Americana - showcase of the Americana set on our new album

The tracks that got a bit forgotten in the previous showcase in all their ragged glory.

Also, Twenty Years is The Civil Wars not the Dixie Chicks as suggested there!

The New Album in 360 seconds

The New Album in 360 seconds  Each track has a dedicated film, lyrics, full track notes, info etc etc.

• This is an album we've made to celebrate our Sapphire Wedding. The concert of British folk and Americana we'd invite you all to if we were 45 years younger! If you have any questions or comments about the music, you can submit them as you listen and we'll get back to you at the end. Or please feel free just to listen, let the music do the talking and enjoy. 
  FEEL FREE TO LISTEN TO ANY OR ALL OF THE ALBUM AND WATCH THE FILMS BEFORE DECEMBER 1ST but we do hope you will also join our get together for the Listening Party on the day itself. All welcome. The more the merrier!

   

• Streaming + Download 

  Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
  Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz. 

    £7 GBP  or more

   

	1.	The Peacock's Tale 03:00 video
	2.	Rosemary Lane 03:20 video
	3.	Crazy Man Michael 03:39 video
	4.	In The Bleak Midwinter 03:22 video
	5.	The Rise of an April Leaf 03:04 video
	6.	Lady Guinevere 03:01 video
	7.	Bring Me To Fring All Saints 04:02video
	8.	Listen Listen 02:43 video
	9.	Blackwaterside 03:02 video
	10.	Tired With All These 02:03 video
	11.	Gwenhwyfar 05:40 video
	12.	Summer Wine 04:37 video
	13.	The Swimming Song 01:58 video
	14.	Walk on the Wild Side 04:52 video
	15.	Diamonds and Rust 04:14 video
	16.	Twenty Years 01:58 video
	17.	Transatlantic Arti 04:29 video

Lady Guinevere

A new recording of this for the new album https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/peacocks-tales-the-sapphire-wedding-album

Belle ami, si est de nous, ne vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous.

Let them play at boyish games round
A table. Though walled up, bound,
In an unpublished garden, stone
Tower with window, all alone,
This court still revolves around me.
I twist them all round my pretty
Little finger, a studded ring:
The champion knight, the poor king,
Modred, Gawain, my Lancelot.
It’s the only power I know.

Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.

He comes through enchanted forests,
Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;
From slaying giants, big bad knights:
Barons with feudal appetites;
Impossible quests for Our Lady,
Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;
Obsessed so with courtly sin and
Confession – Indulgence’s twin;
Greets Artos, old friend – clash of mail
(So grieved his crown still lacks a graal,
So tedious!) He comes to me

Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.

© Gareth Calway 1991

credits

This Guinevere lyric is written in imitation of the French romance verse form (octosyllabic couplets giving a lighter, faster feel than the English iambic pentameter) and evokes the medieval Guinevere of the troubadours of Provence rather than the Gwenhwyfar of Celtic myths and of Dark Age history. We wanted this Guinevere to sound contemporary and confident, chipping against the beat of the courtly love tradition in which she was a love object rather than a love subject.

Peacock's Tales album trailer

This is an album we've made to celebrate our Sapphire Wedding. The concert of British folk and Americana we'd invite you all to if we were 45 years younger! If you have any questions or comments about the music, you can submit them as you listen and we'll get back to you at the end. Or please feel free just to listen, let the music do the talking and enjoy. 
FEEL FREE TO LISTEN TO ANY OR ALL OF THE ALBUM AND WATCH THE FILMS BEFORE DECEMBER 1ST but we do hope you will also join our get together for the Listening Party on the day itself. All welcome. The more the merrier!

