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So familiar as one half of Show of Hands, it may come as a surprise to learn that it’s been 17 years since Steve Knightley last released a solo album. However, with the duo now on an extended hiatus, rather than take a well-earned rest, he’s put together a new band, Dream In Colours, and, produced by drummer/bassist Mark Tucker, released his new album ‘The Winter Yards‘.
While distinctly himself, The Winter Yards nevertheless marks something of a departure for Steve Knightley in that the focus is sonically more urban and transatlantic than rural while embracing such influences as Springsteen, Waits and even Peter Gabriel, on which he’s joined by dobro/harmonica player Phillip Henry from Edgelarks, keyboardist Matt Clifford, Cornish sisters True Foxes, Madrid-based four-piece Track Dogs adding trumpet, cajon and ukulele, percussionist Johnny Kalsi and, of course, regular partner-in-crime Phil Beer.
Kalsi’s tablas make an early appearance on album opener, the slow walking paced Transactions which gives the middle-finger to those who see immigrants as a blight (“We work in your factories, your kitchens, and fields/We work on the wards and the farms/For all of the lives that it cost to get here/Do you really think we mean you harm?/You should embrace us, you should be glad/Maybe we’re here just in time/We could be the children that you never had”) while also addressing the challenges facing the younger generation navigating their personal and sexual identities (“Where is the person I knew?/One door led to darkness, the other to light/Where am I now that I’m through?/With all of your knowledge and all of your skill/With all of the science you learned/I was just troubled, I wasn’t ill/And my life wasn’t yours to affirm”) and the Post Office scandal (“You trusted us with your parcels and gifts/We were always the heart of this town/Long hours of labouring, working in shifts/But the ghost in the code brought us down/With all of your power and all of your skill/With the might of the law to deploy/We were rebranded as felons until/There was nobody left/To destroy”). The refrain reminds us that “Facts don’t have feelings, but families do/Behind the headlines are lives/Fathers and mothers/Sisters and brothers/Husbands, partners and wives”.
The bracketed title track, The Ride (The Winter Yards), is, with acoustic guitars, synths and Henry’s harmonica, a wistful West Country Springsteen-like lament for the traditional travelling fairgrounds and showmen (“For a hundred years, my family’s worked these grounds/The county shows, the village greens, and the market towns/But now it’s over”), framed as a father and son narrative as, the season done, things shut down for the winter (“He said, ‘I’m really sorry, son/I can pay you for the work you’ve done/But I can’t keep you hanging on/’Til the summer rolls around’”), and perhaps forever although the younger man clings to hope (“And as we packed the gear away/I promised him I’d be back one day/For one last ride I’d gladly pay/To work these loads again/For I don’t believe my way of life has passed… Then I’ll drag my weary father to his feet/I’ll say, ‘Look, the summer’s here and there are people in the street/Oh, this locked-down winter yard is no place to hide’”). Written during lockdown, it’s not a stretch to also read into it a commentary on the loss of shared experience brought on by the closure of live music and other entertainment venues and a reminder that “there’s one thing every showman knows/People still need a place to go/For a film, a fair, a dance, a dance, a show/Where they can shout and sing”.
Phil Beer makes his first appearance on Spanish guitar alongside Track Dogs, providing Spanish backing vocals refrain, and Steve Knightley on cuatro for the lilting Latin sway of the lost love song Maria (Recuerdos), set in the Canaries and another about the joys of summer giving way to the harsh cold of winter. Henry on dobro, the husky-voiced If You Come Back has a lazy acoustic ragtime blues shuffle feel as the bereft narrator (“without you here, I’m lost at sea”) promises (not entirely convincingly) his woman he’ll be a better man if she’ll give him another chance (“If you come home, gonna treat you right/And love you, honey, day and night/Quit the booze, work hard every day/Sing a new song, be a stand-up guy/I’ll win your trust this time, I’ll try/To change my tune if you come back today… I’ll fix the roof and the broken door/I won’t hang out with the boys no more/Find the good Lord and get on my knees and pray”). The True Foxes on atmospheric distant backing it’s a broken relationship theme (“God knows I tried (to hold us together)/But when love has died (it dies forever)”) picked up on the melancholic I Tried which, born from staring out of a Bath hotel window onto the rain-soaked street, is another taken at a slow blues pace with Tucker supplying a synth and bass wash as in weary loner tones he sings “I tell myself I’m better off alone/Then I spend the long night staring at the phone…I could head back to where I’m from/What if I’m not here and she comes home?”, urging “Don’t say I’m a broken man/Without a map, without a plan/I’m just waiting for my stars to realign/You can say I just get down from time to time”.
Recorded live and sung unaccompanied with the Dartmoor folk choir The Lost Sound on backing and set to the tune of The Parting Glass, Requiem was originally written for and appeared on Centenary, the duo’s 2015 Great War album, and is as emotive now as it was then, likewise, and still sadly relevant, the yearning for home/refugee-themed Exile is another from the Show of Hands repertoire, having appeared on their debut and assorted live albums and retains its stripped-down treatment in solo form, augmenting the piano with dobro.
