NICE002 The Dicey Rileys - The Ghost Ship

This rambling blog aims to give a bit of background to Nice Mind Records' second release:

NICE002 The Dicey Rileys - The Ghost Ship

The Dicey Rileys are an acoustic folk trio from Chester-le-Street. Although we would not perform together live until a snowy St Patrick's Day on 2018 in the afternoon at The Bridge in Chester and in the evening at The Butchers Arms, the formation can be traced to be back to when I played at The Bridge pub the previous year.

It's funny how snap decisions you can make have a lasting, positive impact.

I had a week off work March 2017 and was feeling at a customary loose end with nothing particular to do. St Patrick's Day was to land on a Friday that year. I wasn't in the habit of gigging regularly at the time, but on the Tuesday decided to go out and look for somewhere that would put me on for an hour or two. Step forward The Bridge! The most neglected, run down and gloriously shabby boozer you could hope to come across when looking for a gig with 3 days to spare provided you finished by 8 cos the place would shut early due to lack of punters. The pub was undergoing a particularly fallow period (it's painfully closed now) and agreed to put me on when I said I would do it for 20 quid. If the barmaid's manager didn't give the ok to put me on I doubt the Dicey Rileys would have got together at all. Like I say, funny how things turn out on random impulses.

I was asked to put a poster together for it, too and managed to come up with this state of the art affair for their window. 

I have to give a mention to a group of friends from Chester-le-Street who were in the habit of going out for a drink down the street every Friday who became known, to ourselves at least, as the Chester-le-Street Red Brigade.

There's most of them there, look. That's Dave front left. What a cracking bunch! The Bridge was great that summer. Cracking jukebox, a secret beer garden, karaoke and dj... I can remember singing I'm A Rover at the top of my lungs with Dave and Bobby of the Red Brigade in that beer garden on one of several tab breaks. It gives you a second wind belting out those tunes with your mates when you're well oiled.

Dave and me soon started rehearsing some of these good time Irish tunes with his dad, Bob joining in on percussion not long after. It took a little while to do some gigs. I'm not sure why. I think I'd fallen out of the habit of getting them. Dave joined me for a couple. One in the Butchers in November 17 and one in Stockton of February the following year. Good harmonies and feel to the pairing from the off.

As referred to above, the live debuts of The Dicey Rileys were two gigs on St Patrick's Day 2018. The Butchers one was particularly lively and was a cracking start to our live career. Only gig I wore a shirt and tie for. I'm really not sure what I was thinking there. 

We've played plenty of gigs around the area since then. So, just a bit of background on the social nature of the music and how we came to be.

Friends, Chester-le-Street, drinking and rousing tunes. A heady combination!

Recording The Ghost Ship

January 2019, recording an album. I always wanted to record an album. I'd managed a few EPs and tracks before. In the end it only took the one day, aged 42.

Northside Recording Studios, again in Chester-le-Street the perfect place to do it. Great recording gear, engineered and recorded by Angelo Citrone who knows all his equipment like the back of his hand. We had 14 songs to record in all. Most of them we recorded instrumentally live, with 4 recorded live with vocals when I played my guitar which I am more comfortable with.

It was pretty straightforward, really, apart from me failing to get a penny whistle track down without causing Bob to have fits of laughter. I had to run through the jigs a few times and The Gentleman Soldier breakdown. I can't remember Dave or Bob having any problems at all.

Peter Dinsdale attended later in the session to add an acoustic bass part to the title track to fill it out a bit. Me and Dave had to lay the vocal down, so Peter knew where we were with it and it worked champion.

Whilst on with mixing the album, Angelo kindly added a double bass part to You've Been A Friend To Me to fill out the sound a bit nicely and give a touch of rockabilly at the album's close.

Over ten years after the release of NICE001, Nice Mind Records was revived for the soon to be released album. In the following weeks there were meetings with the label's creative director in The Wicket Gate to discuss cover art and tracklisting and the like. Roddy McCorley was set aside for the time being, leaving 13 tracks clocking in at under 40 minutes, thereby falling within the label's idea of what makes a classic album length. Although as of yet the album hasn't been pressed onto vinyl (you never know, one day) The Ghost Ship developed a label habit of splitting the songs into sides A and B. It's just too good a format to let go of, I guess.

