The Visitor Featuring Mike Garry

from Quarehawk by Michael Walsh

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about

Mike Garry joins us on this piece. In the moments between night and dawn, insanity and imagining the final seconds of my father’s life, this piece helped me find a way to start to describe my feelings of the shock of loss of his death. The air is a traditional song, An Buachaillín Donn (The Brown Haired Boy), I learned from Aoife Granville, the great Dingle musician. It seemed to connect with the pain I was feeling. I struggled to find words and could hear the voice of the poet Mike Garry in my head. I asked and he wrote some words for me about the relationship between fathers and sons and loss.

lyrics

The Visitor for James Hugh Garry.
My father is with me, he visits me, calls to me from the dark.
Plays tricks, turning lights on and turning lights off, changing channels on TV.
Once, when I was sleeping, he shaved my eyebrow.
I could feel the warm water drips from his fingertips.
The soft, slow scraping blade, the dabbing of is off white handkerchief
And a kiss, a kiss so soft, it might never have happened.

My father was a fighter, hands like bricks, buckets for fists
Heart of fire, glowing golden, flowing and he loved the best he could.
For he knew little of love and hungered the most basic of things,
The very fundamentals, the glue that binds the heart and soul together.
But he did the best he could and I believe he loved.

My father was a dancer, feet like leaves on a breeze
He’d glide in and out and in and out and in and he stole the heart of my mother
with a single waltz.
Mesmerized her eyes and mind with a single dance and she swears she floated that night
just above the dance floor and by the look in her eyes when she told me,
she was probably right.

My father is with me, he visits me, he calls to me from the dark.
He plays tricks, turning lights on and turning lights off and changing channels on TV
And once when I was sleeping he shaved my eyebrow.
I could feel the warm water drips from his fingertips, the soft slow scraping blade
and the dabbing of his off-white handkerchief and a kiss so soft,
It might never have happened.

Copyright Michael Garry

credits

from Quarehawk, released May 29, 2020
The Visitor (Words copyright: Mike Garry. Music Trad Arr: Michael Walsh, Liz Hanks, Michael McGoldrick).
Vocals: Mike Garry.
Wooden Flute: Michael Walsh
Cello: Liz Hanks
Guitar Synths & Soundscape Samples: Michael McGoldrick
Produced by Michael Walsh & Michael McGoldrick

Recorded and Engineered By:
Michael McGoldrick at Boxroom Studios Manchester.
Tom Wright at Powered Flight, Sheffield.
Mixed by Sam Proctor.
Mastered by Nick Cooke

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about

Michael Walsh Sheffield, UK

Manchester born, Sheffield based singer, fluter & poet. My music reflects growing up in the Irish community in Manchester my Yorkshire home & my love for the music of the Iberian peninsula. My flute playing is inspired by Irish traditional music from the west of Ireland. The album charts the last three years of my life. Celebration, loss, moving on & finding my own voice. ... more

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