Returning to new material, I’ll Never Forgive You is, with just Knightley and Tucker on percussion, a choppy John Martynesque blues that puts a spin on betrayal in being inspired by a friend who turned on those who supported her following a break-up when they got back together (“You were my pillar of strength, my safety net/So I told you things I now regret/When all you gave was love and care/I’ll never forgive you for being there”).
Wickham plays a part in two of the songs, the first being a co-write with Ross Wilson of Blue Rose Code, who he met at the Wickham Festival, resulting in Remember This Kiss, on which the pair trade verses while Knightley brings mandocello to the mix and Tucker lays down the piano anchor, the track a straightforward parting love song with decided Caledonian colours (“We wear our history like a glove/That’s been woven from the heather/Like the eagle and the dove… So go walk by moonlight, dance beneath the stars/Find your beauty in your bruises and your scars/I’m the light in the darkness, the laughter in the tears/And if you return, you know I’ll be here”) and, I suspect, a dash of Robert Burns.
Written for a traditional English wedding scene in an as yet unreleased film and the second featuring Beer (on vocals and fiddle), The Mermaid(The Wedding Song) is, with Henry on dobro, a goodtime thumping rhythm drinking song (“Drink to the bride, drink to the groom/Drink to the sun that rises soon”) that draws on the film’s maritime themes for its own playful lyrics (“A mermaid is a salty dish/Half a girl and half a fish/He’s not sure which one to kiss/And wonders how he caught her”).
Another with a link to Centenary in that it developed from a mandocello riff he was playing around with at the time, the melodically orchestral circling Red Handed, featuring Bennet Cerven from Dream In Colours on violin sweeps, draws on the good cop/bad cop language of police interrogation (“Give yourself up to me, there’s no escape/This house is surrounded by the scene of crime tape/We can sit here for hours in this hot, airless room/Your tears and confessions just can’t come too soon/We know the game’s over/I have you/Give yourself up/To me”) as it leans into the obsessive side of love and a cheating backdrop (“I’ve unlocked your phone/The fingerprints taken are matching your own/The trace of some stranger lies under your nails… You’re trapped in my web, you’ve been caught in the act/But I’ll still set you free if you’ll only come back/To me”). It’s a nice reminder of Knightley’s often overlooked wry and more whimsical playful side.
It ends with the second of the Wickham connections and, commissioned by the parish council, A Song For Wickham with Kalsi back on tabla and dhol and Tucker’s clattering drums underpinning its stirring, swayalong Afro-gospel celebration of the Hampshire village near where he once lived with “The fete, the china, the strawberry teas/Ducks under bridges the leats and leas/Boxing Day when with the bikes change gear/The pubs in the square, the barrels and the beer”, that gets some lusty vocal blood from the audience of the Forest Folk Club in North Bearhunt who backdrop the closing spoken passage about his childhood memories and how the song came about and send it all off with one fading chorale burst.
A welcome return to a solo platform and a springboard to new musical paths, The Winter Yards reaffirms Steve Knightley’s amply deserved reputation and status as one of the foremost names on the English folk scene.
The Winter Yards (4th October 2024) Hands on Music (HMCD054)
Order The Winter Yards: https://www.elm-farm-music.com/winteryards
Steve Knightley Tour Dates
Tickets: https://steveknightley.com/shows
OCTOBER
Wed 09 – Cardiff, Acapela Studio
Thu 10 – Ceredigion, Theatr Mwldan
Fri 11 – Great Torrington, Plough Arts Centre
Sat 12 – Plymouth, Barbican Theatre
Wed 16 – Milton Keynes, The Stables
Thu 17 – Leicester, Y Theatre
Fri 18 – Liverpool, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall (Music Room)
Sat 19 – Kendal, Brewery Arts Centre
Sun 20 – Hebden Bridge, The Trades Club
Tue 22 – York, National Centre for Early Music (NCEM)
Wed 23 Kinross, Backstage Kinross
Thu 24- Glasgow, Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA)
Fri 25 – Newcastle upon Tyne, Gosforth Civic Theatre
Sat 26 – Barnard Castle, The Witham
NOVEMBER
Fri 1 – Portstewart, Flowerfield Arts Centre
Sat 2 – Sligo, Sligo Live
Sun 3 – Clonmel, Moynihans Back Room Venue
Wed 8 – Bristol, Bristol Beacon
Thu 7 – London, Grand Junction
Fri 8 – Shoreham by the Sea, Ropetackle Arts Centre
Sat 9 – Aylesbury, Queens Park Arts Centre & Limelight Theatre
Wed 13 – Exeter, Exeter Phoenix
Thu 14 – Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms
Fri 15 – Bridgwater, Bridgwater Arts Centre
Sat 16 – Penzance, The Acorn
Wed 20- Shrewsbury, – Shrewsbury Abbey
Thu 21 – Bury, Bury Met
Fri 22 – Sheffield. The Greystones
Sat 23 – Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre (MAC)
Wed 27 – Cambridge, Cambridge Junction
Thu 28 – Canterbury, The Gulbenkian Arts Centre
Fri 29 – Cranleigh, Cranleigh Arts
Sat 30 – London, Kings Place
