.LAKE SONGS FROM RED WATERS |
'Lake Songs' is not just a collection of music for Gay Woods. It's a reminder of the time she spent with husband Terry living in an isolated house in rural Ireland during the 1970's. Here she remembers the stories and the songs. |
in those times...looking at the pictures on the CD cover They are pictures that a friend of ours Paul Welch had.He used to come and visit us.I remember vaguely seeing them years and years ago. I think it was a good idea for both of us. (The pictures) were taken in the actual vicinity (of where we lived) That lake would be the actual red lake. It was a secondary lake. No tourists or anybody ever bothered about it. The area was called Knock Lough which in actual fact is 'Lake Hill'. When you were coming from Dublin (when you eventually got there) you had to come down a very steep hill and then the house was in the valley near the lake. It's a beautiful little spot.There's a few more houses built there now but its still not so disturbed.We were there for eight years from 1972. I liked that time so much.I hated going away to gig. There was a pub and a shop about two miles away and that was it. There were just one or two houses knocking around but they were the natives that lived there so it was a very quiet existence.I don't think Terry liked it too much because he was always trying to keep in touch with the music business.He still does. I'd like to have that lifestyle now. the songs....... Most of them (the songs) I wrote were heavily influenced by that style of living.If I had been living in a city I don't think I would have been writing so many nature-worshipping songs. In 'Stealer of Dream's' what I am doing is just comparing everything with nature. It'll be the saddest thing in the world, I think, to leave this Earth, especially the natural side of things.In retrospect, why I like 'Winter Poem' was because I had the courage just to write it exactly as it was and I didn't change it. I didn't care if it sounded silly and I'm so glad I did.I would have to be a bit more sophisticated now. I would never have the courage but just for the young girl I was..... Some of the lines you actually work on do come out much better.I've proved that now but I'm much older. I have a lot more life experience .Then I was a young girl. It was my first time in a little house in a valley, cooking on a fire and loving it so much. I'll leave it there - where it belongs. I put the music myself to 'Little Brown Girl' Sometimes I'd have the whole thing done and it just needs a bit of shape on it.The results sound pretty amateurish but some of the songs sound pretty good I think for the type of person I was. I love Dunlavin Green. I'm so pleased we put that one down because of my now renewed interest in Irish history,I've been through Dunlavin many times, its a lovely spot. The songs belong to that time. After that batch of songs my songwriting changed dramatically. I started writing songs about being alone which were never recorded. There was a song called 'Double Yellow Lines' about going back to city life and I did another one called 'Heaven and Hell' and that was about saying goodbye to that lifestyle. the future...... It would be lovely to sing again. I spoke to Terry Woods.He said that we might do something and fix up something where it would be appropriate.- I'd love to do them (the old songs) again. I've been kind of relearning them. I'd beable to sing them much better now. I do like them.I'd love to do a bit of singing while I still can and I'd like to sing some of my own songs and not other peoples. It would be good to have a little bit of a thing here. Me and Terry could get something together.We'd have to do it right to see that it was launched publically,do some of the old stuff, just to see how things go. It would be nice to enlarge on it (the new CD) and the sense of place it seems to have evoked. Strangely, when I got the phone call from Brian O Reilly (of Hux Records) I had just been down that area and it was a dreary day. It all seemed so very far away and I wondered how I'd ever lived there.I heard the songs and I hadn't heard them in ages. I thought they sounded so very naked and raw. I don't know when anyone hears them what they are going to say....... |
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