I am gratefull to you all :) Meg Davis, September 9, 2000
All music and lyrics written, produced and arranged by © Meg Davis 1967-1978 / (P) Leelanau Heritage Arts/BMI/Harry Fox Agency. Assistant Producer and Engineer : Jim Krause. Recorded July 1978, Fifth Floor Studios, Cincinnati, Ohio. First released by Meg Davis on Philo/ Rounder Records
SPECIAL 2000 EDITION BONUS TRACKS :
About The Songs (Tells you the date they were written)(You can Click on highlighted song titles to get lyrics)
My summer haunt is a beautiful, old (circ.1940's) house on a lovely, cool lake (well away from the humidity of a Cincinnati summer). The folks who tend the house, and get it ready each year, have no idea how they have inspired me over the years. They get into their hip-waders each frosty May to put the dock in and, depending upon the placement of the metal poles, I end up with a very haunting sound all season that comes from the wind blowing across the holes in the posts. Some summers it's a brighter tune, sometimes a rather spooky chord, but whenever it happens I tell myself, it's only the wind in the pipes.
The Elf Glade exists behind the summer house ( it's a 'summer' house because it has no insulation or foundation and the pipes freeze in winter). Some of our oldest trees are in the Elf Glade and, when we felled one of the trees this last April ( due to rot ), I read its rings and guessed it to be around 150 years old. The trees send gnarled roots above ground and moss has grown a soft, lush green carpet in and around the root systems. In summer, deep, yellow wildflowers sprout up ( as well as an odd assortment of amazing and weirdly shaped mushrooms ). Under the wooded tangle there appear to be doorways and deep holes which are the entrances for elves and other creatures living in the underground labyrinth behind the house.
A few years ago the Elf Glade was torn up a bit by a fellow who owns the house with us. He has no idea of the importance of this little plot of ground and, consequently, keeps cutting trees off at the knees and tearing up the general environment. A lot of the wee people moved because of this and shifted themselves across the driveway into a deeper part of the surrounding woods. Quite a few of the elders have remained because they have such extensive underground mansions, wine cellars and gold hoards, that it would be quite impossible to move them now. I have made friends with one of the oldest inhabitants of the Elf Glade and he, along with his nephew, are helping me to write an in-depth book of their lives and adventures which I hope to publish in the 'not too distant' future.
Yevgenia and the Snow Dragon (1972)
This is one of my earliest songs and I created it after attending a concert presented by the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra. It was a very invigorating experience and I rushed home, as soon as the show had ended, to write this story of the conquering power of love. Oh, and it did happen to be a howling winter outside at the time, as you may have guessed.
This is simply about the saddness and loss of lives in Northern Ireland as seen through the eyes of a child. Even today I don't think I'd rewrite it although I might exchange the word 'pavement' for 'sidewalk' but, otherwise, it does express what it must be like to loose your friends and playmates to violence. I make no political statement here...my only intention is to express sorrow.
The very first song I'd written,done at the age of 14, and composed during a long summer while gazing out across a green and blue lake. I was always late for everything ( it seemed ) and so I felt a great deal like Alice in Wonderland (in trouble before I'd even begun).
This may have happened to a few of you along the way....a good friend comes to you the night before their wedding and flings themselves into your arms (telling you how desparately they love you) and begging you to help them make the earth shattering decision of whether to go through with the wedding or not. These nights were always filled with tons of talk and lots of tears and one, large, looming Nightmare.
A song about being different , about doing what you feel is right even though you may get punished for it and how people can love you for who you are ( not just for what you look like ). I think everyone feels themselves to be 'outsiders' at one time or another.....some people feel themselves to be on the 'outside' their whole lives.
Captain Jack and the Mermaid (1975)
The true story behind this particular song is that it was written in order for me to deal with the death of my older brother. I received the news while at school in England and I was pretty much in shock for several years after that (as I was unable to come home for the funeral). And so, I imagined that this must be what it was like for the ladies whose men went off to sea, never to return.....you'd never see your loved one again and, the odd thing is that, never having seen them buried, actually keeps them very much alive in your memory. Which is a good thing, I think. Captain Jack's sweetheart faces the sorrow that many of us face in our lives.....having to love and then let go. By the way, this song is loads of fun to sing along with so, just because the reasons behind the writing are a bit sad, I certainely expect you all to continue to raise your glasses ( bifocal or wine ) and bellow on regardless. My brother would have wanted it that way !
THE BONUS TRACKS :
When I was a teenager I always imagined, that if I continued to leave half eaten bits of pizza and dirty socks under my bed, eventually something nasty would create itself and sneek out into the world. Well, that's exactly what happened one day and the resulting monster has been living in my gardens and travelling with me ever since. He still has no name but he'll eat all the raw cookie dough he can get his claws on!
Ah, Pirates ! Tough, swarthy and livin' the wild life on the High Seas.Well, I've sailed on some of those tall ships and I've never found one that didn't have a cat onboard. Now then...what would all those swarthy Pirates be wanting with a cat...or two ?
Behold the Green Gryphon (1983)
I have another friend and he's rather large. Although I was often blamed when things went missing around the house I knew who really had them but who would believe that a huge, and bright green, gryphon had run off with the fingernail clippers and was hiding his great feathery self in a shoe box ?
A lust for gold and a lust for life....that, combined with some interesting cooking skills, takes my seafaring girl Polly on a big adventure. Oh, she meant well I assure you. But, when it came to choosing between love or gold...well, the sparkly stuff won out every time. Eels are a favorite dish in many lands but, from what Polly told me, if you undercook them they can be deadly. Sounds like a slithery situation to me !
If I Had My Life to Live Over (1972)
This life cannot be relived. It is given to us to appreciate just this one time through but still, I wondered what I would have chosen if I had MY life to live over. What would YOU choose ?
I wrote this love song for someone who was very different from myself. he was rather grey and colorless around the edges and I wonder, to this day, if he knows the bright colors that are hidden within him. It is also a song of longing, of loving someone who is not capable of loving you in return.
Other People's Children (1987)
One Autumn I had been staying with friends in Cheltenham Spa (Gloucestershire, England)and had the occasion to spend a quiet night watching over their child while they were away in the country. As I sat in that cozy home, curled by a crackling fire, I considered the feeling of not having had children of my own. Like myself, Lewis Carroll spent most of his life writing to entertain all children...mostly the children of his closest friends. He spent his last days living in a beautiful town in Guildford, Surrey (where I had gone to school)and the picture of him walking the High Street on Christmas Eve as he searched for a special gift represented to me the feeling of going through in a swirl of other people's children.
I was able to spend some time in Galway one year because of the hospitality of friends I had met while onboard the Irish tall ship "Asgard II". The smallest daughter of the bossun's family was named Rachele and she took me for a walk one night down along the quay that becomes the Claddagh Walk. It leads down to the sea where sailors would say goodbye to their sweethearts and exchange the the Claddagh ring which Galway became famous for. Rachelle was so sweet and lovely that evening...I envisioned a sailor of the late 1800's having such a sweetheart as Rachele and the pain of them having to say goodbye to one another there...by the sea.
This song has many different meanings. On the one hand, it is about Lewis Carroll and his little Alice as they used to walk along the beaches during summers spent in Llandudno, North Wales. On the other hand, it is about Wales itself, being forgotten by the people of today in their hurry to move on....forgetting how to read the language of the stones or sing the ancient songs. And, then again, perhaps this song is about me and how I returned to Wales in order to find my way home.
