The Catahoula Leopard Dog

I walked upon a shoreline path this November morn, and came upon dog shit in several places.

As the song goes, “Come on clean up your shit”.

Which song? I hear you ask.

Oh, only one of my favourite compositions, The Catahoula Leopard Dog.

It’s a favourite for several reasons. I like the unusual title. I like the connection to people whom I had never met before who came from the USA to play a Homesong in my house. One of them had just such a breed of dog, which I later discovered, heralds from the state of Louisiana. I like the fact that I later wrote a completely unrelated song, with a woman I had never met, who came from Louisiana. I like the song itself and the way I’ve got a mysterious dream song, with a message about environmental pollution, out of such unlikely source material. There’s certain amount of songwritery pride in the creation.

All those reasons. In my imagination, I picture playing this song in a bar in New Orleans, with a cool local band backing me. It might happen one day. It might not.

The possibilities in dreams are endless. Sometimes it can even occur that strange foreign creatures make an appearance in them….you just never know.

Wild Women Of Woodgreen

Well this takes me back. The Wild Women Of Woodgreen was an affectionate song written about the (mainly) women I worked with in a particular care job that I did for a few years.

It specifically referred to the Christmas staff nights out, which I initially found terrifying. These Campbeltonian women could drink, and it brought out the wildness within. Poor little me, and the odd other poor fella, had to negotiate these nights with care.

In the end though they became kind of fun. But also not particularly healthy. I learned to drink too. A little too much for a period of time. It was kind of cultural here, though a lot less now, as the pubs, sadly I would say, despite the mayhem they are often responsible for causing, are gradually closing. They’re still a vital part of the community in my opinion.

The downside back then among many, was that it became a badge of pride to have an evening out that you couldn’t remember afterwards. That’s not a good look really, and I’m personally glad that those days are well behind me. But, hey, I had a great job with some happy memories. And, to quote the famous line…what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

Also, there are always songs to be extracted from the debris.

The Old Boys

The Old Boys, the ones older than me even, remember not only a world without Ai, The Internet, Mobile Phones, Audio Books and Social Media. They can even remember a world without Television.

I’ve just finished an amazing book that I picked up from the local Library. (By the way, Libraries continue to be a great resource, and I hope they continue having a role in this changing world we live in).

The book in question is called The Way Home by Mark Boyle. He, it has to be said, is someone who most people would see as something of an extremist. He chose to live without money for a few years, for instance. And this particular book is about his ongoing life without making use of (almost) any of the modern tools and technologies that are available to us. Including electricity.

It’s not a life that the vast, vast majority of the world would even contemplate, let alone be capable of living. But his account is beautifully written, deeply honest, thought provoking and, if I’m honest too, a little guilt inducing.

I’m very wary of guilt and it’s place in leading a person to act. Mostly the kind of actions it leads to are impossible to achieve, or are short lived. Guilt is not ever the best kind of motivator in my experience.

Never the less, I’ve been challenged (again!) to think about the life I live, and how divorced it (and we) often are from each other, the planet we live on, and the kind of behaviours that might lead to more contentment and, well a more fulfilled life. And even, dare I say it, a better world.

I think the book was so profound that it will probably (I hope) lead to some changes in my own behaviours. I don’t know what they will be yet, and I’m not going to be hasty in making them. But for now, I’m simply recommending the book.

Soon enough I’ll be an Old Boy. There’s life in this body and brain, and there are certainly new things to be learnt and experienced. That much I never doubted. Here’s to more mistakes made, on the way to finding out what we can learn and experience next.

Yellow Teeth And A Pure Soul

My friend Gary Carey often jokes that I (“wisely”) don’t listen to any of his suggestions regarding changes needing made to the songs I’ve written.

In the beginning of my songwriting life I would always write a song and leave as was. Then I came across the strange concept of “Editing”. It was a bit of a shock to the system. It felt like messing with the art. I thought a song should emerge fully formed from the ether, and drop into my lap like a new born baby.

Of course life - and songwriting is a part of life - is never that simple. And so I took on board the need to change things in the songs I wrote. For a while I did it far too much, changing things that didn’t need to change. Years ago I completely rewrote a song that several people I knew really loved. The rewrite turned out to be crap. And I ended up forgetting the original.

Hey ho. These days I’ve learnt, if not mastered, the craft. And I usually get in the ballpark for how the song should be, fairly quickly. But I’m comfortable with the need to make changes that improve things. And I’m quite OK with hearing, and either accepting, or often rejecting, suggestions for change from others.

And I do listen Gary! In fact todays title song Yellow Teeth And A Pure Soul is a case in point. He might not remember, but a few years ago he suggested that one line in particular from this song - “polishing the sky” - stuck in his craw. I pondered upon his remark, as I usually do, even if not immediately. And although the recording above remains the same, I have changed the line to “reaching for the sky” instead. The critique and the change made sense to me.