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/merch/peacocks-tales-the-sapphire-wedding-album-listening-party

Gwenhwyfar

All our own work, though in different centuries. I wrote the words in the 1980s; Maz put them to music in the 2020s. This is the grand finale of the British folk front side of the new Sapphire Wedding album ("Peacocks Tales, launch and listening party on Bandcamp Sunday Dec 1 5 pm) and, particularly after the instrumental section recapitulates the various strands we've pursued in unison and harmony: folk song, poetry, British storytelling and the combination of all three. It's a worthy subject for this, the long glories of the Arthurian legend narrated in the style of ancient Welsh alliterative verse as they come to their tragic end, imbued with ancient mysticism and Celtic myths of the cycle of the seasons, and from the point of view of Gwenhwyfar, joined by Bedwyr, the dwindling Round Table and the centuries of elegising bards after the bridge.) A very different Gwenhwyfar from the cocky Norman minx of track 6. Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Cross on invincible shield, blood-red, Dragon on young-summer green, red, The terrible clatter of returning hooves. I never quite believed. Always feared him Dead. But he always came. Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved: Swift white charger swooping like a spear On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women, Scourging the rat run barbarian inroads, Animal tracks of attacking Saxon, His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast. (Then Llugh fought battles within himself, Cei fought his own rule, Bedwyr fought Llugh, And some sought long for the holy caldron, Sought it like a spoil of war, And, gentle as light, my Beloved loved me.) And Medraut gnawed through the golden years Myrddin called a threshold to the dark, And its beacon. Medraut, eyes on me Like a dog’s on the moon, snapping his moment. To Camlann the coastland, carried me off. Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn. Bridge And little the faith I had yet in Arthur, The Angel campaigner, strong as light, His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard, Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. At last I understood. The flincher from spears, Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow, Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned: Avalon. And I’ll run no more. I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession. Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens Will flock on the gore. Let others keep A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight Until the dawn. My confession’s done. Still my heart waits for hoofbeats. (Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…) © Gareth Calway 1991 credits from PEACOCK'S TALES (The Sapphire Wedding Album) Maz: lead vocal, acoustic guitar Gaz: bass, percussion, harmonium, howls, vocals and voice in Part 2, common flute The film combines a seasonal cycle - Medraut the winter king to Arthur's May king and with Gwenhwyfar's autumnal mood as Logres falls into the dark - with a lake supplying the hints of Celtic water divinity and our splendidly spacious heathland-situated alma mater (UEA) standing in for Logres, Camelot and civilisation.

Sonnet 66 Revisited

New recording and new film this ShakespaRap for our new (Sapphire Wedding) album, launch and listening party on Bandcamp 5 pm Sunday Dec 1st.

ShakespaRap (Sonnet 66)

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry,

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Originally I rapped this straight to camera. For this version, we've worked the audio up into the full drum and bass extravaganza and dubbed that onto the original. 

Rise of an April Leaf

https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/the-rise-of-an-april-leaf

The rise of the title implies the fall and in this poem the leaf at its unfurling nervously considers its mortality and all the things that can go wrong. The second voice representing all the things urging it on - sun, spring etc - riffs on the old moral 'he who saves himself loses himself'. We've recorded this poem as spoken word before under the title 'Bringing in the May' but this musical version will represent the vegetation stage in our emerging "A Love That Involves Evolution" sequence, which begins here -  peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/track/invocation-a-love-that-involves-evolution

lyrics

Puckered,
Helpless,
Grizzly,
Clenched
Ugly as a newborn face;
Scared to let myself go:
And where can I go
Except towards death?
And what if I grow
In the wrong directions,
Abnormal or twisted,
And how do you do it anyway?
Thoughts crumpled,
Feelings crushed.
Perhaps I’m not even a leaf?
Just scared to stand out
From the crowded branches?
So what am I? – yellow?
Or just painfully shy
Soft virgin green
Closed against the urging sun?
Do I have to do anything?
Will I just become – me?
Or do I have to force myself out?
Safer to sit tight;
But then I get scared
The rest of the branch
Which had seemed
So wooden
Is unfolding faster;
Best to let go then;
But what if my flower
Hardly out of bud
Gets pollinated?

The May blossom light
Of the still warm evening;
The birdsong high
Above distant traffic:
The Sun become mild
And expansive, beaming:
The breathless wind:
All give their answer:
He who saves his dances

Will never be a dancer.

© Gareth Calway and first published in 'Encounter' Magazine in April 1987.

credits

released October 29, 2024
Maz - voice, acoustic guitar
Gaz - voice, bass guitar, drums

license