A deceptively simple folk song on the subject of time, mythology and, well, rocks. :-)
Lyrics, production: Somhairle Kelly
Music, vocals, ukulele: Elly Hadaway
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This is the third track of my 2015 EP, "Tell Me Where the Ocean Went". It's also the first song that my partner/collaborator Somhairle Kelly and I set out to write together. I commissioned some words from them on the subject of "time", and they have this to say:
"The prompt I was given for Toad-Stone was 'time', and since I'd seen a beautiful piece of Derbyshire toadstone in the Natural History galleries in Derby Museum, that fit together very well. The mythological toad-stone is a fossil tooth, and toadstone (todtstone, dead stone) is a basaltic inclusion in the lead-bearing limestone, laid down slowly by water. So we have fossils, layers of stone, and the echoes of an industry that shaped so much of Derbyshire's landscape - rake, vein, and manifold are all lead-miners' terms - and the song weaves them together with the singer and the seasons."
The songs have a surface simplicity that belies the layers of meaning, so I wrote a very simple tune with (at least to my ears) a slight air of unease.
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Tick, tock, toad-stone
Crouching in the river bed
Tell me where the ocean went
Tell me where you lay your head.
Tick, tock, toad-stone
Swaddled in the ocean's bone
Show me where the river goes
Show me what the limestone knows.
Tick, tock, toad-stone
Why do you sit here alone?
I'll tell you what I've always known
Down in the river's autumn.
Tick, tock, toad-stone
Tell me where the branches fall
Each new branch a world a world alone
Rake and vein and manifold.
Tick, tock, toad-stone
Tell me where we're going now,
Ocean, forest, metal, me
We're all there for you to see.
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