A Drop Of The Morning Dew – a live album from Serious Sam Barrett to mark the Yorkshire singer reaching twenty years as a performer – celebrates both his achievement and a living tradition. Recorded one night in Yorkshire – a handful of miles from his childhood home of Addingham – this is a set by a featured performer at a folk club. That club being the Bacca Pipes, aka the Keighley Folk Club, started sometime in the 1960s and thrives yet despite a somewhat peripatetic recent past; I have happy recollections of visiting in the early 90s during its long sojourn at The Globe.
Sam’s a punk skateboarder whose mastery of the twelve-string guitar and banjo can justly comparison to the American primitives, and retains a love of song and the roots of his raising. He’s toured extensively in the US, often with Alabama’s The Pine Hill Haints, so country music too has rubbed off on him. This eighteen song set, perfectly constructed, serves as a career (thus far) retrospective while capturing the essence of a live show. It’s a really excellent recording, and the mix job that James Atkinson then did on his tape is exemplary; while not absolutely vérité it actually provides a truer experience, and when the club is heard serving as accompanists on songs like ‘Holmfirth Anthem’ and ‘Was On An April Morning’ it’s apparent their collective memory holds the songs just as well as Sam’s does.
While there are a good number of songs from recent releases The Seeds Of Love and Where The White Roses Grow he touches every landmark of his musical progression. Opening with the unaccompanied ‘Every Night Has An Ending’ – a reworking of ‘Derry Gaol’ – he follows it with ‘Alf’s Song’ a paean to his colourful, trade unionist grandfather, and then ‘Drive Your Way Home’ a road song recalling his time touring with Alabamans and a reminder that over the years he’s travelled a long way from Yorkshire. There’ll be touches of Americana in ‘Back On The Jack’ (and later ‘Long Gone’), with a couple of mentions for George Jones in his song notes. Then ‘Sailor’s Song’ provides an opportunity to let fly on the guitar.
A run of traditional songs follows; some like ‘The Female Drummer’ with tunes of his own composition. ‘Holmfirth Anthem’, ‘Bushes And Briars’ with banjo, and ‘Was On An April Morning’ present circuit staples but only re-emphasize why they hold that elevated status. Interspersed are top-notch originals ‘Last Of The Yorkshire Outlaws; ‘Lullaby Of Leeds’, and ‘Where The White Roses Grow’; contemporary but grounded and set in place. Then there’s the title track, not a companion to ‘Back On The Jack’ as might be guessed, but based on the traditional belief that the secret of a young complexion is literally to wash with dew fresh from the grass.
As the valuable song notes explain he learned that wisdom at the Bacca Pipes. These are presented in the booklet accompanying the record; its cover collages gig flyers for names like Martyn Wyndham-Reade, Sid Kipper, and Norma Waterson, with Bob Davenport, Anne Briggs, and Dick Gaughan then turning up in the text, making plain he learned a lot more there too. The consequence being this grand endeavour, undoubtedly one of the best folk albums of recent times.
A Drop Of The Morning Dew is available now on CD and Double Vinyl. Buy it here.
Photo by Reece Leung
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