Lyr Add: Northwest Passage (Stan Rogers)

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Betsy
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 06:47 PM

Whenever I hear this song - I always think that the version by Ian Bruce was sang particularly well. It was the best version I have heard - obviously I haven't heard them all - but his delivery was excellent.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 05:34 PM

Come on, explain yourself please!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 04:20 PM

Is it the Albions song about drunken injuns perhaps?

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Jan 08 - 05:50 AM

"Odd, I do like the Albion Band, when they don't go out of their depth."

I'm glad that you like the Albion Band - to which line up are you referring? They are all very different, but have all included Ashly Hutchings of course, who is a prolific song writer.

Are you part of the local Folk Police perhaps? Please explain the "out of their depth" part of your comment.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 07:37 PM

I know one person around here who would always sing the name of the river and pronounce it "Fray-zhier" (like the character on the sitcom) rather than "Fraser" (fray-zer). Man, it would just set my teeth on edge when he did that.

Northwest Passage, as Stan Rogers did it, is a simply wonderful song.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 06:29 PM

Metchosin - you have lost me there I'm afraid!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: MartinRyan
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 06:21 PM

Metchosin,
Believe me that, while I feel no urge to visit your (mostly) southern neighbours (fine people though they no doubt are) - a visit to Canada would be high on my list!

Regards
p.s. The yacht Northabout which in recent years did both NE and NW passages, is a frequent resident of Kinvara, our local harbour.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Metchosin
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 06:09 PM

Hey Martin, here's part of your envisioned lazy little drive across this country. The road looks really good today.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Metchosin
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 05:58 PM

Really? Has the Albion Band finally learned that being a Blackfoot and drunk is not necessarily synonymous and as plains Indians, they used the tipi rather than the wigwam of their eastern counterparts, they ate dried, not salt meat and that no matter how hard you try, "wigwam" does not rhyme with with "rattle in hand" on this continent. Makes me wonder too. LOL

I sure hope they also pronounce Fraser (fray-zer) correctly in their rendition of this song. There'd be some in Canada that would wonder what the hell they were talking about if they called it the Frai si er River. Of course, I guess one could always use poetic license and dip an oar in the Sha-nee-on or go off to Dub-lee-in. *BG*

Odd, I do like the Albion Band, when they don't go out of their depth.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 05:39 PM

Metchosin

I never suggested, of course, that tardiest and laziest are synonomous. Apart from the internal rhyme mentioned earlier, I'm quite happy with "laziest" as a narrator's gently sardonic comment on the idea of driving a car through the wilderness.

More generally: as an unaccompanied singer with a very mixed but largely traditional or traditional-style repertoire, I typically find that, as I learn songs, they tend to morph slightly in my head for a variety of reasons. If a song has a very standardised set of words and a static presentation style, I find I'm not likely to sing it - regularly, at least. That said, I may happily join in in with someone elses singing of it where appropriate!

Regards

p.s. Or, as a well known female Irish singer remarked once: "Martin - you just collect oddities of song!"!

p.p.s. I continue to be fascinated by the "Ads by Google" generated by our threads. The current one is offering me two possibilities of a Northwest Passage voyage in 2008. Clearly, the organisers have great fate in global warning!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 01:57 PM

But none I'm afraid compares with the Albion Band.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Emma B
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 01:31 PM

some icy images and great singing from CBC brrrrrr!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Schantieman
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 01:23 PM

Are there, I wonder, any songs about John Rae and his actual discovery of the North West Passage?

Happy New Year


Steve

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bee
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 01:02 PM

Metchosin, yes, tardiest meaning latest, most recently at the attempt, or arrived, in this case.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Metchosin
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 12:52 PM

My point as well Bee. Not only that, but "laziest" and "tardiest" are not synonomous. Changing that one word screws with a major portion of the gist of the song. It sort of put my teeth on edge... like someone saying they make copies of the Mona Lisa, but they have trouble with mouths, so they painted a turnip there instead. Its OK to pay homage to a master, but some things you just don't dick with.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bee
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 11:23 AM

MartinRyan, that may be it. I was puzzled over why you might find 'laziest' a better sound, as my mildly Cape Breton accented rendition of the song encounters no difficulty with 'tardiest'.

Iarf, I always have thought 'mileage clicking West' to be a reference to a car's odometer turning over.

I've read somewhere that the added verse was written by Stan, but never recorded by him.

I'm very fond of the song, wish I could sing it better. I find many of Stan's works difficult to adapt to my limited soprano-ish range, even with much fiddling with transpositions and capo placements. But then, I'm a rank amateur on the guitar.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 05 Jan 08 - 07:46 AM

I wonder if thereare any other live recordings of Wolfe by that Albion Band line up which included Simon Nicol, Dave Mattacks, Ashley Hutchings, Cathy Lesurf, Jean Pierre Rasle and Dave Whetstone?

