Newry Highwayman

“Newry Highwayman,” from Building St. Petersburg.

In Newry town, I was bread and born,
In Stephen’s Green now I die in scorn.
I served my time to the saddling trade,
But I turned out to be a roving blade.

At seventeen I took a wife,
I loved her dearer than I loved my life;
And for to keep in fine array,
I went robbing on the King’s highway.

I never robbed any poor man yet,
Nor any tradesman did I beset;
I robbed both lords and the ladies bright,
And brought their jewels to my heart’s delight.

I robbed Lord Golding I do declare,
And Lady Mansel, in Grosvenor Square;
I shut the shutters and bid them good night.
And home I went then to my heart’s delight.

To Covent Garden I made my way,
With my dear wife for to see the play;
Lord Fielding’s gang they did me pursue,
And I was taken by the cursed crew.

My father cried, “my darling son.”
My wife she wept and sighed. “I am undone.”
My mother tore her white locks and cried;
Saying, “In the cradle he should have died.

And when I’m dead and in my grave
A flashy funeral pray let me have;
With six bold highwaymen to carry me.
Give them good broadswords and sweet liberty.

Six pretty maidens to bear my pall,
Give them white garlands and ribbons all.
And when I’m dead they will speak the truth,
He was a wild and a wicked youth.

I think the real trick in making good music is in cover tunes.  Since the 1960′s and the advent of singer-songwriters–that is to say, in the period that formed basically all of my assumptions about what it means to be a musician–the focus has been all on writing “original songs,” however unoriginal the actual songs may be.  I began realizing in my early 20′s when I got really into Billie Holiday, which was a bit late for me given how long I’d been into jazz at that time, that here was a craft that had basically been forgotten by people my age and, I’d add, my background.  Of course Billie was, in her way, tops, though I probably go back to Ella Fitzgerald more often than Billie.  Billie put the craft of interpretation, often radical interpretation, at the center of her work.  This is by no means an original observation but it’s critical.  What does it mean to be a singer?  It means you sing songs, and what people my age and likely younger have all but forgotten how to do is to interpret, rather than imitate, others’ music.

Coupled with what was a growing understanding of the importance of interpretation of song, not just of writing them, was a growing appreciations I developed for traditional tunes, distinct from tunes written by someone with a known identity.  Covering someone else’s tune can be a good thing, for sure, and I enjoy and feel I can do it well–witness the Floyd Westerman tune, “Quiet Desperation,” I do on Adieu, False Heart–but doing so creates in the mind of the listener, or rather the listener who knows the original version, a relationship between the cover and original.  The artistic experience of the listener, the experience that counts, in art, is that of a relationship.  That’s definitely cool, and not just in a po-mo way.

With a traditional tune, however, one creates a different set of relationships.  A listener might know any number of different versions of the tune.  No one particular version is original, and so each new version relates to the others more or less as equivalent.  Authenticity is not a consideration, or really shouldn’t be–any sense that one recording of a traditional tune is more authentic than any other is a fantasy in the mind of the listener.  The earliest version of “Newry Highwayman” comes from an 1830 broadside, which is to say, in written form rather than recorded.  The first Earl of Mansfield lived in the 18th century, so we would be smart to assume that the tune had existed likely for decades before its first, written appearance.

No sense, then, worrying about authenticity with traditional tunes.  All that counts is quality and applicability to one’s present.  The latter is the real trick, I suppose.  Obviously, we can discard all museum-piece arrangements, all attempts to recreate things “as they were.”  The quickest way to irrelevance is to try to repeat the past.  Hence, the bankruptcy of Conservatism, unless one approaches Burke as a theoretician of change rather than stasis–which I wouldn’t necessarily do, myself.  A better bet is someone like Richard Thompson, possibly an obvious choice but nonetheless the musician more than any other I know of who consistently performs traditional music in a relevant way, even more so than the clearly more famous Bob Dylan.

I recently have been listening, over and over, to a recording he’s released of “Willy O’ Winsbury”, the Child Ballad, off RT: The Life and Music of Richard Thompson. Thompson plays it absolutely straight, performing the song on guitar, singing without any tricks.  This is the secret.  There is no need to make a traditional tune anything other than precisely what it feels like to a performer

“Newry Highwayman,” of all the traditional tunes I’ve recorded, is probably the least “traditional” sounding of the recordings.  This is primarily because of the electric guitar, recorded with fairly heavy vibrato.  I’d used this trick before, on “I’ve Maintained My Advantage,” above all.  I learned it, I swear–I’m not just trying to sound legit–from Bo Diddley, and particularly like how much it reminds me of some of My Bloody Valentine’s stuff.  The song itself I heard on a live recording posted to Bob Dylan’s website.  I’ve since become much more widely versed in sources for traditional song, though by no means as studied as a real afficionado.  At the time, though, I basically got traditional tunes from Dylan, the Pogues, and the Dubliners.  Dylan’s version is good, though not great.  That said, it really stuck in my head, so I cut a version of it.  I’m pretty convinced it’s one of the better things on the album.