Artists
Album Info
Release Date: 2024-02-09Label: Future Grave
Released and sold by reverbworship.com & Future GraveLimited to 50 copies
Side A recorded in 2023.
Side B recorded in 2021. Originally released October 2022 as a digital-only track for the compilation tribute album - ‘Spirit of Clive: A Tribute to the Music of Clive Palmer & COB.
Side A
Meanwood Valley Tanneries
(Henry Parker)
A song written for the tanning industry of Leeds, which grew up in the Meanwood Valley, to the north of the city, in the mid 17th century. The song tries to conjure atmosphere and describe the process of the work, of fell-mongers stripping the hide, before soaking the skins in lime and oak-tannin. In the 19th century Leeds was the second largest leather producing city in the UK, throwing out 100,000 pairs of boots a week. Due in part to it’s foul smelling industry, the Meanwood valley was known for being a particularly rough place to live, with drunkenness and crime being rife. Eventually the local woods were completely stripped of the necessary bark used for the processing of the raw leather and in the early 20th century foreign competition drove the mills and tanneries out of business. The son of the owner of Meanwood Tannery, Samuel Smith, went on to run the family’s famous brewery in nearby Tadcaster.
Inspiration for the song and information for sleeve notes comes from The West Yorkshire Woods – Part II: The Aire Valley by Chris Goddard, 2021.
Side B
Sweet Spring
(COB / Clive’s Original Band)
Appearing as a bonus track on the Sunbeam Records CD re-issue of COB’s 2nd album: Moyshee McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, originally released by Polydor in 1972, this song, possibly written by Mick Bennet or Clive Palmer never made it onto the LP at the time but remains an enchanting glimpse into the period. The band were immersed in philosophy, Buddhism and poetry; and Sweet Spring’s yearning lyrics draw from Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill, “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea”.