June Tabor’s Turn of the Road: Music to Marry By

June Tabor (credit: Bseliger.de)

June Tabor is perhaps the finest female vocalist working today in the English folk tradition.  In his All Music Guide review, Richie Unterberger is dead on when he says: "June Tabor is probably the finest female traditional British folk singer of the late 20th century — if not the best British folk singer of her time, period."

She sings in a traditional idiom, but also includes in her repetoire contemporary songs complementing that folk tradition.  Her song choices are flawless.  Her arrangements are unusual, provocative and contemporary, while still honoring the tradition from which they spring.  And did I say that she sings some of the most beautiful and evocative music there is?

Our wedding photo

It’d be hard to pick a single recording to feature because so many are so good.  But I’ve chosen Against the Streams for purely sentimental reasons: I chose to sing The Turn of the Road (hear it) to my wife at our wedding meal.  It is simply the most gorgeous and romantic ballad I know of and a perfect choice for such an occasion:

Will you walk with me
Beyond the road’s turning,
Where Day takes the valley
That leads into Night?
Love will you walk with me
All through my journey
Or only till the light?

Believe me I need you
Don’t think of leaving
This evening your love lights
My way to the dawn
Don’t leave me here
Now you’ve got me believing
Tomorrow I’ll wake newborn.

If you will love me as I love you
Who cares how dark the night may appear.
If you will love me as I love you
Then I will know no fear.

The signs on the road
Are there to mislead you
At times I misread them
Though I was so wise.

The turn of the road, my love
That’s where I need you
Tears always blind my eyes.

Love, will you hold me
Through all my life’s evenings?
Love, will you take the road
Right to the end?

I never had someone
I could believe in
Forever my lover my friend.

What can one say?  It simply takes one’s breath away.  What is ever more amazing about this song is that it’s composer, Les Barker, is a famed punster and general eccentric on the folk scene.  After hearing one of his corny, over the top performances at a comedy club in Seattle, I’m simply amazed that this guy could’ve written such a profound lyric.  But he did–isn’t it amazing?

Against the Streams contains many wonderful songs.  But Waiting for the Lark (hear it) is stiff competition for The Turn of the Road.  What are its charms?  First, it is a child lullaby (written by Bill Caddick) and I’m a sucker for a good lullaby.  Second, unlike most lullabies, this one explores the child’s relationship with its father (we fathers like that sort of thing).  Third, the setting is a farm and I just love the rural imagery of moon and lark and cow and daddy’s boots in the drowsy morning.  Last, the musical arrangement here is exquisite: just Tabor’s unadorned (but gorgeous) voice and a plucked violin.  That’s it and that’s everything:

Sleep on child
It is not quite day
For the moon has still to set
The lark she will cry
And bring down the morning
To where you lie.
But the lark has not risen yet.

Sleep on child
While the birds rest on
The cow she sleeps in the stall.
For the meadow stands grey
In this dew-down morning
Before the day,
And waits for the lark to call.

Sleep on child
While the fields are still
And wait for your father’s hand
That he will not go
And the sun will not shine
And the cock will not crow.
Till the lark cries over the land.

Sleep on child
And heed no sound
Your father may rise in the dark
With his boots in his hand
Go drowsily down
By the doorway to stand,
Waiting for the lark.

As the father of three young children, this song strikes right to the quick.

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