Life’s Spinning Song is a collection of songs about the Cragg Vale Coiners in the fictional voices of the coiners and their contemporaries.
The collection came about in association with the coiners’ exhibition at Heptonstall Museum.
I was asked to provide a soundscape to accompany the exhibition, which included a broadside ballad. The obvious candidate was the voice of David Hartley before his execution, reflecting on his life. This is the standard style of execution ballads. I wrote The Ballad of King David, then began looking for a singer and found Paul Denman.
Several other singers came forward, but one factor that persuaded me to work with Paul was that he wanted to alter some of my words – to make them work with his melody. We did and the song was improved. Here was someone I could work with, and I began thinking about other voices in the coiner’s story, in particular Hartley’s wife, Grace. Her life after he was hanged, their life before and how they met. Their working life as clothiers. Another individual who interested me was coiner Thomas Spencer, a former soldier who escaped the gallows when Hartley was hanged, but was hanged thirteen years later, for leading a grain riot.
I knew I needed another voice, a female singer, but wrote the lyrics sometime before I decided to approach Jennifer Reid. Jen is an established folk singer, an authority on English ballads and was a cast member in Shane Meadows’ adaptation of Ben Myers’ novel about the coiners, The Gallows Pole. I met Jen in Towngate Tearoom in Heptonstall and handed her the lyric for My Love Will Haunt Me No More, Grace’s reaction to her continued grieving after David’s death. I was at the counter when she burst into song. Heads turned, and I suggested we retire to the Museum to look at some more lyrics. Jen also cut lines and moved verses to make it her own.
The collection, then, is a collaboration. A successful one, I like to think. The songs were recorded at Limefields Studios, Middleton, Manchester, with the support of studio manager John Ellis. The ambition was not to write songs about the coiners but rather to hear their thoughts.
See what you think.
Life’s Spinning Song is available in digital format and can be downloaded from BandCamp or we have a limited number of CD’s available – on sale through Heptonstall Museum.
You can read more about his work – http://michaelcrowley.co.uk/