Songs Of The Week 2025: Take 6

Neil Morton

FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK

Ashfields And Brine: Archie Fisher

The sad news of Archie Fisher’s passing at the age of 86 transported me back to the North-west folk scene in the Seventies, and especially to magical evenings at the Bothy Folk Club in Southport. It was there I first heard the Scottish troubadour sing his beautiful composition Ashfields And Brine, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.

The Glasgow-born Fisher was renowned for his fine interpretations of traditional music, particularly relating to the sea and the landscape of his native Scotland, but his own songs were even more memorable. He made them sound as if they had been sung for generations. The whisky and honey warmth of his baritone voice and exquisite fingerstyle guitar could melt hearts and moisten eyes.

The moving Ashfields And Brine was an ode to nature’s ability to regenerate and regain ascendancy over the ravages of industrialisation. It was the opening track of his 1988 album Sunsets I’ve Galloped Into, recorded in Hamilton, Ontario, and was revisited on Windward Away, a 19-track collection in 2008, which included ‘lost’ recordings from sessions with Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy in the Seventies. Although several songs had been appeared on earlier albums, the missing master had never seen the light of day and the musician felt they were worthy of formal release.

Fisher’s Sunsets liner notes explained: ‘This album spans 20 years of songwriting by myself and a few friends. Every song has had a season and holds a special place surrounded by its particular memories.’ He said of Ashfield And Brine: ‘A new industrial estate now covers the old Inverness landfill on the Moray Firth which because of garden waste used to support myriad herbs and flowers despite the barren surroundings of cinders and sea.’

The Sunsets version, with Fisher on acoustic guitar, David Woodhead on piano and bass and Canadian producer Garnet Rogers on flute, violin and electric guitar, is less busy than the rescued Seventies track where his voice seems to be competing with too many instrumental distractions. But the Windward Away take and those other recovered tracks – Final Trawl, The Winter It Is Past, Silver Coin, Star Of Belle Isle, Eire Lingers, Cuillins Of Home and Joy Of My Heart – were welcome inclusions.

Come when the autumn burns through my land

And let its flame feel warm to your hand

Stay by my side while the winter comes on

You may leave in the spring when the memories are gone

Of the ashfields and brine

Love all the summer, carefree and warm

Heed now the calm of the gathering storm

Barren and bitter my last years will be

From the smoke of the fire and the spray of the sea

Leaving ashfields and brine

Ashfields and brine or gold flowers rare

Time and sweet columbine will brighten the air

And all of the sorrows and tears I have known

Will be cinders and see where a blossom has grown

Far from ashfields and brine

It was at the Bothy that I heard Fisher performing with Barbara Dickson. They recorded two albums together including Thro’ The Recent Years in 1970. Dickson was lured away to sing Beatles songs in Willy Russell’s play John, Paul, George, Ringo... and Bert. It was a privilege to be in the audience at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool for that as well as the later Blood Brothers at the Liverpool Playhouse. She was too versatile for folk to contain her and has enjoyed a highly successful recording career. She describes Fisher as her ‘musical mentor and huge cultural icon here in Scotland’ and when she returned to her former genre she just had to enlist his help.

Fisher was born into a large singing family including sisters Cilla and the departed Ray with whom he played in a skiffle band. In 1960 he moved to Edinburgh and appeared regularly at The Howff folk club run by Roy Guest. In 1962 Ray and Archie released the single Far Over the Forth and in 1965 the whole family released the album Traditional And New Songs From Scotland.

Fisher, who presented BBC Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk show from 1983 to 2010, was honoured at Celtic Connections following his 80th birthday with artists from around the world seeking a turn on the night. Dickson and Rab Noakes were notable contributors. The evening was playfully called Archieology, the veteran balladeer digging up such back-catalogue classics as The Shipyard Apprentice.

His selections illustrated his island heritage, his affinity with the adopted Scottish borders and the influence of US folk legends such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger; the Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, whose vocal he is most compared to, must have been a favourite too. He had toured North America with Garnet Rogers and later with John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. He spent his final years in the south of Scotland, enjoying his beloved horses at Fountainhall (Ontario Dust was a tribute to one of them).

Another Canadian singer James Keelaghan paid a heartfelt tribute on Facebook: ‘Stopped in to see him and to spend the night at the hacienda near Galashiels last June. We ate curry, we told stories, drank whisky and played some songs. And in the early afternoon, I took my leave. It was the last time I saw him. But it won’t be the last time we’ll be together. Tonight I will sing Dark Eyed Molly, Final Trawl, Bill Hosie and Witch of the West-mer-lands, and we will be together again. And if we keep singing his songs, he’ll never die.’ His storytelling, whether within his songs or between them, was a delight.

