Elly Hadaway - Toad-Stone info, credits, lyrics, and comments at IndieMusicPeople

Elly HadawayToad-Stone Folk/Acoustic Rock/Americana

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Monday, March 22, 2021 8:55:32 PM

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Monday, March 22, 2021 8:55:32 PM

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Barefoot on a Dirt-Floor

Eve's Magical Ride

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A deceptively simple folk song on the subject of time, mythology and, well, rocks. :-)

Lyrics, production: Somhairle Kelly
Music, vocals, ukulele: Elly Hadaway

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.

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. x

Song Comments

Eve's Magical Ride
I love this!! ok I'm a little tired now but it made me teary eyed and I'm not even sure why. Maybe cause it's great to be alive and to be able to hear songs like this for the first time.