Reg Meuross, Harbottle & Jonas – Songs Of Love & Death
Hatsongs – 29 October 2021
As anyone even vaguely familiar with traditional folk music will know, the vast percentage of songs have to do with love and death in one form or another, the two often inextricably linked. After various lockdown collaborations, this has led to “Songs of Love & Death”, a pairing of fellow West Country artists Reg Meuross, guitarist David Harbottle, and keyboards player Freya Jonas. Harbottle & Jonas provides harmonies for a collection of some of the best-known in the genre.
Set to fingerpicked guitar and cittern drone backdrop, proceedings open with a suitably dirge-like arrangement of the much-covered Irish traditional She Moved Through The Fair, the narrative arc going from his lover promising the singer that, given her parents’ approval, they’ll soon be wed and ending with her visiting at night as a ghost, promising the same but in a somewhat more chilling context.
Another staple is that of maidens encountering some chap while going about their daily business, he having his way and promising they’ll wed only to prove faithless. It’s represented here by another from Ireland, the ripplingly fingerpicked, wistfully melancholic As I Roved Out featuring Freya’s harmonium. One of several variants, here the man, a soldier, comes across his erstwhile lover who admonishes him for marrying another with more wealth. He admits that he regrets his action and ends wishing the wars would end so he could return home to his real true love.
From soldiers to sailors, Lord Franklin, which sparked the whole project, dates from around 1850, a broadside ballad in which a sailor is lying in his hammock dreams of the disappearance of Sir John Franklin in 1845 during his expedition to seek out a Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. In the course of the lyrics, the narrator somehow mutates to become Franklin’s wife, who financed voyages to find her husband. Featuring Reg on harmonica and Freya’s harmonium and concertina, it’s set to the traditional Irish tune Cailín Óg a Stór, but I suspect Stan Rogers’ Northwest Passage might also have an influence.
The first of four numbers stretching past the five-minute mark, sporting some lovely Appalachian dulcimer from Reg and Freya on concertina, Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy, sung by a sailor leaving his lover to go to sea, is one of the great traditional parting songs and Reg and Freya perfectly capture the ache of leaving her behind, returning home once the wars are over but, he inevitably drinks away all the money and sets off again.
Perhaps best known via Bob Dylan, coloured by harmonica, a lively reading of Oxford Girl (the tune of which recalls Last Thing On My Mind) provides one of the obligatory murder ballads, followed by the second, wheezing harmonium drone introducing the dulcimer-accompanied Anglo-Scottish Lord Randall, Freya’s backing vocals echoing Reg’s, a tale of poisoning framed as a dialogue between the dying young man, done for by his lover, and his mother, asking how he wants to divide his possessions.
There’s more death and capricious maidens with Barbary Allen, the simple fingerpicked version here, David on cittern with Freya on harmonium and harmonising on the chorus, is set in the West Country having Jimmy Grove rather than William Green as the young man spurned on his deathbed by the titular object of his desires, she subsequently repenting her hard heart, dying, their bodies buried adjacent, and the rose and the briar that subsequently bloom entangling with one another.
John Rawlinson puts in an appearance on autoharp for the circling notes and soaringly sung near seven-minute Scottish traditional Anachie Gordon, a definite highlight of the album, chronicling how, though in love with Anachie, Jeanie is forced by her father to marry a better catch, Lord Salton, but refuses to share the same bed, collapses and dies, her true love returning from sea to learn the news and, kissing her cold lips, he follows suit.
With its darkly circling notes, The Trees They Do Grow High provides a penultimate bittersweet tale of both love and death, a young woman recounting her arranged marriage by her father to a much younger boy to secure her fortune, the lad wed at 16, a father at 17 and killed in battle at 18, his bride now watching over their child as he’s growing.
It ends in wistful, gently lilting, waltzing mood, arranged for cittern, harmonium and piano, Reg beautifully counterpointed by Freya, with I Wish The Wars Were All Over, which has, as in many a similar song, the woman lamenting that her lover is away fighting and wishing for him to return safely home to they can wed. It was written to the backdrop of the 18th century Seven Years War between Britain and France, but the sentiment is timeless.
The choice of material may not offer any surprises, and I would have liked to hear Freya take the lead on at least one of the numbers. Still, there’s no questioning the freshness and resonance of the interpretations or the sheer class the trio brings. It is a reminder that, while traditional folk music may well be centuries old, it is still alive and well.
Pre-Order the album via Bandcamp: https://regmeuross.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-love-death