Back in that sepia-tinged long ago I recall hearing him play Ashfields And Brine at the Fylde Folk Festival where younger would-be singers were probably forced to revise their ambitions. There should have been more recorded music but, like his songs, there was no rushing this balladeer. His final album, A Silent Song in 2015, had been seven years in the making. As ever, it was worth the wait. The final track is a poignant rendition of The Parting Glass.

I prefer to recall the touching final verse of another memorable song from the Sunsets album, Gunsmoke And Whisky, his tribute to an old seafaring friend...

You wandered your road, I ran in circles

We’ve walked together too short a way

Tell me you’re happy, Gunsmoke and Whisky

And I’ll be the wheel-man, just for today

Sing for the strangers that we’ve seen smiling

Sing for the lovers that we’ve seen crying

Sing all the songs that we sang for each other

Old friend and brother, before we die

Old friend and brother, for you and I

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The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right: Lisa O’Neill

Sometimes even a gentle song can possess the force of a storm. It took Irish artist Lisa O’Neill more than seven years to complete her new single but we are grateful she went to the trouble. The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, shakes you to the core.

The formidable songwriter from County Cavan describes the title track of her forthcoming EP as ‘a reaction to the unsettled times that we live in’. Dystopia in the now. Years of heartache and hardship inflicted by the giants of business and the ideologues of politics. The last two words of the title are deliberately chosen. The guilty are not named – from a song she began eight Novembers ago there are too many candidates – but we can guess who they are.

Oh, to be wild like the roses

Oh, to be red with delight

My blood is red out of fury

The wind doesn’t blow this far right

Some terrors are born out of nature

Some terrors are born overnight

Some terrors are born out of leaders

With their eye on a different prize

The thing is, some leaders are players

And players sometimes can be clowns

And clowns then sometimes can be dangerous

When they’re there and yet they can’t be found

The Big Mac

The big man

The big bomb

The power of money and lies

The power of fear in the people

The wind doesn’t blow this far right

The video, directed by Ellius Grace, heightens the dramatic impact of a traditional melody transformed into a tour de force by O’Neill’s unmistakable, idiosyncratic vocal. It features appearances from musicians Kae Tempest, Kevin Rowland, Spider Stacey of The Pogues and Iona Zajac, Nigerian/Irish poet Feli Speaks and actors Olwen Fouéré, Hazel Doupe, John McArdle and Jack Walsh.

Zajac provides backing vocals with Seamas Hyland on accordion, Brian Leach (hammered dulcimer and bass drum), Joseph Doyle (double bass), Mic Geraghty (harmonium), Jordon O’Leary (electric guitar) and Ruth O’Mahony Brady (piano). The cast of characters are moved to tears by the power of her delivery about how the spread of misinformation and divisive politics have damaged livelihoods and imperilled the environment – and how she will not be cowed.

Drill, baby, drill

Don’t, baby, don’t

Don’t you hear the winds

Feel the fires as they burn

Beautiful planet

Beautiful home

Drill, baby, drill

Don’t, baby, don’t

Kill, baby, kill

Don’t, baby, don’t

Don’t you hear the kids as you blindly bulldoze on

Beautiful children starved to the bone

Kill, baby, kill

Don’t, baby, don’t

The six-track EP includes a cover of Bob Dylan’s All The Tired Horses which soundtracked the closing scene of the final episode of TV drama Peaky Blinders, Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age), a collaboration with Pete Doherty released as a single back in January, and the live favourite Mother Jones about the Irish union activist Mary G Harris Jones who emigrated to the US and in 1902 was called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ for her successful campaign against the mine owners. The set is completed with a version of the hymnal The Bleak Midwinter and a reading of the James Stevens poem Autumn 1915.

O’Neill has written and sung fearlessly about social injustice: Rock The Machine about unemployment in the Dublin docklands, When Cash Was King, Violet Gibson about the Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926, and her stirring duet with Lankum’s Radie Peat on Factory Girl. Certainly the new single is a match for the best of her acclaimed 2023 album All Of This Is Chance: the magnificent Old Note, Silver Seed and Goodnight World.

The Dublin-based musician told Cordella Magazine in 2023: ‘I think that if one mind can be changed for the better via a song then it is worth writing and even still it is worth writing for the writer’s expression. The human voice when speaking the truth is a powerful form of protest.’

As Mark Radcliffe remarked on his BBC Radio 2 Folk Show: ‘She shies away from nothing.’ Unvarnished, bleak, raw, magnetic, authentic. The extraordinary voice and storytelling skills of O’Neill have drawn all the appropriate adjectives for these austere times. Chill, lady, chill.

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