Perfection doesn’t exist. But appropriate editing is a useful tool.

And so is brushing your teeth. I should probably do more of that too.

Where Did The Stars Go?

Light travels at…um….well the speed of light. Imagine a speed named after you! And imagine a bunch of light (that’s the technical term for its plurality!) setting off on a journey at that speed in our direction. Hoora fast! 186,000 miles every second.

OK, so it’s heading out at a lick. And light years later… a light year is the number of seconds in one year times by 186,000 (if we’re dealing in miles)….it reaches us. The very nearest star to earth (other than our sun) is 4.26 light years away. Which is a fair few miles

Some stars, though apparently it is rare, are so far away that they themselves have died by the time their light reaches us.

I find that idea encouraging. Because a kind deed is a little bit of light in a dark world. And perhaps its influence can also outlast its giver.

”Where Did The Stars Go?

They’re shining in your eyes.

Simplicity

Simplicity.

That’s a city I want to know better.

A place where there’s only one thing happening at a time.
One person at a time.
One problem at a time.
It only exists today. Now. Tomorrow is somewhere else.

Simplicity acknowledges complexity and accepts the truth of its existence. But it doesn’t try to understand it.

You’ve got to be humble to stay in Simplicity. It’s not a place for smart arses. It’s for people who know they’re limitations. People who aren’t in the game of One-upmanship. Who aren’t on the make.

A lot of people have moved out of there for good. It’s not a city that’s thriving. Could do with a few more residents to be honest.

I’ve been trying to move in.

Hope I don’t bring the tone down.

The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth

The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth.

Will they?

It’s all a mystery, and this song wasn’t really a prophecy. Les and I were just having a bit of fun with the idea at the time, as a way of trying to make sense of some realities that appeared crazy to us. As they do now.

But a crazy reality is still reality. It might be the reality we have to live with.

There may be peace to found in the midst of the storm.

But it never comes without looking our present reality fully in the face.

Alien In Slovenia

Alien In Slovenia got radio time. In Slovenia.

I like obscure song titles that peak the interest. At least my interest. It does make you wonder…”Well what the hell’s that about?”.

Doesn’t it?

And I often like it when the song itself leaves you wondering the same thing. It’s an incentive to listen again.

I’m very happy with the lyric I wrote for Alien In Slovenia. But without the accompanying catchy tune and a great vocal (in this case from Alison Leith) nobody would be coming back a second time to try and figure out the story.

I hope you do.

It Can Only End In Tears

It Can Only End In Tears? Really?

Not true.

It’s a turn of phrase we use when we aren’t very confident of a positive outcome. But other endings are available. At least in terms of our own experience. I’m convinced of that, despite having been a man of, predominantly, sorrow for far too many of my years on earth.

The tears came, can still come, when we want things to be different than they are. When, to quote Radiohead’s Creep:

I wanna have control
I wanna perfect body
I wanna perfect soul
I want you to notice when I’m not around

It’s all so far out of reach. And it’s in the future, if at all. So it’s understandable when we become miserable, because it’s all too easy to persuade ourselves. Everything we want is around some close or distant corner.

But still, the tears generally cease when we simply accept this. This.

ps. I do hope you read this blog as the meanderings (back and forth) of a man who is working it all out as he goes, and reporting on his personal findings, and repeating the same messages to himself when it helps. That’s all it is.

pps. Also it’s the blog of a little boy who might still find a fart joke funny. And laughs at his own hilarious self regularly. I suspect that side isn’t coming through much at the moment, but it’s never far from the surface. I hope I can always find joy in the absurd.

Blood And Bandages

It’s pure coincidence that the titles belonging to the songs written by myself and Les Oman are popping to the surface now, during this trundle through the archive, using those song titles as blog titles.

Pure coincidence that the songs written as a result of Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration , nearly eight short years ago, are the ones I’m blogging on now — at the moment he gets voted in as American president for the second time.

Blood And Bandages is, at heart, a commentary on the fact that history doesn’t always progress in a smooth and improving manner.

Sometimes things go backwards.

We shall see what happens in reality. As is always the case, whatever the contradictory experts, including ourselves, predict. As I’ve said many times recently, I’m focussed on the shit that I can do something about, not the shit that is out of my control.

I also don’t want to be in the prophet of doom business.

So that’s my colours nailed to the mast anyway.

Have a nice day!

Like Minds

Like Minds is the only song in the now hundred and fifty strong Fee Comes Fourth collection that I didn’t have any part in the writing of. This one is all Les Oman. He sings the main vocal too.

And the song moves me and gets me thinking.

One of the hardest tasks, for me, of getting older, was the discovery that there is literally nobody out there who thinks what I think about everything. There is no soul brother or sister who perfectly aligns with me.

