk.
Daniel has also performed and recorded with the The Aardvarks, double bass & Bass with Mossflower, The Minor Works Unit, Mr Keep Calm & The Cancelled Cheques, The Blackdown Bluebirds andThe Duncan Batey Trio.
... more
Streaming and Download help
If you like Daniel Shaw, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp