Marisa, Jack & Davy – Bring Us In
Out Now
Sometimes I need something different to listen to in the car other than the radio. When I remember, I’ll take a CD or two with me, particularly if I am driving any distance, and my latest listen allows me the opportunity to learn the words of a few well-known but quirky songs.
The CD in question is the new EP by Marisa, Jack and Davy, Bring Us In. Marisa, Jack and Davy are a Bedford-based trio that formed in 2015. Following an encouraging floor spot at a Stick in The Wheel folk night, they decided that they would explore British folk music further and this is the result. It is a good cross-section given the short form of the EP and explores many of the different subjects of folk and traditional song.
Bring Us In is always going to be a good opener, just as a good beer will set you up. The title of the song is invariably shown without the next words of the line: “Good Ale”, apparently so as not to confuse it with the Good Ale of The Copper Family et al. What is there to be confused about? I don’t know – unless, perhaps you have had a surfeit of the good ale. The song’s origin is said to go back to about 1460 though I am sure accuracy and age are secondary when you listen to the quality of the voices, particularly the harmony, and the clarity of the production – all-important if you are learning the words from the CD as you are driving. Who said that the oral tradition. Is dead?
The next track, Bushes and Briars (Roud 1027), may cause older readers to recall Julie Christie mouthing the words whilst Isla Cameron’s voice was dubbed on the 1967 film version of Far From the Madding Crowd. The version on this EP has a lovely setting that is vaguely bucolic and quite reminiscent of the gentler side of late sixties folk-rock. If Bushes and Briars was quite a usual song of love, then Nottamun Town is real quirk. Everything is not as it should be in this nonsense rhyme (or is it a spell?) though it is sung in direct contrast to the non-sense: straight, almost hallowed voices convincing the listener that all is normal.
An aptitude for the nonsensical may be part of the national psyche, but nothing evokes the spirit of England as much as a reference to its native trees and in this case to Rudyard Kipling’s Oak & Ash & Thorn. I wonder how many of us would know this poem if it had remained on the page of a book and had not been blessed with Peter Bellamy’s tune. Marisa, Jack and Davy pay good heed to this and their harmonies really do come to the fore.
Despite the strong sense of Englishness on this EP, The Sun Rises Bright in France comes from Scotland. This sad song of exile, set in the period of the Jacobites, is lovingly gentle, a lament for the estranged lovers who may only meet again in Heaven.
And so we come to the end and return south with the Bows of London (Roud 8), a song that has so many versions – The Two Sisters, The Wind and the Rain, The Berkshire Tragedy et al – that I am sure that books could be written about it, if they do not already exist. Interestingly this song may be Scandinavian in origin though let me not distract you from this British version, with similar words to Martin Carthy’s, and driven at such a pace that you would need a sit down at the end.
A great selection from Marisa, Jack and Davy. The difficult thing about an EP is that it is a snapshot, a vignette of what the performer has to offer. Here – and, as my spellcheck wants to say, hear – the clarity, the harmony and the arrangements offer a good picture, full of style and, yes, quirky but good quirky. Now we can hopefully look forward to the full long-player. Give them a listen – and learn the words.
https://marisajackanddavy.com/