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The Living Tradition _________________ SOURCE Scottish CONTENT INSTRUMENTS
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| Alan Bell "In My Homeland" Dragon Records DRGNCD991 | ||||
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The cover photo shows
Alan Bell looking every inch a 'sand bred un' on the Fleetwood shore.
It's a very appropriate picture, for the man is so strongly identified
with the Fylde coast in particular, and the North-West in general, that
it's hard to think of one without the other. Through his writing he has
given the area so many chances to celebrate itself in song. Nevertheless
there is no feeling of parochialism about his output. The range of emotions
and situations he writes about apply to people everywhere.
Several of his songs
derive from the memories and experiences of real people - Jack McCaig,
driver, in 'The Wagon Driving Man', veterans of the Fylde Mountaineering
Club in 'The Golden Rule', ex-servicemen in 'There Was A Day' and, most
poignantly, Len and Barbara Berry, known to the folk scene as The Portway
Pedlars. Len and Barbara are the inspiration behind 'The Song Of Time',
a tribute to long-lasting ever-growing love that caused me to breathe
deeply and ponder on my own life. It's an old-fashioned sentimental tear-jerker
of the kind that Arthur Tracy and Cavan O'Connor would have sung years
ago, and bravo to that.
Add a couple of songs
dealing with the seafarer's life and the fishing industry, and the closing
track 'In My Homeland' and you have an album that seems to me to express
much of the writer's attitude to life. He does not offer us startling
psychological insights, neither does he preach to us. He speaks in simple
language of things that seem simple on the surface but will resonate with
listeners everywhere. Good work.
Roy Harris
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