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Acoustic, folk, jazz, folk pop, Oxford.

Nothing to do with indolence, published in 1947, ‘Idle Women’ was a book by Susan Woolfitt about the waterways equivalent of the women’s land army and her life as a trainee working the canal boats during WWII, each woman bearing a badge emblazoned IW for ‘Inland Waterways’. It now gives its name to the Oxford trio of Jane Rouse (concertina), Charlie Henry (accordion, musical saw, baritone & soprano ukulele, cello) and Steph Pirrie (piano, whistle, trumpet, flugel horn), united by All Hands Together, an album celebrating these unsung heroines and a shared love for on the canals and waterways.

Co-produced by Pirrie, Ben Avison and Barney Morse-Brown, the latter pair also contributing assorted instrumentation alongside Colin Fletcher on double bass, fiddle player Wilfred Howes and Sylvester Howes on bodhran, it was mostly recorded in a pop-up studio in a barn alongside the river Thames as it travels the Thames and the Oxford and the Grand Union Canals, navigating history, politics and folklore, and capturing everyday life on the water through the eyes of boaters, exploring connections to place and landscape and our relationship with nature.

There’s just one traditional, ‘Lowlands’, which borrows from the Anne Brigg version with Pirrie adding harmonium to accompany the trio’s humming harmonies , the first of their self-penned numbers stopping of at Warwick’s as the album’s the first port of call with Rouse’s ‘Boatie Boy’, an a cappella shantyish number about two boaters who meet at the bottom of the Hatton’s flight of 21 locks, romance striking up as they navigate them (“First of all we simply worked the locks and talked about the weather /As we climbed on up the Hatton flight and had several cups of tea/I knew that you were the boatie boy for me”).

A collaboration between all three members, the strings and concertina swaying ‘Castles And Roses’ tells the true story of Jack and Rose Skinner, two working boaters from boating dynasties, who played a crucial when they took role in saving the Oxford Canal, first in 1955 when they hauled 50 tons of coal down from Birmingham and then in 1967 when, with legislation threatening to close the canals and fill them with concrete, they took then Minister of Transport Barbara Castle for a cruise south down the canal and won her over (“She started to see the boaters’ view of life in the green the still the quietness it thrives”).

Drawing on her own experiences, featuring twin ukuleles, bodhran and cabasa, Rouse’s bubbling ‘Green As’ recounts the trials and tribulations of a novice boater (“as green as the plants I proudly arranged on my cabin top”) learning the literal and metaphorical ropes (“I dreamed that I would live afloat one day…a romantic, a peaceful, idyllic way of life/I had no idea of what living on a boat would be like”), as she goes from cock-ups (“There was the time when I had a leak in the water tank and gallons of water poured underneath the new floor/And another time I tried to moor up in a strong wind/I was stood on the towpath but the boat was on the other side”) to confidence (“Now I’m chugging along the canals of England I stop when I see a nice place to moor/I’m part of a linear community and I’m living the dream I dreamed so long ago/There are bonfires, singing, homebrewed wine what a rich and splendid life it turned out to be”).

Featuring accordion and field recordings, the breezily whimsical ‘Hieronymus Pepes’ is a music hall-like ode to an infamous Oxford boat that tried the patience of those who experienced her (“His engine it is broken so the only movement is/Prompted by the wind in the willows … two stoves condemned in January’s cold/And then there was the gas leak and the carbon monoxide”) but inevitably won them over (“There are no firm foundations, we’re not even on the ground/But tethered to two metal hooks we’re found/And suddenly I find myself in the deepest love I’ve known”).

Another in the music hall tradition, the stirringly patriotic ‘Old Father Thames’ was written by Ray Wallace (though it’s also credited to Harry Hudson) and Lawrence Wright (under the name of Betsy O’Hagan), first recorded in 1933 by Jack Hylton and His Orchestra and made famous by Australian baritone Richard Dawson who released it on HMV in 1934, Pirrie’s arrangement nodding to the Andrews Sisters with its uke and muted jazz trumpet.

Henry’s sole contribution, featuring rocking ukulele and wheezy accordion and a blackbird and a cuckoo duet recorded by the canal and the River Cherwell, ‘Springtime’ is an uplifting swayer heralding the arrival of Spring (“Life on the canal is waking up now after the months of hibernation/There’s leaves budding on trees and the ducks seem to flock and breed… There’s daffodils and crocuses and bluebells in time All poking their heads up bravely/The blackthorn hedge is starting to flower/The bullrush are standing up proud”). That fades away with the harmonies ebbing and spoken folk rap carrying it to the rousing finale, to be followed by the fingerpicked swayalong ‘Rosemary’ with its thrumming musical saw, a song by Peter Dodds that, written at the time when canals and boats were being rediscovered as a leisure pursuit, tells of a neglected boat in Brummagem that was rescued and restored by a boatman who saw her potential. Very much of a traditional persuasions, it even has a folderol di do folderol day refrain and a final excursion into folklore with “Now on dark stormy nights at the fall of the year/If the beat of a bollinder in the distance you hear/It’s not Clayton Stour the Omay of Tae/It’s the ghost of the boatmen and the old Rosemary”.

Featuring Avison on guitar alongside uke and fiddles, written by Rouse and Pirrie, the perky ‘Turbulent Waters’ (here they’re like a canal answer to The Roches) is another about the ups and downs of living on a canal boat (“There are times when the water runs too fast/And the ebbs and flows are all wrong”) but ultimately one of hope and reassurance (“This vessel it may sway and tilt but I know my boat will carry on floating… Embrace life in these moments and enjoy the ride”) because “The darkest night will finally yield to day/The wildest storm eventually calms/And the sun it will set and the evening it will be serene/Tied safe to the bank with ropes and mooring pins”.

It’s Avison who provides the album closer, a strings-peppered piano ballad, ‘The Water is Narrow’ was written when he moved off his houseboat Petrushka in Oxford, the grand piano being recorded in St Barnabas Church, capturing the life of a life on water (“This boat is my home…The timber is damp and fire is low/The moon as sharp as a knife/I carry the coal to the boat that lies/Still in the water, my love, my life”).

There’s many albums and songs about waterways, but whether you’re a boater or just a gongoozler, All Hands Together is definitely a cut above.

Tracks:
01 - Boatie Boy
02 - Castles & Roses
03 - Lowlands
04 - Green As
05 - Hieronymus Pepes
06 - Old Father Thames
07 - Springtime
08 - Rosemary
09 - Turbulent Waters
10 - The Water is Narrow

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.