Love Is Just A Four Letter Word - Bob Dylan
My version of the Dylan song that Joan Baez made her own - Dylan never recorded this song, nor did he ever play it in concert - but it is a beautiful song, with fabulous words - I especially like the lines where the rhymes come mid sentence, rather than at the end of a line. The story is that Baez found the unfinished song behind the piano, or even perhaps in the bin, perhaps in her room at the Chelsea Hotel, or even perhaps in Susie Rotolo's flat, while she was away in Europe. She asked Dylan if she could record it - if he could finish it - she then had a hit with it a hit on her next album.
Make you Feel My Love - Bob Dylan
This was a relatively obscure Dylan when I first learned it and started to play it in folk clubs - so I was a little miffed when Adele made it famous…
Crow on the Cradle - Sidney Carter
This is a song that I have known since forever - I am told that I was on the first Aldermaston CND march in 1958 - with my chin chuckled by Michael Foot… Sidney Carter was a committed pacifist and conscientious objector - and worked with Donald Swan. I met both at a Quaker conference when I was a young and impressionable teenager. Crow on the Cradle had been recorded by a couple of my musical heroes - Jackson Browne and Steve Knightly from Show of Hands.
Devils and Dust - Neil Young
Another of my heroes - and an extraordinary song about the pain soldiers might experience in conflict.
Old Bones - Jez Lowe
I first heard this song in a folk club, played by a lovely old man, sadly now long gone - old bones at the time. In fact it is almost the only song that he sung. I have since heard it sung many times by Jez himself. A directly pacifist theme, but in the form of a gentle ballad.
Linda Goes to Mars - John Prine
One of my favourite singer/songwriters, tragically taken by covid - this is a very poignant song about ordinary relationship - as many of his songs are.
Simple Twist of Fate - Bob Dylan
I was quite proud of my guitar arrangement in this - dadgad - but also mixing various versions of the song as recorded by Dylan over the years - I remember a concert long ago in Hammersmith, where he sang this, changing almost every verse in some way or another - very exciting!
Here Comes the Sun - George Harrison
This was recoded by me in the early 80's with Viv Ellis double tracking her beautiful voice, and me playing the guitar - I borrowed a four track from the school music room. Viv has gone on to have a career in music, including working with Holly Near.
Apple Suckling Tree - Bob Dylan
This was recoded around the same time - with my creating all the tracks - an very obscure Dylan track at the time, before the release of Basement Tapes.
Is Your Love in Vain - Bob Dylan
Also from around the same time - with me starting to make use of a double dropped D tuning, and enjoying singing the more obscure Dylan songs - this one from Street Legal.
Burning Times - Charlie Murphy
This was a very early arrangement that I sang on an Aldermaston March in the 80's, which then became a favourite with folk at Oak Dragon Camps - this version having been recorded by Jonathan Fryer on a wet and blustery evening, when we were all crammed into a dome, singing, and drinking hot chocolate. The Didgeridoo is being played by Chris Park. I originally learned heard it played by Roy Bailey at a Towersey Folk festival, but it is also famously the title track on a Christy Moore album.
Hard Rain - Bob Dylan
Just one the most amazing dystopian songs ever - Dylan says that they really didn't know if that day might be the day of nuclear holocaust or not - and every line might have become a song, that he wouldn't be able to write. Although he did not attend his own Nobel price ceremony, Patti Smith sang a very heartfelt version of this, that can be found on youtube.
Don't Think Twice - Bob Dylan
The guitar on this is very similar to Streets of London - but the Dylan came first…
If I Should Fall Behind - Bruce Springsteen
I learned this to play at the wedding of a family member, it being one of her favourites
Gypsy - Suzanne Vega
I like to think of myself as the protagonist in this song - at least, when I first played it, back in my art college days in Sunderland, when we were both in our early twenties, Suzanne Vega and I. She headlined Glastonbury in 1989 age 20
Life's For The Living - Passenger
We saw Passenger at the Cambridge Folk Festival - fantastic energy
Me ad Bobby McGee - Kristoffer Kristofferson
Another sadly recently demised artist - a song that goes really well with his road movie 'Convoy'.
Dimming of the Day - Richard Thompson
A very difficult song for me to sing - doesn't suite my limited vocal range. Maybe why Linda sings it on the original album - maybe written for her?
On Raglan Road - Patrick Kavanagh
A beautiful and mournful poem, put to music by the Dubliners
The Price of Petrol - Seize The Day
A song that makes me well up - knowing the father of the child who is the subject of this song.
Kathy's Song - Paul Simon
Such a poignant song, one of my favourite Simon songs - and he was only in his early 20's when he wrote it…
My Darling's Downsized - Chris Wood
I learned this around the time I was contemplating retirement - and we went to see Chris Wood in a very cold January church in Bristol - the heating was not working, as the power was off, so no PA either, so we all huddled around him to listen to an authentic acoustic set. This is a great open D tuning.
