Category: Music

Dram Fools

Lead with Your Heart is my favourite musically, Halfway Home contains my favourite lyrics, and if I’m allowed a third choice it would have to be The legend of Dram Fools or Whisky River just for the mad joy and fun of it!

Dram Fools

ad hoc post – 6

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Dram Fools

My nephew, Gavin Landless, was in the UK recently for a visit with his partner, Donna. They came to catch up with various friends and relatives and came over to see me and my Donna at our home in Cirencester. Gavin’s Mum, Cindy (my sister), came with them.

I’ve always liked Gavin, it’s interesting to chat with him as we do have several shared interests, and it was great to meet Donna as well. While he was with us he handed me a CD. For quite some time, Gavin and his friend Bob have been writing their own music and lyrics and performing locally in the part of upstate New York where they live, Syracuse. It occurred to Gavin that they had enough songs for a CD, Bob agreed, and Gavin, who once had a professional role in music production, set to work. They employed other musicians to enlarge the instrumental range and the CD, Dram Fools was released and seems to be doing well. It deserves to!

They try to define their style, writing on the website:

Think vocal-driven R&B-jazz-pop-Celtic-alternative and you’ll have, well, still no idea really. So it’s better to just follow them, listen to a few tracks, and find your favorite song!

So perhaps I’ll simply say that it’s hard to decide which is my favourite song because they are all really, really good. But I have to pick one or two, don’t I? – Lead with Your Heart is my favourite musically, Halfway Home contains my favourite lyrics, and if I’m allowed a third choice it would have to be The legend of Dram Fools or Whisky River just for the mad joy and fun of it!

Keep going Bob and Gavin, Dram Fools you may call yourselves, but you’ve got something good going here!

See also:

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Another great song from Sarah

Another great song from Sarah

Sometimes we struggle because we know we’re at a place of final defeat. Yet beyond that defeat, hope can still spring up.

Sarah Reynolds is a talented singer and musician in the Cirencester area and has written, performed, mixed and produced several of her own songs. A little while ago her latest song, Wilderness, was released and I’d like to share it with you. Here’s the version with lyrics.

So – What is special about Wilderness and why do I love the song? For me, Sarah manages to capture both the anxiety and the struggle of seeming failure, but also the hope and expectation of redemption. Sometimes we struggle because we know we’re at a place of final defeat. Yet beyond that defeat, hope can still spring up – sometimes unexpectedly.

This is surely an experience we’ve all had – I’ve been at the end of my tether but finally realised the way forward depends, not on my ability and strength, but on an external source of help. So have you! We’ve all felt this way from time to time.

So this song’s emotional engagement comes from reminding us that there’s defeat within us, yet ‘hope springs eternal’ from elsewhere.

Follow Sarah online:


Sarah Reynolds

Sarah has focussed on collaborating with producers, writing, tracking and editing vocals, and releasing some songs

Sarah Reynolds is a talented song writer, composer and music producer who also has considerable ability as a singer. Her most recent release is ‘Covers Me’; she wrote the lyrics, composed the music, and sings the track too.

I was impressed when I first heard this song and liked it more and more on listening again – see what you think…

This particular song fits right into the genre of Christian music, but Sarah’s musical tastes are far more wide ranging than that. She’d like to develop her work in a variety of ways, writing music for TV and film for example; she has abilities and skills in recording, mixing, and production as well. That adds up to an unusual and valuable breadth in understanding and communication across the whole spectrum of roles in the music business.

Bio in a nutshell

Sarah was brought up in the Cotswolds in a house that was full of music. She learned piano and flute during her school years, at ten she was performing the lead role of Joseph in the school production of ‘The Techicolour Dreamcoat’, and she has a Music A level. Sarah achieved Grade 8 on the piano and then began improvising, taking a keen interest in the music of Alicia Keys’ early albums. She taught herself guitar while at university.

Sarah began writing songs as a teenager, and played in a songwriting competition at ‘The Cavern’ – Yes, that Cavern! She also began working with sound engineers, producers and other musicians, recording some of her songs, performing gigs around London, and learning more about production, recording, sound engineering and mixing.

Going forward

Recently, Sarah has focussed on collaborating with producers, writing, tracking and editing vocals, and releasing some songs. She works with others online a good deal, quite an advantage in these days of Covid-19. She’s always looking for talented writers, producers and artists to co-operate with, and to learn from. Here are some examples of her work with others:

In the future, I hope Sarah finds more great people to work with – I know she has significant talent and wide experience and won’t disappoint!

You can follow Sarah online:


Marble Machine – Wow!

What an amazing device

I came across this marble machine today, somebody posted the link to Mastodon, I watched it once, and absolutely had to write about it here. What an amazing device. It does lose its marbles – well, a few of them anyway towards the end.

The astonishing Marble Machine

What is Mastodon, I hear you cry? It’s sort of a bit like Twitter, but is an open, free and distributed system. Wikipedia, the fount of (almost) all knowledge knows what it is. (Wikipedia even knows about the Marble Machine.)

David Bolton’s music

I found his quiet, contemplative, gentle style rather lovely

Earlier this evening I came across a blog article by David Bolton in which he explains his musical journey in terms of composing and singing songs with his own guitar accompaniment.

At the the bottom of the article he has added a playlist. I found his quiet, contemplative, gentle style rather lovely and I’d like to share it with you here. I hope you’ll enjoy listening as much as I do.

That said, the article is worth a read as well; so don’t make a dash for the music without coming back to read about it later. There’s a lot of other good stuff on his blog too, if you have time to explore a bit.