June Tabor - Seven Summers

It was a long wet year
But still she looked for summer
Grown weary waiting for the sun
She saw the sodden fledglings fasten to the trees
And corn lie flat in fields

From Seven Summers, written by Dave Goulder

This is yet another song that I caught on the radio years ago back in my days as a student at Marshall University in Huntington, WV, then spent more years hunting down.

Situated as I was in the Kentucky/Ohio/West Virginia tri-state area, I could pick up public radio stations in all three states, and Sunday night programming on Ohio and West Virginia Public Radio was pretty terrific. WOUB out of Athens, Ohio in particular had a rotation of three DJs that alternated on those evenings, and you could count on hearing a fantastic mix of music. One DJ favored music from the British Isles; another leaned more toward traditional folk and blues; the third was a devotee of Americana. I loved them all, and I recorded a few of those shows...I had a pretty decent Nakamichi cassette deck ready to record at a moment's notice and I kept a good stash of high-quality blank tapes on hand at all times.

June Tabor

One of the tapes I recorded on one of those Sunday evenings had a pair of songs by the same singer. I knew it was June Tabor, since I already was familiar with her voice and her style, and I was (and still am) a huge fan. But there are no commercials on public radio, so musical sets could last as long as half an hour before the DJ would come in to back-announce the songs that were played. Even then, there was no guarantee you'd hear anything beyond a required station identification and perhaps a promo for an upcoming live music event or two. Then it was back to the music.

So I had two songs to chase down. The first song was easier to identify, since "The Banks of Red Roses" (also known as "The Banks of Roses") is a traditional Irish song that has been traced back to the late 18th century, so I was already somewhat familiar with that one, having heard it performed by a number of musicians over the years. Tabor's version is one of my favorites, an appropriately haunting take on an old murder ballad.

But the second was much tougher. The song title, "Seven Summers," isn't mentioned at all in the lyrics. All I had by way of an identifier was the closest thing that the song had to a refrain: "It was a long wet year." I started searching for that as a song title, since recurring phrases in songs turn out to be the song's title more often than not.

Not in this case.

These were the pre-Internet days, so searching involved wandering into record stores, finding the folk music section (if they had one), checking to see if they had any June Tabor CDs, then scanning the back covers for song titles. It was a frustrating exercise...record shops in my old part of the universe did not have well-stocked inventories of diverse genres of music. I'd be lucky if they had more than two or three of her releases. I also checked her work with Oysterband, a group she has performed with numerous times over the years, just in case. Recordings by this group were just as difficult to locate (when I could find them at all), but no luck.

Then came the Internet. It still took a bit of searching, but I finally found what I was looking for. The album, titled "Aqaba," had both the songs I'd been seeking, plus so many more. It's a fantastic recording.

"Seven Summers," written by Dave Goulder, is a beautiful and melancholy tune, and Tabor's performance highlights that mood to great effect. The arrangement is the definition of simplicity...just piano, playing spare, unhurried chords, perhaps a few partial chords. No runs, no solos. And then there's June Tabor's lush voice filling those spaces with understated beauty. Her singing on this one transports me every time.

Each time I hear this song, it feels like fall has returned...specifically, a gray fall afternoon, slate clouds overhead, bare trees and sidewalks littered with leaves, a snap of chill in the air carrying the aroma of chimney smoke from somewhere in the distance. Perhaps there's a bit of rain falling, peppering the pavement lightly behind you as you slip through the front door after your walk, as you pull off your coat and scarf. You make a cup of tea and relax with it in an easy chair facing the front room window that looks out onto the street. The afternoon slips into evening, and you can see the fireplace behind you reflecting in the window, a soft yellow glow from burning logs the only light in the room.

You sip as the rain begins to fall a little harder, and a melancholy melody begins to come back, mixed with sound of rainfall. Spare chords on a piano, one lovely and somewhat lonely voice, reminiscing about how "It was a long wet year."

It's so nice to have this song nearby when I need a visit from my favorite season, or any other time I just need a reminder of the power of a great song paired with a great performer.

No chance of summer now
She saw the geese returning
Fieldfares are in the swallow skies
Not a lot of sense in hurrying from school
When all the light is done
It was a long wet year
From Seven Summers, written by Dave Goulder