Hi!

Last week we had the 45th Rowan & Friends at the Golden Ball. And this involved the usual singalong at the end. But also made myself and a few others making a fool out of ourselves as “The Jorvik Seinfeld Players”.

We reenacted an episode of Seinfeld called “The Ex-Girlfriend” with laugh tracks and slap bass stings all included.

The next Rowan & Friends gig will be myself playing solo keys and guitar at the Angel on The Green, York. This will be on the 13th of September. Probably about 8 or something.

Writing new songs

If you have been reading this newsletter for the past few weeks you will know I have been writing new songs. This has been going well, I reckon. And I am starting to talk to “the friends“ about the prospect of recording a new album.

This is still a long way off. Of course.

But it feels good to say that it is “in progress”. And I hope to release something new by the end of 2027 at the latest.

Since writing the last song of Go On! Roll That Old Boulder Away: “The Season of Longing”, I have been wondering what will come next. And I think whatever’s next will follow somewhat thematically (and musically) from that album, and hopefully take things even further.

But - as I just said - this is still a long way off.

This week’s recommendations

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS - I was told by a friend recently that Gerald Manley-Hopkins was a very good poet. That friend was correct. What I didn’t realise was how weird he was.

GMH - as I’ll now call him to avoid typing his name out in full - was mainly a parish priest and mainly unknown/unpublished during his lifetime. But he wrote spiritual, but very powerful, poetry that became famous thanks to a friend who posthumously published him.

The poem “The Blessed Mother compared to the Air we Breathe“, was the first of his I read, while sat in a bookshop in York. It opens with the incredible lines:

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;

Proper stuff.

GEORGE JONES - staying with the G’s: it’s always a good time for George Jones and in particular for The King Is Gone (So Are You) - which was formerly known as Yabadabadoo (So Are You), before Hanna Babera ceased and desisted the possum.

Another great, but nonsensical, George Jones song is Old King Kong, which has the brilliant chorus “Yeah Old King Kong was just a little monkey compared to my love for you“.

Proper stuff.

That’s

it. Thankyou for reading this weekly newsletter.

More next week,

Rowan. :~)