I am sitting at the keyboard humming an old song. "The Banks Of The Roses". In my head I am hearing the late Jim Reid sing it on the Foundry Bar Band's second album. A super song and a super singer. A great band as well.
I remember the first time I heard the Foundry Band. It was in a squat in Amsterdam. A French couple who lived in the flat below regularly took pity on me and used to invite me down for my tea and such like. One evening after we had eaten, they put on a tape of Scottish Dance Music and described a Bar in Arbroath where they had spent an evening listening to tunes.
It was a lovely sensation hearing music from home. Traditional music, timeless music. Music that spoke to loss and emigration and being far from home.
I was an economic exile. Alain was a war resister. As a pacifist he had left France to avoid compulsory military service in the French Army. Alain effectively spent the whole of his twenties in exile. Alain and his partner Sylvie eventually returned to France one month before his thirtieth birthday. When he turned thirty, there was no longer an obligation to do military service.
It was an important point of principle for him to return and live clandestinely for that last month. It may be difficult for people to understand. When I have tried to explain to people Alain's justification for this act they look at me blankly. Somehow though I think I understand this gesture.
I wish I knew where Alain and Sylvie are now. Are they still together? Was a life in exile what kept them together?
They moved to Paris from Amsterdam. I had their street address in Paris but I never wrote in the way that thoughtless young people never write. And I was a thoughtless young man then. In the event it was more than thirty years ago. They have surely moved by now.
They were kind to me and I think fondly of their kindness.
Back to the old song. What does it mean when old songs come into one's head? They surely cannot arise unbidden. There must be something that has stirred them up from the distant past. I have no idea. I am thinking hard and cannot fathom why this song of all songs has come to mind.
It was not the act of writing that brought it forth. I was thinking about Jim and hearing him singing "The Banks Of The Roses" in my head before I sat down to write. I enjoyed Jim's singing for many years and was privileged to play with him several times before he died in a band with Friockheim accordion player Scott Carnegie. Scott and Jim had a particular sympathy for each other's playing.
As Jim became ill and forgetful and confused we still went on jobs. I remember loading out of the Invercauld Arms in Braemar at two-thirty one cold morning with snow on the ground and realising that Jim was at that time already in his seventies. Understandably he was failing.
I remember wondering to myself if I would want to be loading out band gear in my seventies. Hopefully I will be spared to do it, as Jim was.
In the end illness did not spare Jim though. Scott and I visited him in hospital a few times before he died. It was the hospital where I used to work. In fact I had worked in that very ward. I knew some of the staff, indeed had worked with them.
It was a cruel illness that took Jim's mind from us. I wonder though how many people remember Jim's voice, his wonderful song writing and way of presenting a song.
His talents brought joy to many and no-one could wish for a better testimonial than that.
The verses of the song come to my mind.
By the banks o' the Roses, my love and I sat down,
And I pulled out my fiddle for to play my love a tune
In the middle o' the tune oh, she sighed and she said,
"Oh, ma Johhnie, lovely Johnnie, dinna leave me."
An old traditional song, in Jim and the Band's version pulling double duty as a Scottish Waltz.
Thanks for the memory as they say.
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