My first series of posts will focus on the work I’ve been doing over the last year or so assembling the Lincolnshire Suite.

This post revisits the very start of the project and the proof of concept track that became “Straight Furrows”.

After mine and Graham’s brainstorming session regarding starting out on our Lincolnshire journeys, I went home and starting digging for video footage of Lincolnshire I could potentially use. I knew Graham was focusing on a more Lincolnshire dialect based project so wanted to create something different, as a companion piece almost. I found quite a lot of footage on the BFI site which was gathered footage from all over the UK, there were a few Lincolnshire based ones and I waded my way through them.

Eventually I found my source, there were two perfect videos made in the late 70s/ early 80s actually sharing some of the same footage, so an enterprising cameraman at least, marketing footage to two sources!

The videos were interesting as they showed Lincolnshire in all its pastoral glory, and highlighted the small market towns and events within them as well as tourist attractions. They were almost like a time capsule capturing a lost era, with recognisable places and characters from my own past.

However they were made to attract business to Lincolnshire and promote its great transport links to Europe and beyond, ironically the very thing that would destroy Lincolnshire’s pastoral calm in the future.

This dual aspect of a lost past and a future that turns out not quite as planned really appealed to my interest in Hauntology and of course the footage and narration really resonated with my own past and lost futures too. I set to work finding some snippets of sound to use.

The idea for a travelogue came from my own memories of travelling around Lincolnshire as a child, in the back of my father’s Renault 16.

We used to drive over to Woodhall Spa regularly as my Grandma (Dad’s mum) was in an old peoples home there. Dad would go in and spend time with her and after I’d had a few minutes there mum would take me out to the town and we’d walk the high street or have a wander in the woods, taking in the tearoom in the woods or the famous Kinema in the woods.

I remember the high street very well and its Victorian iron awnings over the entrances to the shops, it felt almost sea side like, which I suppose is due to it being a Victorian Spa town.

Equally of interest to me and my war movie obsessed younger self was the fact that the famous Dambusters squadron used to come to the town for much needed R&R and I imagined Guy Gibson walking the high street and visiting the famous Petwood hotel and the Blue Bell Inn just down the road from Woodhall in Tattershall Thorpe. Woodhall is now home to a great yearly 1940s weekend which is very busy but well worth a visit.

My memories of the journey to and from Woodhall through the rolling farmland of Lincolnshire and the inevitable signs for Ploughing Competitions we would spot along the way directly inspired the song I was to write.

Straight Furrows came to being quite quickly, I’d been playing around with some of the new generative features of Ableton 12 and created the music based around some melodic loops it generated. Building my own instrumentation and rhythmic elements over the top. I used the sounds of the Roland CR78 initially as those sounds were very anchored in the 1980s for me and on a personal level Graham’s old BOSS DR55 Drumbox was the first one I’d used as a teen, and had very similar tones, an extra layer of nostalgia.

The song had two very distinct parts, a nice build which dropped to a wonderful melodic second part which felt very pastoral to me, exactly what I was looking for.

I’d intended the track to be an introduction to the project, so found a great bit of audio describing Lincolnshire and how it runs from the sea to the pastoral fields and wolds. This worked really well, and in fact in the live version I created later I use some of the musical introduction to one of the original videos too as it had a lovely pastoral feel which matched the feel of the track.

Then for the change I found some great audio talking about the art of field ploughing. It talked about the traditional ways being superseded by more modern mechanical methods and how a good ploughman valued the importance of a straight furrow. This worked so well over the musical change when part two dropped in and created a wonderful ambience.

The track was done. I created a live version and played it live for the first time appropriately in Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire and got some great positive feedback from the audience.

Here’s a video of that first performance in Cleethorpes:

https://youtu.be/4WcFynk_M8M?is=IvSaZPR6Q0Nsdj0_

I also created a video I could use for live performances by using edits of the original colour footage in atmospheric black and white which added an extra layer of nostalgia.

Here’s the full video:

https://youtu.be/Sod8abc4IFM?is=BrU_jcWBOvA7K_qo

My proof of concept had worked. I now followed this pattern for the next song…

More of that next…

Blog post number three achieved! 🎉