Album Info
Redwood Cathedral (1998)
[Greentrax CDTRAX 158]
Engineer Roy Ashby
Producer Dick Gaughan
Artist : Dick Gaughan
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
Track Notes
October Song (Robin Williamson)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Keyboard drones
Let it Be Me (Becaud/Belanoe/Curtis)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
All the King's Horses (Dick Gaughan)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
Davey Paton : Bass
Steve Green : Drums
Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
Turn, Turn, Turn (Pete Seeger)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
Davey Paton : Bass
Rab Handleigh : Keyboards
Fine Horseman (Lal Waterson)
Dick Gaughan : Vocal, Guitar
Historical Footnote
Recorded at Hart St Studios, Edinburgh.
More than anything else, I regard myself as a song interpreter. This is a much maligned craft these days and is often written off by use of the crass and meaningless term "covers", a term invented by the music industry to create, for purely commercial reasons, an artificial hierarchical distinction between those who write songs and those who don't.
The crafts of singer and songwriter are as different as those of actor and playwright. Some are skilled at both - but they are few and far between. Increasingly, pressure has been applied by the recording industry to singers that they will only be recorded if they write their own songs; this maximises profits for the record companies by ensuring they collect the publishing royalties and own the song copyrights.
The end result of this is that many fine singers end up making records way below their capabilities, padded out with trivial, inconsequential songs about what they had for breakfast and whether or not the sun was shining while they ate it.
Imagine this -
If all actors only acted in plays they had written themselves, theatre would die within a few years.
If all orchestral musicians only played symphonies they had composed themselves, there would be no orchestras.
If all car drivers only drove cars they had built themselves, there would be even greater carnage on the roads.
Add your own analogies.
And if all singers only sing songs they write themselves then all songs will die with their authors and in 100 years time there will be no folksongs.
Fact - there are many fine singers who can't write songs and many fine songwriters who can't sing.
Give the work of the fine songwriters who can't sing to the fine singers who can't write and there will be a lot more performances worth listening to.
Although this album does contain two of my own songs, it is primarily a homage by a song interpreter to the craft of the songwriter.