Back on my bike

This month's song is a bit of a departure for us, in that it's not particularly personal or at least is ostensibly about someone else, namely British cycling legend, Tommy Simpson. I first came across the story that inspired this song when I read Will Fotheringham's biography of Tommy, also called 'Put me back on my bike', which are allegedly some of the final words of this '60s cycling legend, shortly before he died on the slopes of Mont Ventoux. It's a story of endeavour, of someone with extraordinary grit, ambition and talent, such that he became a huge success, but that same ambition arguably led to his tragic demise... a classic tragedy. Definitely worth a read, or a watch of this documentary about him. Anyway,  we're both keen cycling fans and cyclists and the idea of someone literally riding themselves to death seemed to have a natural sense of drama in it, and with this final words, something about it made the songwriter in me perk up.

It so happened that I injured myself playing football a couple of years ago, and was in plaster for a few weeks, and so obviously couldn't cycle, and one of the things I missed most was cycling. Those words 'put me back on my bike' kept going round my head, and of course being temporarily incapacitated I had time on my hands, and so was able to work up this song. I can't think of another song that I've crafted and honed as much, to get it just so. It started out as a simple narrative told as if it were a letter home to his mother, but somewhere along the line I found the equivalence of a miner and cyclist, both professions in which working men use their bodies and risk their lives to make a living. It may be sport to us, but it's life and death to some poor soul....



Although there is definitely a personal resonance, it is clearly someone else's story, which makes me think it's somehow proper songwriting, as in it's the sort of thing that first made people write songs, to spread stories and songs, not unburden themselves of their own troubles...so goes the self-doubt of the confessional songwriter.

Anyhoo, I'm well-pleased to get it down and share it with you, especially given the synchronicity with the Tour de France. I'm sure had Tommy lived, he'd have been pleased to see a British(ish) rider leading a British team taking lumps out of the continental riders, wearing yellow up the slopes of the great French slopes where he gave his life in pursuit of le maillot jaune.

Time Out of Mind

The latest in our 2015 song-of-the-month sequence is 'Time Out', a song that has grown and morphed with us throughout the last 20 years of our musical lives. Jeez, I remember trying to get an early version of it down in my Gran's flat (she was away - not sure the neighbours cared for it much) one hot summer at the end of the millennium, using an Akai S2000 sampler and our erstwhile Bonham-obsessed drummer.

It started out as a dark bluesy/Stonesy jam, partly inspired by the emotional space on the Dylan album of the same name, before it tightened up into a sleeker Stone Roses-inspired guitar and drum loop swagger.  When we started to explore our love of folk and country it seemed to naturally fit into a 2 acoustic guitar arrangement, and has stuck around ever since.

I bet every songwriter and artist has songs like this, ones that aren't necessarily anyone else's favourites but just linger around, as a litmus test of where they're at musically, always hovering around the edge of sets, ready to be rolled out when the feeling's right. I think this one has a particular longevity as it's great fun to play and has a very different emotional edge than a lot of our songs, being essentially angry and vituperative. It's always had a two-part vocal which has survived into this latest version with its banjo and Americana shuffle, though the lead has swapped through the years. So here it is again, on another sultry summer evening:


If songs are children, this is a particularly surly and truculent teenager, but, hey, it's still our kid and we love it...

Silly Love Songs

So continuing our song a month schedule for 2015, we come to May and a straightahead love song. But like Macca said "some people want to fill the world, with silly love songs - what's wrong with that?"



On writing it, we were worried it might be just too damn simple. We often write lyrically dense songs, so to have a song that doesn't do anything clever seems a bit of a con, but maybe it's the simplicity that lies beyond complexity?! Certainly it's musically pretty simple, partly due to being written on the banjo, which tends to lend itself to harmonically quite centred songs. But saying it simple might be a good thing - we think so, and we hope you do.

Now to work out a way of playing it live...

Redemption

This month's song is 'Redemption':



Erm, what to say? It's probably not quite a typical Nobodaddy song, hence it's one that we've tried recording a number of times and never quite cracked. This is a pretty bare arrangement but hopefully that reveals the heart of the song. It's probably pretty clear what it's about...if you were there, you get it, and if you weren't, well you were probably somewhere else fun. Anyone got any vicks?