This fall has been beautiful. Painfully so. Often in contrast to the things going on in my life and the world. The dry weather made for a dramatic leaf change along the east coast. And I spent a lot of time of the road between Boston and DC this fall. A lot of time looking at trees and the clear brilliant sky and reflecting.

Possibly if you have sung in a choir you have at some point encountered Ralph Vaughan Williams setting of William Barnes’s poem Linden Lea.

If you haven’t, here is a link. https://youtu.be/TDy3QKu6aPs?si=rbym6LNyoe64_Pq1 arranged by Arthur Somervelle? It’s a lovely setting. I like singing it with my choir peeps.

It’s high. This is the key I heard it in my head. It makes the arrangement for the tenor guitar work with some fuller open chords. I feel that women often constrain their voices in popular music and force them lower to sound closer to men. F.that. Interestingly, choral music is often all about the Soprano, and showing that strength off, using the full range of human voices in an arrangement. Sometimes it is a bit overdone and ostentatious. I am exploring all aspect of my voice and using them. No apologies. Even if it’s a bit of shock sometimes.

Anyway this tune came to me in the shower one evening, and attached itself to some of the words from Barnes poem which I half remembered. So I went downstairs and made some notes, and I have been enamored with ever sense.

This isn’t the final version, but one where I flesh out lots of ideas on a multitrack. There is a simple version on my Instagram that is just one vocal and a tenor guitar.

If you listen closely (to the one at the top) you will hear some of Mr.Iver’s birds in WI which I stole from the live stream of the woods, presumably his, that they had going after the release of his latest. The internet is a strange place isn’t it? https://www.youtube.com/live/1sz2tr-yNYk?si=PTKIfm5NbADN5EPD

I will continue to work on this. I need to fix some things, clean up some stuff, tune some instruments (maybe), practice a bit more, make some decisions about how to use these elements and whether to take away or add different ones.

It has brought me a lot of joy on a week that has been absolutely one of my darkest.