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Leatherman

from Fish House Blues by Daniel Shaw

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I re-recorded this old song (written in the 1990s) as it fitted with the themes. Growing up near Street and seeing the shoe manufacturing (gloves in Yeovil and slippers in Glastonbury) close and being taken over by the Clarks Village retail outlets. Things change but the history is still there. I found the original tune in Coventry library as a student – it is based on a Lydian Celtic melody and I played it first on a lever harp. The melody took flight and wound around the song.
Someone told me a story about a ‘friend of a friend’ staying in a tumble-down ruin in the remote SW of Ireland. There was no electricity and each night they would watch the mice playing in the firelight on the stones. One night the English friend asked the Irish friend what the music was that he could hear – he realised it had been there at the edge of hearing for the past few nights. His Irish friend was surprised he had only just noticed it: ‘that’s the music of the land my friend, it is what all our music is based upon in Ireland’. The next night they installed an electric fridge and they never heard it again.
I imagine that this tune is what it might have sounded like, ‘the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands’

lyrics

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

credits

from Fish House Blues, released April 20, 2021

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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

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