So Long Marianne - Leonard Cohen
This is recorded live, the summer that Marianne Died - and Cohen shortly afterwards. There is a fabulous documentary by Nick Broomfield, a Sidcot old scholar - who also had a fling with Marianne in her Greek island days. Julie Collins recorded this, and Suzanne, and according to her it was these recordings that persuaded Leonard that he could record them - she got him up on stage with her, and a terribly stage struck and unconfident Cohen walked back off stage - but then was persuaded back on to complete the song, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Catch The Wind - Donovan
Love this song - one of the very first that I arranged for a finger picked double dropped D tuning
Devil's Water - Wilfred Wilson Gibbon
A poem by a Northumberland poet better known as one of the war poets - put to music by my good friend James of the Brothers Gillespie.
You're Going To Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Bob Dylan
To Ramona - Bob Dylan
A song that Dylan wrote partly in London, and then on a Greek island, in 1964 - I am sure written about Joan Baez, and possibly to her, as Ramona seems to have been a name he used for her according to her autobiography. He wrote all the songs for Another Side of Bob Dylan over the same short period, and several songs from the following, Bringing It All Back Home, including Tambourine Man - then recorded them all back in New York in under three hours, drinking a couple of bottles of wine as he did so - To Ramona was recorded in one take.
Before The Deluge - Jackson Browne
A great song for hippie festivals, and Glastonbury - and as relevant as when it was written, if not more so.
After The Goldrush - Neil Young
Another song for hippie festivals - one of my favourite wordsmiths
Another Day - Roy Harper
One of the more explicit songs about love sex and relationship.
Crossing The Bar - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We sang this at my father's funeral, having learned it from the Spooky Men's Choral - I then made my own arrangement.
Mrs Clara Sullivan's Letter - Malvina Reynolds
Such a good song writer - and she only started writing songs in later life - there is hope for me yet… I learned this from a Pete Seeger album.
It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan
The song that Dylan chose to sing to end his famous Newport Festival folk festival set, when he first introduced his fans to material from the now classic Highway 61 revisited.
Roses of Eyam - Traditional
I learned this from a Roy Bailey album, a perfect song for these strange times of Covid lockdowns.
Roses of Eyam from rosswallis on Vimeo.
Abandoned Love - Bob Dylan
This is a fabulous and lesser known Dylan song - having not been released until quite recently, on the Biograph album. He wrote it at the same time as songs such as Tangled Up in Blue, and Simple Twist of Fate, about his marriage to Sara.
Beautiful Day - Ron Meuross
I only discovered Ron Meuross recently, and love his story songs - and try to emulate them with my own stories. This is a song about Sophie Scholl, who was murdered by the Nazis for leafleting information about the holocaust.
The Band Played Sweet Marie - Reg Meuross
Reg was shown the violin that was reclaimed from the body of Wallace Hartley and sent back to his fiancé, who then gave it to an institution, and which was found recently in an attic, and sold for £1m, such is our obsession with the sinking of the Titanic.
Early Morning Rain - Gordon Lightfoot
It seems to becoming sadly more regular that I sing a song by a recently deceased hero…
Lady Franklin's Lament - Traditional
Such a beautiful tune - and becoming so relevant as global warming reveals more and more of this tragic story
Jerusalem - Steve Earle
As relevant now as ever - and just as painful. Learned long ago from a Joan Baez album.
Caitlin At The Window - Joe Crookson
I wrote an almost identical song, without having heard Joe Crooksons - and was miffed that he had got in there before me - and the songs are so similar, perhaps because we are both using words used by Dylan and Caitlin Thomas. I do think mine is better though…
Never Any Good - Martin Simpson
I love this song - and my guitar skills can't do justice to it compared to the amazing guitar work on the original - but I do my best
Catch The Wind - Donovan
Recorded by Will at a Glastonbury Folk Club Session - but an arrangement that I devised very many years ago, and am still proud of - played in a double dropped D open tuning.
It Ain't Me Babe - Bob Dylan
An early Dylan - I heard this before I was even aware of his music, as made famous by Peter Paul and Mary, in the late 60's
Black is the Colour - Traditional
I sang this as a duet with another member of the Glastonbury folk club - always good to learn something new - and such a lovely song.
John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan
I went to see Thea Gilmore - then discovered that she had done a full remake of the John Wesley Harding album - so I had a go at doing that myself, it being one of my favourite albums.
Mr Tamborine Man - Bob Dylan
I went to see Judy Collins at Glastonbury Festival in the summer of 2024, and she sang this, telling the story of sitting on the steps of a stair in the middle of the night, after a bit of a drunk evening, listening to Dylan composing this from behind a door.
