hello My name is eddi reader.. you can call me edna... Thank you boab for helping me find this place....
I am looking for a glasgow pub song...(as my mum calls it), with the title 'WHEN I LEAVE AULD GLESGA BEHIND'.

My grandfather Big Dan from Ruchill used to sing it every new year and I remember being thrilled by its melody.

He passed and this song has disappeared with him... we have a couple of verses but there are more and I wondered If anyone in this club knows of the song or where I might find it and others like it.

this is long but I am new and I wanted to tell you who I am...... I noticed discussion about my abilities as a folk singer... My credentials in 'FOLK' if its needed here are:.... age 17 as a council estate girl, knowing NOTHING of my own culture, but with a love of song and singing, discovering Irvine folk club...(The only other place for the youth to go would have been AMANDAS WET T-SHIRT night, So I was blessed that there was a folk club scene to teach me how to comunicate more valid and authentic songs than the POP music of the time).Mudcat Member BOAB gave me my first floor spot.. I also began going to the more Trad kilmarnock folk club where I learned my first 'proper' folk song..THE BLACKSMITH.
Between the years of 17 and 21 visiting folk festivals and clubs in scotland meeting and befreinding HAMISH IMLACH who taught me how to handle audiences.. Archie Fisher was a BIG influence as was CHRISTY MOORES sister, who sang songs I shall never forget at Inverness folk festival. I became the first/only young female busker in Glasgow,(the only other guys on Sauchiehall st were the harmonica player at BOOTS THE CHEMIST and the blind accordian player down the street...) my pitch was British Home Stores corner and one saturday I earned fifty pounds in a half hour...lucrative... til my aunty saw me and told my mum who promptly stopped me doing it.
I moved to london and looked up JONAH JONES a contact who Hamish had put me on to.
Did my first london floor spot in the HALF MOON PUTNEY 1981 when Jonah was running the club there. Saw Bert Jansch play amongst others.
Visited my first Cambridge folk festival where I sung all night everynight.
I took myself and guitar to france to busk because the folk music clubs were dying and I had nothing I wanted to do in the 'BUSINESS' of music.. I HATED the pop music of the time and in france we formed folk bands that played songs I had learned from the folk clubs I had visited. EG. Matty groves , ae fond kiss, Lord Franklin, The lowlands of holland,... and by the way .. sorry to the man who says I got the words of trad songs wrong.. I only learned them as they passed through the throats of others...I thought that was the oral tradition.. but, please I would love you to tell me which lines I have sung which dont make sense and I will explain EXACTLY what they mean. Or I will apologise for being young, nervous and wrong....
Then I came home from france in '83 and all the clubs seemed quiet. I got a job singing backup for a punk band ... which lead to london again... more sessions with signed bands, which lead to me learning about microphones and harmony work, which lead to meeting like minded people, which lead to a pop hit... in a band which I insisted stuck to acoustic instruments and played everything LIVE. It folded because people where more interested in being pop stars than playing music.
I went to Ireland and recorded my first solo album on which I tried to use instrumentation that was a bit more folkie and rootsy...using the likes of ewan and peggy sons neill mac coll and calum.
That was thirteen years ago and since then I have made albums where I tried to not stray from the acoustic ... only one album let me down and that was a big expencive production number the record co said they wanted or I was to hit the high road... they were wrong.
Finally in february 2003 I get the call I have been longing for, the ROYAL SCOTTISH ORCHESTRA want me to play three Burns songs with them. I worried because I know what traditionalist can be like and I know what classicists can be like.
Yes my voice isnt stuck in a classical soprano and yes I mess around with chord shapes ... but, I was inspired by everyone I have ever heard sing those songs. I knew that I was being honest, when I sung those songs, everyone of them ripped my heart open and I promise you no-one can say to me that I dont love folk song, community singing or the passing on of the information. I had a Pop hit... but nothing has satisfied me as much as walking with my darling robert through these words of his. He brought me home. Just because I sung an acoustic 'country blues' song and it became a hit does not mean I am not an authentic singer from the west coast of scotland who uses her cultural inheritance to belong to and be owned by the songs of that area.

so... anyway... does anyone know the words to WHEN I LEAVE AULD GLESGA BEHIND... SHEESH!!

KEEP MUSIC ALIVE

I will never rant again

love eddi reader