Here's an an alternative cover:

The CDs look great, by the way. A beautiful design. I'd credit the creator, but he'll not be bothered about that. You should get one tho, from the label! If you haven't got one already, of course. It's a good album. Don't just take my word for it. Check out this review, here!

There's another review here courtesy of the ever-dependable The Crack Magazine:

I do appreciate Mr Magpie's review and am pleased he spoke highly of the original title track. We did do a fine take on Geordie for a ramshackle bunch of Chester lads. The album works absolutely fine tho. Get some beers in from Tesco next time you're out and give it a go.

"My bark of life was tossing down

The troubled stream of time

Since first I saw your smiling face

And youth was in its prime..."

See you soon

Chris

The Dicey Rileys

NICE001 Chris Riley - Moments Stolen Back

During this time of Lockdown, I'm going to write a few words on each release on the Nice Mind Records label, so here goes:

NICE001 Chris Riley - Moments Stolen Back

This is the second of 2 EPs that I've ever recorded, but the first to have Nice Mind Records put to it. My dear friend Tristan Sturgeon, who I would later form The False Poets with, was a massive help with this. I was only really keeping my hand in with music by singing the odd cover at Ashington Folk Club at this time. He noted on a local music internet forum (possibly the NARC magazine one) that a music student was looking for an acoustic act to record as part of his coursework and he encouraged me to get in touch. So, I ended up getting the few studio sessions at the John Marley Centre, Benwell for free, otherwise it would never have been recorded.

I had about four songs unrecorded. I'm not the most prolific of writers, tending to wait til they come along of their own accord. Passing Through and Thistle I purposefully put the effort into completing to give me enough material to make it worthwhile as the sessions approached, however.

Recording sessions were relaxed with Thomas Moon doing a professional job of it. I think I was lacking confidence at that time, which may be evident in some of the vocals. The lead acoustic fill on Thistle took a few takes and I remember Thomas punching the air when I managed to get to the end of that without stumbling at all.

The title of the EP I took from Thistle which was the last song to be written for it. It's the only song of mine in the DADGAD tuning which might be why I only played it live once, in the Folk Bar of Ashington's 'Tute. It went down well. I wrote some of the lines to it when on a walk round Elsdon. I think it was Mike Jessop who made a quip about being careful not to be caught hanging around up there. A village famous for it's old gibbets!

I did record a version of Wild Mountain Thyme in these sessions, but the CD reproduction company noted that that song was still under copyright, so that was pulled from the EP.

One song which did make the final cut was my first recorded interpretation of a traditional folk song Hares on the Mountain, heavily informed by the Shirley Collins and Davey Graham version. There is grainy footage of my playing it of a Sunday lunchtime at The Archer in Jesmond here.

Tristan designed the cover, some old negatives of Ashington streets that he had lying around and helped me get the CDs pressed. I probably got too many done (hint hint there's still plenty left!). I think it was Tristan who wanted a label dreaming up for the design. Nice Mind Records was decided upon for the label name as Bran from Ashington bar Bubbles used to say "Nice, mind" a lot, be it verbally or on Facebook. It's got kind of a double meaning so, cheers Bran!

Overall, I think it's OK. There was a review or two. The Crack and NARC possibly. Nothing to write home about. I don't think it's as good a release as my first EP Cloudwalking in the Concreteworld when I had more fresh faced focus, but in Sugarbowl Moon and Thistle it has at least 2 good songs on it.

It also saw the launch of Nice Mind Records which wasn't to make its next appearance for another ten years...

Durham Miners Gala

I'm Chris, a Unison rep of 3 years with Middlesbrough Local Government branch.  3 years also happens to be the length of time I've been attending the Durham Miners Gala.

I'm embarrassed to say that, despite being from County Durham, I had never attended a Big Meeting until 2016. I had obviously heard of it, but never knew what it was about or if it was of any relevance to me or not.

If you've never been before it's a tremendous day out and a great celebration of working class culture and solidarity.

