Steve Tilston – Distant Days
Riverboat Records/World Music Network – 27 July 2018
Given that one of my all-time favourite albums is 25 Years On The Road by Harvey Andrews, a recording of simply voice and guitar, as if live in concert, it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to receiving Distant Days, the latest offering from Steve Tilston, promulgated as ‘solo acoustic recollections’.
In a career that has spanned four decades, this release is not a ‘Best Of’ collection, listeners would be better directed to either 2007’s 5 CD boxed-set Reaching Back: the Life and Music of Steve Tilston or even 1999’s A Greening Wind, the first collection of songs and instrumental pieces from 1971 to 1992. Indeed except for the final track, the much-lauded The Slip Jigs And Reels, the 19 songs and instrumentals selected are less obvious and possibly less familiar items from his formidable canon of work, and their re-working makes this an exceptional album indeed.
Three tracks are taken from Steve’s debut, 1971, album An Acoustic Confusion, the fifth release from Bristol’s The Village Thing Record Label, (coincidentally, the sixth was The Words In Between, by Dave Evans, recently reviewed in FRUK here). Time Has Shown Me Your Face, has a melody which underscores Tilston’s traditional roots, while It’s Not My Place To Fail, written late one night in the Bristol flat of the aforementioned Dave Evans, exemplifies the quintessential English style of this celebrated songwriter.
The third song from this album to be given a new lease of life is I Really Wanted You, which the accompanying sleeve notes inform us Rod Stewart had thoughts of recording, after having also ordered a box-full of this album as gifts. Regardless of any conjecture over the what-ifs and maybes had this plan borne fruition, one way of viewing this is that Steve’s potential financial loss has probably been our musical gain.
With one song, All In A Dream, taken from his second L.P. Collection, the remainder of the tracks on this CD are all retrospective re-workings of songs taken from a variety of releases up to, and including, 2008’s Ziggurat, except for three previously unreleased tunes. Shinjuku a guitar piece, dedicated to Bert Jansch, conceived during a visit to the eponymous bustling Japanese business and entertainment district in Tokyo, Southernhay Avenue named after a Bristol road in which Steve once lived, and Slow Air In Dropped D, a recently re-discovered 1990’s tune, all serve to exemplify the superb guitar playing that saw him invited to contribute to the Guitar Maestro series of DVDs. Their inclusion will surely be a draw for the completists.
The opening song on the CD, The Road When I Was Young is one of three culled from Ziggurat and is, Steve, concedes, one of his more autobiographical efforts, reflecting as it does on people and places that have left a mark on his life. King Of The Coiners, from the same album, is also revisited and similarly shorn here of the strings provided by Richard Curran on the original, allowing the sheer beauty of the melody to shine through behind his ever-distinctive vocals. Pretty Penny, written in 2007, before the financial crash, and the third offering is taken from the 2008 release, appears as apposite today as it was then, and reflects Tilston’s social conscience, which often surfaces in his writing, and indeed social media presence.
We should be so lucky; they’re such plucky fellows,
Only right they pluck the sweetest plums.
If we don’t knock such wisdom,
Rock the boat or rock the system,
If we’re good, we’ll get to eat the crumbs.
Although composed in the late 1990s, Rare Thing, initially appeared on Steve’s 2003 Such And Such release, with a keyboard, fretless bass, violin and drums backing. Here, stripped back to guitar and vocal, new life is breathed into the song, which is possibly presented in the form in which it was originally conceived. Let Your Banjo Ring, the opening track from All Under The Sun released in1996, receives a similar treatment; gone are Maggie Boyle’s vocals and bodhran, together with the 12-string guitar and charango, with the version here being simply delivered by banjo and voice.
Two outstanding tracks from 1995’s And So It Goes L.P. make the cut here. Is This The Same Boy?, is a moving song in which Steve reflects upon meeting a friend’s teenage son, clearly battling mental health issues, whilst remembering him as an ever-smiling child, whilst Goodbye To The Snow, played here on a 10-string guitar, is a nod to the inevitability of the arrival of spring.
With Castaway , inspired by Robinson Crusoe and thoughts as a child of desert island survival, Waterhole, with lyrics reflecting upon being the victim, some 1500 years ago, of what then was the advanced technology of the bow and arrow, and Here Comes The Night, a song of yearning, Tilston’s ability to write convincingly, across a diverse range of subjects, is apparent.
This skill is further displayed with Life Is Not Kind To The Drinking Man, which he declares is not a sermonizing song, but which nevertheless reflects poignantly upon the detrimental and devastating effects that alcoholism brings.
Each and every morning’s crack of thunder splits your head,
Wishing you could clear yourself, or maybe wake up dead.
The album ends with The Slip Jigs And Reels, his most covered song , and described thus by Steve in the liner notes on the original 1992 release Of Moor And Mesa ‘a kind of link song between the so-called “old world” and the “new”, a ballad of a 19th century immigrant who became a minor bad-man in the south-western parts of North America. He fell foul of the Mescalero Apaches. Let’s just say that those fellows refused to be bound by the Rousseauean mould of the “noble savage”. Who could blame them?’
A truly great track, and a fitting end indeed to a tremendous release.
Whilst in no way denigrating the more expansive accompaniments of the originals, the opportunity presented here to experience the stripped back songs in all of their raw glory is an aural delight. Close your eyes, and it’s as if Steve is there, playing live in your front room.
This collection proves that less can indeed sometimes be more, and with Distant Days, Steve Tilston, one of our most revered songsmiths, has confirmed his reputation as a jewel in the folk and acoustic-world crown.