This is the final of four in-depth blog posts for Folk Radio UK about songs from my new album “Esteesee”, an album inspired by the life and work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
Track 5: Friends of Three
I’m writing these blog posts from my kitchen table, the place where most of my songs are written. This is Track 5 “Friends of Three”.
Coleridge was a man who enjoyed simple pleasures and during his years living in Somerset there were days on end where in the company of his friends William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth they would walk through the local countryside and hills in awe of creation and nature.
Reading the ‘Lime-tree Bower’, in which Coleridge is house bound, you can see how much Coleridge longed to be outside. I imagined during these days that they walked and talked and enjoyed each day as a gift.
I live very close to Nether Stowey in Somerset were Coleridge lived for many years, and so I’m familiar with much of the natural landscape that Coleridge would have enjoyed so much.
I had a very specific walk in mind when I wrote this song. The broken wall I was imagining is one that runs alongside a field in Crowcombe on the way up to the Quantocks. We walked past it one winter a few years ago (during the same heavy period of snowfall that inspired “White as Snow” on Bare Foot Folk) and I suppose it must have been one of those moments in nature that made an impression. You can walk up a steep path from Crowcombe to the top of Beacon Hill and look out across the Bristol Channel to South Wales. It may very well have been a route that Coleridge himself would have walked.
Ironically much of the melody of this came to life sitting in a traffic jam on the way to Poole! The melody came first, and then the words came later. For a while this was going to be an unaccompanied vocal song but it grew beyond that and I loved the idea to creating a soundscape. Patsy Reid recreates the trudging sound of climbing the hill and then in the outro we emerge at the top of the hill with the whistle of birdsong and the light airiness of the breeze.
One of the things I love most about this outro was that it was completely organic. I asked each musician to play whatever it was that they were inspired to add and the piece grew naturally when each layer was added. I think there’s something lovely about creating music in such a communal way. All the musicians that play instruments on the album feature in the outro, each one leaving their own signature on the finished piece.
Lyrics
On a cold and careless winter’s morn’
With quill and coat adorned,
Take to the hills all for to walk
All over the heathery moorland.The climb, the hill, the rustic path,
The broken wall beside us
And to the open skies at last
We on the moors resided.And in the upward Quantock breeze
Where proud the beacon rises,
We look toward the icy sea
And to the shores of Cardiff.The climb, the hill, the rustic path,
The broken wall beside us
And to the open skies at last
We on the moors resided.Sir Wordsworth he will walk with me
To talk of all besides us,
The sweet and lovely Dorothy
Between our words will guide us.The climb, the hill, the rustic path,
The broken wall beside us
And to the open skies at last
We on the moors resided.And so the days we friends of three
With all the Lord provided,
Will spend in splendid company
And all of life confided.The climb, the hill, the rustic path,
The broken wall beside us
And to the open skies at last
We on the moors resided.
By: Ange Hardy
Esteesee is released on 24th September 2015 via Story Records (pre-order it here)
‘Esteeesee’ Album Tour & Launch
Along The Coleridge Way
OCTOBER
3rd: Nether Stowey
4th: Halsway Manor – ALBUM LAUNCH!
6th: Holford & District
7th: Bicknoller
8th: East Quantoxhead
9th: Sampford Brett
10th: Stogumber
11th: Wheddon Cross
12th: Roadwater
14th: Luxborough
15th: Luccombe
16th: Porlock
17th: Brendon & Countisbury
18th: Lynmouth Pavilion Project
For details of all of Ange Hardy’s upcoming gig dates please click here.
Read all of Ange’s Posts here.