July 14th 2018 marked the 134th Miners Gala and it was my first time to have the honour of walking into the Racecourse Field with the banners. I was invited, as a Labour Party member of the City of Durham constituency, to march in with Durham City Labour who this year were marching alongside the Sherburn Villages Collieries. It took two hours to make the half hour walk through the city, but it was a great opportunity to meet people. I held aloft the banner with the Labour Links Officer for Darlington Unison and it was great to be clapped along by people soaking up the sunshine.

The event is very well organised and the day flies over. After working up a hunger and arriving in the field I got some smashing food from the Labour Tea Tent, all handmade by people working together and volunteering their time and energy.

I was waiting on friends arriving, so I had a look around the outskirts of the field at all the different stalls. Former Newcastle United and England centre-half Steve Howey was signing autographs in the Unison tent, lending a hand to Show Racism the Red Card, too.

I lay in the baking sun around noon, listening to the old folk performers on the stage sing local ballads of North Eastern life, often tales of hardship, but always of humanity, too. This year the stage was covered with a roof for the first time and the sound system was improved for the growing crowds, so it was easier to enjoy the music as the banners continued to file into the field.

In years gone by, when people told me of the event, I could only get an inkling of its appeal, but you really have to experience it first hand to pick up on the unspoken sense of what has been passed on for over a hundred years and what everyone attending is a part of; people looking out for one another and taking pride in their labour, who they are and where they come from. .

Some excellent speeches followed. Matt Wrack of the FBU for the second year running, speaking up for our public servants and protectors in the Fire Service, doing a job that could end their lives as suddenly as many a miner lost theirs.

Dennis Skinner, who has spoken at the Gala many times, in his 88th year had the crowd laughing and cheering ahead of the closing speech by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn. In his speech, Corbyn touched on many things, but one point that sticks in my mind is his aim to have the history of trade unionism taught in our schools. Too many times he has met young students who have asked him what is the role of trade unions.

Trade unionism is at the heart of that togetherness and solidarity which makes the Miners Gala such a celebratory occasion.

This year, after the speeches, we were treated to a rousing set by Billy Bragg as the sun continued to beat on the smiling hordes. There was time to buy a book from one of the stalls. I opted for a James Connelly book from the Workers Party of Ireland's stall. They had come over from Dublin and it was great to pass the time with people you wouldn't otherwise meet.

We left the field to make our way through the vibrant, smiling city that danced to the beat of the brass bands echoing around the streets many had trodden together year after year.

If you've been before you'll be looking forward to next July. If you've yet to experience it, add it to your calendar.

To find out more visit www.durhamminersgala.org

Thoughts from a First Time Delegate

Although this is my first National Delegate Conference as a delegate (for Middlesbrough branch) I did attend Glasgow 2015 conference as a new rep visitor awaiting steward's training. 

Being in a trade union is a privilege to hold dear and to encourage in others. Our voices and efforts are more important than ever in a country that has seen the worst wage growth since the 1780s!

I've not been a rep long, but that initial feeling of relief at my first branch meeting in Middlesbrough where reps from the college, the council, criminal justice agencies were all getting together to try and improve the lives of their co-workers was a revelation and has been a source of solace and strength ever since. 

At NDC this feeling is amplified. I write this on Wednesday evening and am encouraged by the buoyant, engaged tone to the conference so far. It has also been incredibly moving hearing the brave accounts of the delegates at the podium turn their stories of hardship and injustice into motions that will seek to improve the working environments of people they may never meet yet, with our collective implementation, will positively impact upon their lives. 

It's great to see democracy in action at conference and I'm proud to represent the 2,200 members when I lift the card, but it is a shared pride. I'm only sorry my work colleagues weren't there to see the debate on Motion 19, Tackling Stress. The speakers were excellent. Back at our workplace we are seven years into a pay freeze whilst picking up the workload of those who have left and not been replaced in the meantime. You're just expected to get on with it. Those delegates did a brilliant job in bringing home to us the untold burden and pain of austerity. A burden and pain that the wider public now seem to be realising was so unnecessary all along. 

What has been the purpose of all the damaging cuts? At what point will we all see the benefits of the Treasury living within its means? When the deficit is reduced? Will it be then that we will be allowed the space to fulfil our individual and collective potential and share in the common fruits of our labour as we ought?
Of course it won't and as Unison members I'm sure we could see that austerity was a con trick all along. 

