Today sees the release of Light The Evening Fire, the debut album from Glymjack, an English folk act led by singer-songwriter Greg McDonald. The album was produced with Show of Hands’ Phil Beer, and features Steve Knightley and Miranda Sykes alongside Sam Kelly percussionist Evan Carson and fiddle virtuoso Gemma Gayner.
Greg McDonald’s original songs are unflinching in their dark vision of Brexit Britain. Title track Light the Evening Fire steels itself against the coming darkness with angry defiance as McDonald reels off a list of what he’s prepared to burn to get through the night while Knightley and Beer chant “On the fire! On the fire!” Watch the new video below:
Greg Shared the following
The Light the Evening Fire album was planned one morning at Phil Beer’s kitchen table, with a black coffee and a spreadsheet.
I said I reckoned we could have it done in six weeks. Phil said six months.
Six years later, here’s the title track.
Evening Fire is a collaboration with Phil and Steve Knightley, with whom I go back to a fateful night in my teens when Show of Hands turned up in the backroom of a local pub.
The song Light the Evening Fire was arranged for multiple voices in the hope of creating the impression of a number of characters around a fire. When Steve began recording his vocal, I had the character he sings about, Paul, working in bike repairs. But it didn’t sound right and Steve thought Paul was in the wrong trade. He tried some other options, but none of them seemed to fit. We argued the toss for a while and compromised on Paul taking a role in motor-spares – not what I’d planned for him, but I figured Paul had his own path now. I guessed this must’ve been how my parents felt when I told them I was going to be in a band.
The faces-around-the-fire image was the basis for Henry DC Williams’ music video too. Despite the icy November night, Phil had to be sent back indoors to put a coat on for fear that his inhuman imperviousness to the elements was breaking the dramatic illusion.
Of course the fire-lit faces in Light the Evening Fire don’t fit the urban image of homelessness that tends to make the news, but the people sleeping rough in Britain’s farm buildings and fields are just as cold as their urban counterparts.
There but for the grace of Clement Atlee go I.
Throughout 2018, Glymjack tour as an acoustic trio with Greg joined by Gemma and bassist Dickon Collinson, delivering a high energy, harmony-rich set of hard-hitting originals, English folk songs and fiddle tunes.
Find out more here: https://www.glymjack.com/
Tour dates: https://www.glymjack.com/live
Photo Credit: Still Vision Aaron Karnovski