The Magpie
This isn’t an album review – although I heartily recommend clicking the link at the bottom of the post and going to listen on bandcamp. This is a story about a song.
Many years ago, back when I ran Redditch Folk Club (and had a different name) a trio called Young No More turned up to a singaround. One of the songs they sang was all about magpies, and I was instantly smitten with it. However, I didn’t know the trio, and the internet wasn’t as helpful in those distant days, so I could do nothing but wait.
Eventually, they came back, and arrangements were made to get me a recording of the song. They explained it wasn’t theirs but if they mentioned the name of the songwriter, I do not remember. They told me it was on an old album one of them owned. I learned it from their version and started singing it. The Magpie was always a great favourite with my son, so he picked it up from me and started leading on it. This is how the folk process goes sometimes.
Then The Unthanks covered it and the song became a lot more widely known.
I’ve arranged and rearranged my harmony lines on this song so many times – we sang it through James’s teens with all that this implies. We sang it casually during the years when we weren’t going to events as musicians, or spending much time in folk clubs. It remained a favourite with people we sang with informally. When we started putting Ominous Folk together, it was an obvious candidate for the repertoire. It’s been our most requested song. This is because Mat McCall of Gloucester Steampunks pretty much requests it every time we see him.
Back in September, we had the amazing experience of getting to meet Davey Dodds, the man who wrote The Magpie. We heard him sing it at an event in Gloucester (I cried). We asked if it was ok for us to sing The Magpies at the same event, and Davey said yes, and listened to us doing it and was nice about it afterwards. Of all the things you can do as a musician, playing or singing something in the presence of the person who actually wrote it is by far the most terrifying.
(As an aside, there was one terrifying occasion where I somehow ended up singing a Damh the Bard song to Damh the Bard late one night.)
The new album Davey Dodds has recorded features The Magpie. It means there’s a definitive version from the man who wrote it, which is great news. The original recording (1979, the internet thinks) predates CDs and downloads, so it’s good to have something more accessible. It’s such a beautiful version, the harmonies are lush.