It's been a great conference at Brighton this year. There is a definite sense and a feeling in the air that the tide is turning and it's not by chance alone. It's by all our efforts. I'm very much looking forward to hearing Jeremy Corbyn, a Unison member like us, speaking on Friday. We backed him two summers ago when he was a rank outsider on the Labour leader ticket and he has our backs now.
I will take all the positive messages I've heard from conference and its fringe meetings back to Middlesbrough and Durham and wish you all a safe journey home.

Manchester says No to Austerity

It was my pleasure to accompany my dad on his first trip to Manchester yesterday. Doubly so when it was also for his first political march, that of saying No to the con-trick of austerity as the Conservatives bunkered down in their nearby conference hall.

Our Unison coach left Newcastle at 7am but we missed the five to six service bus due to some bus-stop confusion. A young taxi driver was on the scene to save the day to get us to the coach on time. He asked us where we were headed and admitted to having voted Conservative in May althouguh already he's regretting it. It's ok for his mam, he said, with her mortgage almost paid off, but he's working long hours and seeing little reward for his labour. He knocked a few quid, unasked for, from the fare as he said we were taking a stand for the rest of the country.

On the coach a friend texted good luck and he told me 120,000 people were descending on Manchester and that some elements of the media were doing their best to depict us as thugs. I looked up at the lady sat in front of me with her intricately knitted cardigan as she softly commented upon how lovely the wild flowers in the grass verge we passed were and wondered to myself where the thugs were in this situation.

Really, the day for us was quite uneventful in Manchester. The Sun fully burst through as we arrived onto Oxford Road and we waited patiently at least two hours before marching through the city.

Where we were, near the rear of the multitude, the general feeling was peaceful, happy, lots of smiling, energised faces of all ages, accents and attire. Corbyn's election success has given such a boost and validates the hopes and ideas of so many people ignored by the few deluding operators holding their dim and deceiving conference. That boost doesn't necessarily have to be to Labour Party people either. I was talking to a Green Party member, an economics tutor, who spoke of the encouragement he's taking from having an anti-austerity leader in the main opposition party now.

We had four hours in the city to do what was a half hour march but there were so many people there was the danger of not getting back to our departing coach in time.

As I said to the taxi driver in the morning, one of the main reasons for making the trip way out west was to give us some heartening cheer, a fillip in these hard times. I don't doubt that the Tories see such days of masses of people enjoying a day of solidarity in the sunshine, of merely wanting the right to live a life of hope and promise rather than fear and dismay as something they'd want to put a stop to. Despite their best, most concerted efforts, days such as this show there could well be too much optimism and positivity for them to handle.

I am from...

I am from the undulous land where Romans reined their horses alongside those who'd settled here before along the burn, where the river ran its source of life along the vale, now sequestered under concrete and the clogged arteries of their consumptive combustion engines.

I am from the yearning of the Sunday afternoon hogweed who stretches toward the Sun beneath the scything motorway where Apollo was once placated by those whose empire was built in blood.

I am from the sanctuary of saints seeking refuge from the plunderers of the foreboding sea, resting inland, counting out the centuries in ermine on rosaries of Grace until the hunger of conquerors bade them move once more.

I am from a stinky half-on of a town, stubbed out by the vagaries of a capital that drains its provinces like a stabbed sack of wine as they catch the flowing crims

on with their gaping maws.

I am from the heart on the spine of the nation running from capital to capital, the North Road of England, peopled by ghosts in the still of the dawning light, condemned to shimmering pilgrimage on the timeless highway.

I am from a collection of charity shops and bookies thrown together like broken clothes pegs in the bottom of a bag.

I am from the perma-grey dampness that clings to all it purveys, bonding all hunched together outside in the Wet through their common inclement heritage.

Tuesday 21st October 2014

Willy Nillie creative writing session

A False Poet writes on those that are True

I wrote the following short piece a while ago for a fanzine that's yet to happen (yet to happen, mind you) for the group I'm in, The False Poets. Kind of rambles on a bit til Coleridge takes over for some reason...

