They will con you into dying

Dick Gaughan when he was still performing.

Thirteenth in a series of posts about protest music for the current crisis.

The irony is undeniable. The Celtic Music record label in Britain, at one point, championed the release of music which deserved, but had previously not found an audience.

Now the label is being legally challenged by Dick Gaughan, renowned Scottish singer and songwriter, to reclaim rights to albums of his music once released on the label.

These days, Celtic Music seems unable or unwilling to release music it once championed. If Gaughan succeeds in gaining access to his music, he may help other musicians like Nic Jones, Martin Simpson and Barry and Robin Dransfield who have also seen their creative work languish.

Gaughan could use the royalties, no matter how nominal, and the recognition by a new generation of folk audience, because at 77 his own performance career has been cut short. After a stroke affected his ability to play and travel, Gaughan retired from the stage in 2016.

Gaugan recently found an angel in author Colin Harper, who has written biographies of guitarists Bert Jansch and John McLaughlin, and wrote a definitive history of Irish uillean pipes. He's also recorded his own music and produced a number of musical box sets. When Harper reconnected with Gaughan's music, he was startled by its power, and its unavailability, and wanted to revive the catalogue.

The box set.

So, with Gaughan's blessing, he began compiling recordings, and raising money for a recently-released album of Gaughan's BBC recordings, and a soon-to-be-released seven CD, and DVD box set. When he sought permission to access the Celtic Music recordings, he hit a brick wall, and then set out to raise money allowing Gaughan to make his legal challenge.

Fortunately, not all of Gaughan's music is unavailable.

One of Gaughan's most masterful albums, and a favorite of mine is A Different Kind of Love Song. While Gaughan has always been a genius at interpreting traditional Scots and Irish song, particularly songs of the oppressed, he has also demonstrated a deft hand at transforming popular songs, and he has produced a spectacular body of original work.

A Different Kind of Love Song is based on an original Gaughan song of the same name, that explains how his protest songs might not be considered typical love songs because they are based on a broader love of humanity, peace, justice and hope. "So you see where you misunderstand me/ If you listen again then you might even find/All the songs that I sing are love songs/ But their love is a different kind."

A Different Kind of Love Song is an album filled with protest songs (the streaming and CD versions contain on traditional number, Lassie Lie Near Me) written by Gaughan and writers he admires.

At the heart of the album is a triptych of songs written by others, Song of Choice written by Peggy Seegers (I wrote about it here), a song by Oswald Andrae, Prisoner 562, about Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist who won the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize and was tried and convicted of treason for releasing German rearmament plans, and A Father's Song, written by Ewan MacColl (who was married to Peggy Seeger).

It's a spectacular and frightening musical trilogy that has always moved me.

The final song in the trilogy, A Father's Song, is a disquieting bedtime lullaby that juxtaposes the imaginary "ogres" and "wicked witches" with the more frightening and real "greedy sons of bitches, who are waiting to exploit your life away."

Gaughan delivers the song with a force that its composer failed to exploit in his own recording of it.

It's a lullaby one can barely imagine a father singing to a child, and therein lies its horror, because it's a completely necessary cautionary tale. The real monsters tread amongst us.

I was fortunate enough to produce a concert with Gaughan at the University of Hartford for WWUH in July 1995, where he performed this song live.

That's another day gone by, son, close your eyes

For the moon is chasing clouds across the skies

Go to sleep and have no fear, son

For your mam and dad are near, son

And the giant is just a shadow on the wall

Go to sleep and when you wake it will be light

There's no need to fear the darkness of the night

It's not like the dark you find, son

In the depths of some men's minds, son

That defies the daily coming of the dawn

Stop crying now, let daddy dry your tears

There's no bogeyman to get you, never fear

There's no ogres, wicked witches

Only greedy sons-of-bitches

Who are waiting to exploit your life away

Lie easy in your bed and grow up strong

You'll be needing all your strength before too long

For you'll soon be on your way, son

Fighting battles every day, son

With an enemy who thinks he owns the world

Don't you let 'em buy you out or break your pride

Don't you let yourself be used then cast aside

If you listen to their lying

They will con you into dying

You won't even know that you were once alive

No more talking now it's time to go to sleep

There are answers to your questions but they'll keep

Go on asking while you grow, son

Go on asking till you know, son

And then send the answers ringing through the world