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On 1st June, Duncan and I sent our Heritage album to Ali Karim Esmaail for production. Ali didn’t have a clue what to expect, because this is the first time we haven’t sent him any advance copies. What he does know is how important this album is to both of us. It became more so as it entered its final stages.
Heritage is a celebration of family. Rather than populate the album with new original songs with a family focus, we decided to record our interpretations of traditional songs that have lived with us as a family of four over the years. It’s been four years in the making, entirely due to changing family circumstances along the way. We moved to Berwick, Duncan and Toni to Dunfermline, and Jen and Phiz with their metal craft business to Hawick, all in 2022. Duncan and Toni married and the following year gave Jen & Phiz’s twin girls a first boy cousin, after I’d walked away from the world of international trade at the start of 2023.
Amid all the pressures of work and life, the album never went away. We knew most of the songs that we wanted to record, but didn’t get the right kind of time to complete the process. In 2022 and 2023, we’d made rough recordings of five of the songs, and released our single of “She Moved Through The Fair” with Jo Beth in October 2024, intending the rest of the album to follow on. It didn’t quite work out that way!
In the second half of last year, we all helped Duncan build a garden office and recording studio, in part to create space in the house for his and Toni’s new son Euan who arrived today. By the time the build was finished, we had a 4 month window to finally put Heritage to bed. We re-recorded each of the original roughs, and added a few more traditional songs plus our single, then two original songs based on a trenches parody of a poem from 1865 “The Dream of Gerontius” from my Great Uncle Frank’s WW1 memoirs. Duncan had already recorded the first three verses in “The Keeping of the Bridge, Part 1” for his 2021 album “The Road, Part 1”, and I recorded the next four from this 15-verse epic poem for “The Keeping of the Bridge, Part 2” at the end of May.
Our family is rich in stories, starting with manuscripts from the adventures of a young Johann Sankovsky (John Cofty Carlisle) from Northern Silesia in the late 18th century, who later witnessed at first hand the Battle of Montevideo (1807) from on board HMS Lancaster. Then Frank’s “Great Adventure” followed him through the killing fields of Northern Europe as a stretcher-bearer for the Royal Army Medical Corps for four years from 1915. Duncan’s paternal great, great grandfather manned the forge at Tatton Park in Knutsford, signalling the way for Jen & Phiz’s business. My maternal grandmother – a single mother – ran a Blackpool lodging, at which one of her regulars was a film director for J. Arthur Rank. My Dad’s sister Peggy was a Chanel model. My Mum and Dad each left written records of their sometimes hard, but always loving lives, and so it goes on. And here are we two, creating music.
Many of the songs of Heritage will have been known to all of them but for John Cofty Carlisle, who may only have known a couple of them. These songs have weaved their way through our family’s lives. In creating our own versions, Duncan and I are paying homage to the memory of these wonderful souls. Folk songs connect the generations and will continue to do so, because the human stories that create them will always remain relevant.
We are not sure yet when the album will be released, but when you come to listen to the songs we’ve put together for Heritage, please absorb their stories, and raise a glass in welcoming our new family member, Duncan and Toni’s new baby boy! Who knows what paths the next generations will take? Our hope is that this album and the stories of their ancestors will give them some inspiration.
Peace.
John