A few years ago, when I was 22 I think it was, I got heavily into the Incredible String Band. I’d known of them from my dad’s record collection growing up yet, due to their outlandishness they weren’t often given an airing and on those rare occasions I caught the odd song or two it was difficult to get a handle on it, so I kind of dismissed them as whacked out hippy nutjobs. Yet happily something finally clicked and those first five or so albums of theirs were pretty much all I listened to for a month or two. I can’t recall another band having such an impact upon my outlook on life. The musicianship was great, the arrangements fresh and inventive, the melodies interesting, there was a joy in the playing and, perhaps mostly lyrically, an intellectual vision that was positive and life-affirming. It was like a couple of colourfully dressed farmhands were up in my headspace, scything at the long-grass saying “Let’s get a little more light in here!”

                                                            

What struck me was that initially to my ears they seemed to be singing nonsensical psycho-babble, yet it didn’t take long to become apparent that the florid word-play was genuinely poetical. I like to check out the influences of those people I am a fan of and so it was I picked up a copy of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess from a second-hand bookshop in Sunderland (now gone) for a couple of quid. I knew that the String Band were borrowing heavily from this challenging book for their earlier albums. I read the book once through and found it hard to figure out what it was all about with its arguments of alphabets based upon trees, shape-shifting witches and the peculiar dietary habits of Pythagoras. I’ll certainly go back to it with my older head on but, basically, Graves states there is a Muse whom true poets know and honour in their songs, a White Goddess who, in the words of Apuleius is “the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are.” True poetry is a votive offering at the same time as gaining grace from the mother of all true inspiration. I wondered on the total drop in quality of the String Band’s records once they became followers of Scientology and how the magic of the early work all but vanished. Maybe the Muse no longer shone favour their way?

Towards the end of The White Goddess Graves cites four english poets who he identifies as True Poets, divinely inspired and in communion with the Muse - John Skelton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and John Clare.

So, a few words in honour of the non-John punk poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I say punk as at the end of the 18th century Coleridge, along with friend and co-conspirator William Wordsworth published the book Lyrical Ballads. Together they rejected poetry as a highly stylised imitation of life. Poetry was weighed down with the heavy university traditions of studies of ancient greek and latin. Initially published anonymously, Lyrical Ballads was revolutionary in that the lives of common men were legitimate subject matter and sources of inspiration. Both poets wanted to kick out the jams and bring force of feeling from within into poetry and they succeeded.

Coleridge was the more wayward of the two. Regularly using opium since his teens, engaging in public demonstrations of the use of nitrous oxide, student of science (not least to provide him with a wider stock of metaphors), reported to have been an impressive preacher, prone to outrageous flights of fancy. Check out Kubla Khan said to have been there in his head pretty much self-composed after an opium induced dream. His conversational, blank verse poems such as Frost at Midnight, and The Aeolian Harp can be seen as the seeds of beat poetry. He’s just riffing on his own thoughts and frames them in crystal clear images. He would’ve loved a turntable, a few choice Coltrane lps and the chance to kick-back in a cottage somewhere. The guy was pretty hip!

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge gives us a clear description of The White Goddess herself:

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was as white as leprosy,

The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

That poem wasn’t particularly well received at the time, but time has proven a wiser judge. One of the great poems of the english language. Along with Christabel it pre-figures the weird fiction of the 1920s and 30s. Lovecraft was a big admirer of Coleridge who was an influence upon his work over a century later. Vancouver’s garage band The Painted Ship took their name from this great poem whilst Peter Green took his mescaline driven meditation upon the poem’s central image to the top of the UK charts in 1969. It’s said that during a stormy night in a Geneva hotel Mary Shelley ran screaming from the room as Lord Byron read Christabel to the gathered friends. Sounds better than Wes Craven. People should read poetry to each other more. Personally, the greatest feeling of terror I’ve ever received from any work of art, be it film, music, painting was a reading of The Three Graves. Seriously spooky!

The muse kind of departed from Coleridge in his late-twenties. Opium took a stronger hold, disillusion in the aftermath of the french revolution, unrequited love and heartache, but there were glimmers in his later years. Those early works of his tho - True Poetry - when he finds his groove he cooks like no other. Salutations to the wide-eyed star child of wonder and his power of imagination!