Moorscape

Description

Moorscape is John’s debut album, written in 2016 because of his love of wide open spaces and especially Britain’s fragile moorland landscapes. These are special places that have been used and abused throughout history: enclosed for farming and fenced off by private landowners, pushing farm and mill labourers to exploit the margins; almost destroyed by 150 years of industrial pollution; and latterly set alight by vandals.

These are unique landscapes that wear their history on their surface: abandoned churches and villages; sunken villages, disused mines and industrial workings, dilapidated farm buildings, cobbled tracks for pack horses, lanes and footpaths. People on the margins lived very harsh lives, so the album is loosely based on the life of a Drover. Drovers were tough men who were charged with driving livestock between summer and winter feeding grounds, vice versa, or to market to be sold. They were frequently the target for rustlers and thieves, because they carried the proceeds from the sale of livestock back to their employers at the monasteries.

Not averse to a spot of rustling and thieving themselves, Drovers are regarded as the country’s first bankers. A historic parallel.