Ian David Green – Songs to the Dust
Folk singer songwriter virtuoso Ian David Green is releasing a new album Songs to the Dust on October 6. Songs to the Dust was recorded and produced at Metro13 studios, Edinburgh by Marty Hailey and mastered at King Willy Sounds by grammy-award winning engineer William Bowden.
This album is the last of his trilogy that began with Songs of the Sea which was released in 2021, followed by Songs from the Wheel in 2022. In Songs of the Sea the focus was on the common universal experiences of connection and loss from the perspective on a personal level. Songs from the Wheel then considered the fractious and various happenings of different folks, as Green explored various characters and their dispositions and happenstances. This album, Songs to the Dust, is the most focused on the dark side of humanity of the trilogy.
Title track “Song to the Dust” sets the tone: somber, reflective, pensive, this is almost prayerful: “sing a song that you hope will be enough.” It points its finger to the vast infinity of mortality. “Love Comfort Me” is an ode to love itself, the pensive way we experience love and and the call for love to comfort us. The trajectory of the song feels like the bus just before sunrise opening out onto full glory as the sun finally comes up. And this is the metaphor for our abstract relationship with love that Green calls into focus here.
“Kostya Got A Gun” is a song about a lad with a Russian name who has a gun, and the sorrowful arrangement plays bouyantly while Green sings in a hushed tone.
A mournful song is up next: “Don’t turn out the light, don’t let me fade out of your sight, Rosaline.” Sorrowful and connects with your weeping heart.
“Leiby Kletzky” “went walking on a blue Brooklyn warm afternoon … his first walk home from school. Missing the turn that he had rehearsed, he kept on for four blocks or five.” This song takes a twist, as all good songwriting does, and grips your heartstrings. This song recounts a horrific and sensationalized murder of an 8 year old boy in Brooklyn NY by a complete stranger.
“The Last Long Dance of Bonnie and Clyde” with its lines like “he was locked in a mirrored box with a sketchbook of full of frozen clocks and a backpack full of broken rocks by his side” chronicles the lead up to a jump, an escape, and a heart dying without making a sound, with notable banjo accompaniment. “What more can the heart do but send out a sign.”
Ian is from Liverpool, and that Liverpoolian magic is certainly in evidence in this thoughtful songwriting. We highly recommend this.
Find more detailed information here: http://www.iandavidgreen.com
And the music is available here: https://iandavidgreen.bandcamp.com/album/songs-to-the-dust
Enjoy our previous coverage here: Song Premiere: Ian David Green Antony and Cleopatra Head for the Highlands
Musicians on the album are Ian David Green (vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, banjo), Marty Hailey (vocals, mandolin, banjo, piano, bass, drums, keyboards), Cameron Jay (trumpet), Michael Owers (trombone), Konrad Wizniewski (tenor saxophone), Su-a Lee (cello, hand-saw), Heather Macleod and Gina Bancroft (vocals), Rachel Petyt (fiddle), and
Phil Alexander (accordion, piano).