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 04 Jan 08 - 11:59 AM

http://www.4shared.com/file/33877237/9bf4ebc1/Wolfe.html

Here is a performance of Wolfe by the Albion Band in 1983.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: MartinRyan
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 03:44 PM

Rumncoke

You're right of course! My Irish ear prefers the internal rhyme (assonance?) of "laziest" with "plain". I also suspect that the "tardy" is also rather archaic in our useage.

Regards

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Rumncoke
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 03:31 PM

Hmm tardiest fits perfectly when I sing it - maybe it is just the folk process at work or the different way the words are pronounced in our versions of English.

The last verse is a later addition by the original writer, AFAIK, and I think it is a good one.

It is also true - having been a sailor and walker - the memory is selective.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 03:16 PM

Stan's explorer is not lazy, just a little late (two centuries), i.e. tardy.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Tyke
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 12:33 PM

On the TV documentary in the UK they went to Baffin Bay where there are Three Graves. They bodies were preserved in Permafrost on X-raying the First body they found that all the sailors organs were in the wrong place. An autopsy had obviously taken place to discover the reasons for his death. Lead Poisoning!

The Franklin Expedition being one of the first to use Tinned Food several companies had tendered to supply the expedition and the lowest quote won the contract. The tins had been sealed with lead solder.

These three bodies are the only clue to missing Franklin and from these clues it seems reasonable to assume as only one of the three Bodies had undergone an autopsy. That they new the cause of his death and as they all were eating the same food from the same tins they new as they sailed from Baffin Bay that the entire crew had also been poisoned and had a death sentance hanging over them.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Kim C
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 12:27 PM

Right, it was lead poisoning. But I thought it was more than just two.

Well, I'm over 40 now, and I just can't remember things like I used to. ;-)

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 12:09 PM

Ah Franklin and his bold "cwoo"! There's many a wesident that I've heard singing that!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: MartinRyan
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 10:54 AM

Lead poisoning - and only two, as far as I remember.

Regards

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Kim C
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 10:17 AM

Didn't they determine many of Franklin's crew died from botulism from their tinned foods?

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: HipflaskAndy
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 08:55 AM

Our version of the Trad 'Lord Franklin' pays homage to Stan's 'NW Passage' right at the end.... hear it here...click this
It's the third track on our player there.
Happy new year - D & Crew

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 03 Jan 08 - 08:42 AM

Here are the words to Wolfe:

The fleet was a floating forest spread before me on the Thames
And Greenwich bells saluted all her proud departing sons
I stood upon the hillside with my spyglass misted o'er
And I turned to make my way to home once more

Chorus
O to cross the line and defy the time forever
To take the paths of happiness and walk away the pain
If for one last time you could hold these hands together
Content to scale the heights of home again

Its hard to lose your loved one to a nation's grateful heart
For now you are her sweetheart and you're never more to part
Your virtue she may trade on and your likeness she may buy
But she'll not hold you any more than I

Last night I dreamed you lay with me
Your head upon my breast
You had no thought of trading me for glory in the west
The park was then our Eden and the stars our guileless game
We charted them until the comet came

This land may want you for a hero she can call her very own
To glory you in ballads and to honour you in stone
But I have no need of gratitude and praise and nothing more
I want my love beside me as before

The chorus is sung after each verse

It is the death of General James Wolfe seen through the eyes of Kathleen Lowther, the lady he left behind when in 1759 he went to Canada.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: MartinRyan
Date: 02 Jan 08 - 02:31 PM

Metchosin

Jest? About the tardy, the lazy, or the fine? ;-)

Regards

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Greg B
Date: 02 Jan 08 - 02:23 PM

I wonder if there's going to be variants on the song to account
for the fact that the passage is opening up?

Ah for just one time, I would cruise the Northwest Passage
To dine and dance on the Carnival line or maybe on Dis-ney
Tracing one warm line, through a land once wild and savage
On a party boat from sea to northern sea

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Jan 08 - 02:09 PM

MartinRyan, surely you jest.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 07:42 PM

Northwest Passage featured in an item earlier today (1st Jan 08) on BBC News 24 (Freeview channel 80). The item was about 25 minutes long and discussed the effect of global warming on the North polar ice cap. For the first time, earlier in 2007, the ice receded to the extent that previously impassable straits were capable of navigation. A Canadian survey ship negotiated the route in a week that took Amundsen four years almost a hundred years ago.
The January broadcast has not yet appeared in the BBC play-again list, but it seems to be an updated version of an item that was broadcast in October 07. Various items, both video and audio, can be found at this search page

The Stan Rogers song was played at the start of the item and occasionally through the piece. It didn't sound like Stan's version, and there is a concertina playing. Could be Steve Turner? Any ideas?