I discovered, in that sense, that I am completely alone in the universe. And I’m laughing as I write, because that revelation was actually a liberation. My idealist dreams and beliefs died, but life itself started to burn brighter. It turned out that reality was good enough.

And so is “similar”. Like Les, I’m still reaching out for Like Minds. They do exist. People who share that similar outlook and world view. A similar sense of humour and the ridiculous. A similar hope for the world we live in. A similar realisation that in our aloneness, we desperately need to find each other.

Because, in the famous words of John Donne, “No man is an island”.

For me, I suspect, the songwriting and this blog are my attempts to find those like minds. And it doesn’t need to be a lot of people.

Which is quite convenient as it happens. ;-)


Discover Fee’s Substitute

Ai

Sorry, got to rush. Today, my 150th consecutive song release is out. It’s called Ai. The lyric below was written without any kind of digital software stimulants.

Living in a world of synchronised faces
A-i, A-i
Dream our dreams in digital spaces
A-i, A-i

Get a grip
Take a trip
Back to the real world
Your touch
Too much
Back in the real world

History will leave no traces
A-i, A-i
Every thought now syndicated
A-i, A-i

Get a grip
Take a trip
Back to the real world
Apathy
Empty
Back in the real world

I can recall  
Every love letter
You ever sent me, darling
All I need now
Your breath on my skin

Keep up, Keeping up, All the time, Keep up
Baby, A-i
Don’t ever fall behind, don’t let me see
You cry, A-i

Get a grip
Take a trip
Back in the real
Your touch
Too much
Back in the real
Get a grip
Take a trip
Back in the real
Apathy
Empty
Back In The Real World

Keep up, Keeping up, All the time, 
Keep up Baby
Don’t ever fall behind, don’t let me see
You cry
I can recall  
Every love letter
You ever sent me, darling
All I need now
Your breath on my skin

Everything Is Wasted

The song at the time said Everything Is Wasted.

It does look like it sometimes from a human perspective. In both senses of possible meaning. It both looks as though we as a species throw away all the chances we have to get back on a better track AND that we lay everything in our paths to waste.

That’s a very negative spin of course. Some would take the same big picture information and come up with a much more positive way of looking at things.

I vacillate between the two points of views depending on the day in question. What I don’t change my mind about anymore, is the absence of inevitable outcomes. The possibilities, though not endless, are never the less extremely varied. It could all go in a whole host of directions, and anybody who tries to prophecy the future is very much a hostage to fortune. It’s a mugs game.

We are in an exciting novel of our own making. We don’t know the ending. But we do get the chance to write a few lines ourselves. Lines that will have an affect on the outcomes. Though not ones that we can control.

Never the less, I’d prefer not to waste the small opportunities I do get to be an active player in the story.

Discover Fee Laying Waste To The Man-Child.

Weaver’s Bay

So my friend Les Oman had a lyric called Weaver’s Bay. A powerful, evocative, and very sad tale about the forced evacuations of approximately 150,000 Scottish people from the land they knew as home to the United States and Canada. It is one of those stories that is little spoken about outside of Scotland, and might may help some people (people like me, for instance, as an English fella living here) to understand a little better the antipathy many Scots felt and still often feel towards the old neighbour England - its fellow member of what is generously known as the United Kingdom.

These things, rightly or wrongly, get into the blood for generations.

Anyway the lyric felt related at the time to the collection of songs we were writing about the happenings over the Atlantic, in the shape of a certain Mr Trump. He himself grew up in the USA because of his mother’s emigration from the isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides.

Les had got a tune for the song, but didn’t like it and asked me to have a crack. I was happy with the subsequent result, and so was he. Which is maybe a lesson in keeping hold of material that has something going for it, even if it feels incomplete.

So, as I said previously, I’m avoiding politics these days, but that doesn’t mean it goes away….

Discover Fee Learning A Thing Or Two

Everything On Gold

Let’s celebrate the losers!

Which is most of us all of the time, and all of us some of the time.

We could, and some do, live a life putting Everything On Gold. Which, by it’s very definition, even if we reach the gold standard, means working our whole lives, every day, towards that one moment in the future when we’re top of the pile. It means putting our goal before other people. It has to be our only focus.

To become a winner will take everything we have. And being one can be a very short lived experience.

But alternatively, we can have fun, be kind to each other, work at things we enjoy, relax. Live for now. Like the losers do.

Perhaps those two possibilities aren’t completely mutually exclusive.

But if you’re a loser, you’re in good company. Hello to you all!


Discover Fee And A Betting Man

Ranches And Mansions

There are some pretty impressive walls here in Campbeltown. Some of them are in our garden. Tall, strong, and built without cement. They’re not going anywhere.

Walls are a necessary feature of life. Our body is full of cells, and every cell has a wall. Quite ingenious walls that keep bad things out and let good things through. In both directions.

