Danny Pedler and Greg Russell – Field and Dyke
Self Released – 10 May 2019
Field and Dyke is drawn from an oral history project Danny Pedler conducted in the South Holland region of Lincolnshire – a county with a rich history stretching back to the merging of the minor Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey with the Danelaw borough Stamford. A low-lying land kept free from inundation by drainage, the South Holland region and its people can be summed up by two facts: it has the lowest unemployment rate in the region coupled with a per capita hours worked score only bettered nationally by Eden in Cumbria. The album can be characterised not solely as a celebration but also as a recognition of this hard-working, hard-living region and its people. It is, in every sense, a vital and essential piece of work.
Using interviews with locals as the basis for the songs, the album’s approach and structure remind me of Public Service Broadcasting’s seminal In Every Valley (2017). This charted the impact of modern industrial decline by examining the trajectory of the mining industry in the Welsh valleys from its heyday in the mid-twentieth century through a deliberately orchestrated destruction that led to communities being neglected and then abandoned in the name of cynical, malignant and calculated commercial and political agendas. In Every Valley was, by some distance, my album of 2017. 2019 is reaching the halfway point and there are some mouth-watering releases by big names on the horizon, but after living with this album for a while, it’s hard to think of anything quite packing Field and Dyke’s emotional punch this year.
As a predominantly agricultural area, South Holland has always been defined by migrants arriving to work. The opener Down and Deeper addresses this centuries-old narrative, weaving the introductory interview segments with the elliptical rhythm of a dough prover’s motor in order to address the question: where is the point in history where we can firmly say ‘this is who we are and this is where we come from?’ It is salutary to consider in this age defined by ever-more entrenched positions behind national borders and national narratives that we are all ultimately from somewhere else, and that the narratives of origin and belonging we often cling to as certainties in an uncertain world are illusory and were often expediently constructed and reconstructed to suit political imperatives.
If not a rejoinder, Poverty Knock Retold responds to the original Poverty Knock to indicate that although time has passed since the original was first sung, we have not travelled any particular distance. The original was set to rhythms and sounds of the steam looms of early industry. Pedler and Russell’s twenty-first-century rejoinder uses the sound of an engine built by the Lincolnshire firm of Ruston & Hornsby to observe that although workers have secured fairer working hours, improved health and safety standards and what appears to be a better hourly wage many of our jobs are monotonous, soulless and disenfranchising. Quietly, in its own way, like many of the songs on this album, the fine unheralded details underpinning the song’s construction, arrangement and construction offer as powerful a panegyric as the lyrics themselves.
Similarly, S.K.Y. uses the Lister engine that provided electricity in the Fens to provide a rhythm, but having established the contexts of land and work in the previous two songs, its vox pops and lyric looks beyond the everyday realities to the horizons of land and sky. There is a sorrow for the things that have passed, but also a clear recognition of common universalities between the past and present in its lyrics ‘I see the difference in all / And that we all belong.’
The changes between past to present are beautifully realised in Pigeon End. This uses the narrative mechanism of a man joining the Navy later returning to see a familiar place through the refracting lens of time and distance. The changes in the tightly-knit community based around The Pigeon pub are then reflected in the changes in his family life: ‘Kiss your daddy goodnight darling / Lipstain smudge on the photo frame.’
Pedler’s approach redresses the fact that the collectors of the Folk Revival largely avoided the area. In doing so, the songs directly address the fact that folk songs have always been rooted in social realities; the implicit subtext being that it’s very easy to slip into seeing them as historical documents of personal and local history while simultaneously failing to recognize that what we enjoy as an art form was primarily a way for people to get through their days and their lives. Yes, they were sometimes a means of directly celebrating and commemorating triumphs and joys or tragedies or disasters. But often what was handed down was invented simply to keep rhythm while weighing anchor, or to keep the scythes roaring in time during the harvest, or to break up the monotony of early industry.
‘The Boggart and The Farmer’ can be seen as an attempt to redress this failure of the early collectors to visit the region. South Holland has a rich folk mythology, and in simply writing the song, Pedler has asked the question as to why this was the case. Was it the inaccessibility of the region? The locals’ lack of cooperation? Or was it, as Pedler observes in the sleeve notes, simply because the hard landscapes of the Fens did not fit the early collecting vision of a bucolic, rural Merrie Old England waiting to be (re)discovered? It’s a powerful tune that draws on a local folk story for its narrative and (to these ears) the broadside tradition.
Two instrumentals, Knock on Wood and Delta 3000 LD SB XY Plastic Presser are sequenced into the album. The first is described as a love story without words and is elegiac in its thematic development. The second, based around a machine that sprays tomato sauce onto unbaked pizza bases, is a measurement of the distance travelled. We are some considerable time on from the machinery of the early industrial revolution, it notes, but the working lives of many of us are still set to the repetitive rhythms of industry. Meanwhile, the title track Field and Dyke reminds us that gang labour is still a fact in the region and draws attention to the long hours and hard lives of those who survive by doing it.
As an oral history project set to music and drawing on the rhythms and realities of the region, it investigates and chronicles, Field and Dyke is not necessarily an easy listen, but it is a superbly rewarding one. Once heard and absorbed, it’s difficult to forget the melodies, harmonies and rhythms used on this album or not to be moved by it. Supported by Arts Council England, Transported, and Freshlinc LTD, this is an excellent and highly recommended album.
Field and Dyke is out now. Order it here http://www.gregrussellfolk.co.uk/field_dyke.php