Ross

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Big Mick
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 12:10 PM

Thanks so much, Tyke, for posting that link. It is a powerful rendition, I love his take on it, and will likely change the way I sing it now. Great the way he changed the time signature and phrasing. And my old friend, Paul Mills, and Ken Whitely, ..... it is just great to see them onstage. Good on ya!

Mick

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Tyke
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 08:03 AM

Back to the future? Nathan Rogers

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: MartinRyan
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 07:18 AM

In singing Northwest Passage , I found I always stumbled over "tardiest explorer". Just sounds awkward to me. I've always changed it to "laziest explorer". Fine song.

Regards

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Carol
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 06:19 AM

It's funny but as I was reading through the posted words I thought that I'd never heard the last verse and don't sing it myself. So that sent me looking through my Stan Rogers and that last verse isn't on there either. Is it a verse he added later - the 'cos he doesn't sing it on the LP Northwest Passage?

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 04:55 AM

Interesting posts - many thanks, I actually copied and pasted the words on our laptop we brought to the hotel in San Juan near Alicante in Spain, where the sun has shone since we arrived on Saturday and now we are in the departure longe at the airport waiting for our return flight!

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: EBarnacle
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 10:19 PM

Sorry about that, I just copied this from the DT:

"He could smell the flowers of Bermuda in the gale
When he died on the North Rock shoal"

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: EBarnacle
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 10:17 PM

The lyrics in Songs from Fogarty's Cove are: He could smell the flowers of Bermuda as he died on the North Rock shoal. [From memory, so there may be some variation from the book. EB]

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 08:46 PM

The WHAT Mountains??? Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 06:53 PM

Fraser River. It flows from the Rockie Mountains to enter the Pacific at Vancouver. (B.C. not Wa.)

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Rumncoke
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 06:43 PM

Some songs have that cupid's arrow quality - this was one of those that got me the first time I heard it and I just had to sing it.

Is the river the Fraser or the Frasier? - mind you, I always sing
Frai si er

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Iarf
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 06:40 PM

Would you belive it that In crusing WWW for Stan R I found that another of his songs is also one of my favs from the singing of Steve Turner on the seminal album "Outstack". The flowers of Bermuda. The line..." you can smell the flowers of Bermuda on the Breeze as we drowned on the north rock shore".

Stan could write real songs. And Steve Turners album "Outstack" is seminal to all UK folk music enthusiasts.

Cor......Glad I came on the Mud tonight. Given me listening raison detre (ok my french is la shite).

Dave W

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Iarf
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 06:24 PM

Best and easiest harmonies to sing in any song I know. We do a four part (well three really with bass, tops and melodies) harmony and it is one of my real favs. Thanks Stan.

The line ......"with the milage clicking west" takes some thinking about.

Funny thing is one of his other songs (Barrats Privateers) has almost no natural harmony but always gets a stunning chorus from any audience.

Some guys get to write all the best songs. He was one of the best. (IMHO)

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Carol
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 12:32 PM

Still a great song

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Emma B
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 12:28 PM

Both The Northwest Passage and Lord Franklin were used to great efffect some years ago in a UK TV programme following an expedition to exhume some of the members of Franklin's ill fated voyage and with a view to establishing the cause of death.

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 11:46 AM

Hello Bonzo,

You might enjoy this!

Clicky

I always loved this song...especially so now...a little dabbling in Family History shows I have a distant relation who got stranded while trying to find the North West Passage!

Best wishes,

Peter

Subject: RE: Northwest Passage
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 11:34 AM

Bonzo, many thanks for taking the trouble to type this in. However, it would have been slightly quicker to type 'Northwest Passage' into the lyrics and knowledge search box in the top right hand corner. The lyrics are in the DT, and there are several threads on the song. For further info, dig here :-).

Subject: Lyr Add: NORTHWEST PASSAGE (Stan Rogers)
From: GUEST,bonzo3legs
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 10:43 AM

I heard this song as part of the soundtrack to a programme on BBC World about navigating the Northwest Passage.
^^^ Northwest Passage
Words and music: Stan Rogers
(Recorded by Tom Lewis on Poles Apart)
Chorus:
F-o-r just one time I would take the Northwest passage,
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage,
And make a Northwest passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'twas there 'twas said to lie,
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died,
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones,
And a long forgotten, lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter I take passage overland,
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his 'sea of flowers' began,
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again,
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking West,
I think upon McKenzie, David Thompson and the rest,
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me,
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them I left a settled life, I threw it all away,
To seek the Northwest passage at the call of many men,
To find there but the road back home again.

And if should be I come again to loved ones left at home,
Put the journals on the mantle, shake the frost out of my bones,
Making memories of the passage, only memories after all,
And hardships there the hardest to recall.

Curiously enough, it was sung to the same tune as "Wolfe" by the Albion Band on their Light Shining album, so perhaps Ashley borrowed the tune as part of the natural progression of things?