In fact we all build walls in day to day life. As individuals and nations. A borderless world and a borderless life are both pretty impossible. We need them. But we often tend to focus on the “Keep Out” part of the equation.

Even castle walls though, built for safety and protection, need to be like human cells to a certain degree: letting things and people in and out. Because a good wall should be permeable. In both directions. As well as strong.

This Strunts song, Ranches And Mansions, is the story of a wall that as well as keeping people out, also keeps people locked in. There’s such a thing as a bad wall. Wall building is an ancient craft, and it’s hard to do it well.


Discover Fee In Front Of An Impermeable Wall

Too Much Of Everything

As much as possible I stay away from politics at the moment. I’ve been in that frame of mind for a while. When I wrote this song a few years ago, Too Much Of Everything, as part of an album I made of that title with my friend Les Oman, it was perhaps the beginning of that feeling.

Anyway, ironically, that album was large inspired by the rise of Donald Trump over in the USA. And it could well be that, in a few days, we’ll be right back where we started.

As I say, I’m not paying too much attention. My head can’t cope with it. And to be honest, I think that one of the best things we can do for the world as individuals is to make sure that our own mental wellbeing is as healthy as possible.

We can be believing all the right things, doing all the right things, saying all the right things, but if we’re miserable, we’re going to make the people around us unhappy too. Miserable people tend to make for a miserable world.

Les and I bumped into each other a couple of days ago, funnily enough beside the cashpoint in Campbeltown where our first album began in the form of a conversation we had back then. The subject of a new album came up. The possibility that there was going to be (already is to be honest) more than enough material to sing about.

I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know if I can engage with the subject matter enough. A lot less of everything in life has been my line of direction, and maybe that could be a starting point for something. We’ll see.

Discover Fee Feeling Overwhelmed

ps. and here’s the album

Angus

Angus, Grandson No. 2, is so called after his mums maiden name.

We all put a lot of weight on a name. And passing on the family name (through male offspring in most cultures) is seen as a big deal.

Plenty of folk, can’t, don’t or won’t, pass on their surname though. Either they don’t get married or have a partner, or they are infertile, or they only have girls, or they choose not to have children, or they adopt. Many don’t get the chance for the particular privilege of nominal longevity.

I walk through the graveyard every other morning when in Campbeltown, and repeatedly see what happens to every single name that gets passed on. It gradually fades upon the facade of a gravestone, and like everything and everyone, it eventually gets forgotten. Most of the graves have not got a single flower in remembrance.

Whatever we do to leave our stamp on the world, it will all pass or fade away sooner or later

It’s easy for me to be blase about all of this obviously. I’ve got five Fee sons, and five Fee grandchildren. So something is getting passed on. Never the less, it’s not something I hold great store in anymore. I’m just going to enjoy and get to know Angus, and all the people whom I am related to, or know and love, as much as possible while I and they are able.

Everything else is like the misty, drizzly clouds outside the window, which will soon blow away to reveal a new face to the world.

Discover Fee Being A Proud Opa Again

Indian Summer

Unexpected sunshine.

That is the promise of an Indian Summer - the song of that title is another co-write, this time with Gary Carey - a few days of sunbathing at a moment in the year when we were expecting everything to turn a little bit dreich. Today it is dreich. But when the sunshines unexpectedly it is an undoubted bonus. A surprise. It literally warms our souls.

However, I’m trying to approach life without any expectations right now. And to accept the good and the bad with equanimity. That’s a lot of lifetime habits to undo. Ones filled full with hopes, expectations, and a very definite and quite reasonable preference for good over bad. My definitions of course. But usually involving wanting the weather to be different than it is.

So all of that expectation is still very much a part of me. In-built. That’s OK.

But it’s nice, these days, to be not so completely dependent, for the state of my mood, upon the vagaries of the climate, or any of the multitude of variables in life of which I have no control.

At least some of the time.

Discover Fee Basking In The Sun

Miss You When You Go

Back in the day, I loved the most well known song by The Flaming Lips, Do You Realise, on first hearing. It captures the brevity and beauty of life with such lovely poignancy - by, among other things, stating the bleeding obvious - “Do you realise that everyone you know someday will die”.

I had never heard anybody say anything like that before. I think it made me feel less weird about my own love affair with staring hard truths in the face with as much honesty and open-ness as I could muster. Perhaps it wasn’t such a crazy thing to do, after all. Maybe it could actually be a helpful and positive way of approaching life.

Miss You When You Go is a song that continues in that tradition. This one was a co-write with my songwriting friend Dave Harris. I’ve hardly ever played it, and listening to it now makes me want to relearn it. Which I’m going to do as soon as I finish today’s blog.

OK, I’m done.


Discover Fee Missing You In Advance