A new song out today. from a new project just unveiled.

The song is called 'Golden Streets, Bitter Tears' and is the first offering from a history and music project called 'Bring Your Own Hammer’.

Bring Your Own Hammer is a new project in which historians and composers collaborate to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources.

It is rooted in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the Irish Diaspora and involves songwriters and composers from Ireland and Britain.

‘Golden Streets, Bitter Tears’ features the voice of Brigid Mae Power and is out now via Dimple Discs.

https://bringyouownhammerpresents.bandcamp.com/

I wrote a few words about how I came to be a part of BYOH.

When Cathal Coughlan first contacted me about contributing to Bring Your Own Hammer, I immediately accepted the invitation. We arranged to meet for a coffee on the seafront near where I live in Dublin.

He had asked me to think of somewhere close to the local train station and I suggested this café by the promenade. The café, incidentally, doubled up as a hairdressers which Cathal found very amusing, making some quip about us getting some highlights done while we were there.

I was the first to arrive for our meeting and I took my coffee from the counter and sat by the window. I recall gazing across at the yellow sand bags that had taken up permanent residence by the sea wall, and contemplating the open sea beyond.

Cathal arrived and eloquently explained the concept behind the project, describing the deep well of material we were invited to draw from, thanks in no small part to his historian friend, Richard.

It was clear from the beginning that this was to be a new approach to songwriting for me. I had been writing songs for decades and had always felt like my inspiration comes from all manner of mysterious places, and seldom had I formally researched anything ahead of putting a lyric to music.

In the months that followed, I found myself divining for magic threads. My notebook filled slowly with my longhand cursive, transcribing from newspaper archives and court sessions, first hand accounts of hardship, digitised manuscripts written in ink, epistolary missives, diaries, eyewitness incident reports, transcripts and essays.

I spent long hours at library desks and kitchen tables, on trains and in departure lounges. Reading and reading. Often I was lead along by instinct or chance. I found real-life stories. Stories of strife and resilience, stories of adversity and struggle, stories of longing and of poverty, stories of survival and failure, stories of misery and sadness, stories of minor triumph, stories of loss and disappointment, stories of the fields, stories of the shoreline, stories of the streets, stories of the workhouse, the prison yard, the courthouse, stories of hunger and yearning, stories of the open seas, stories of the human spirit.

I felt enrapt by these figures of the past and what they lived through. And their names visited me in my sleep.

I am thankful for the seafront rendezvous that day and for the songs that followed. I hope these songs will find a place in the world and will, in time, live a life of their own.

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And here are is some historical background about ‘Gold Streets, Bitter Tears’ courtesy of historian Dr Richard Mc Mahon, co-founder of BYOH.

This song is a beautiful and poignant evocation of the idea of the sea journey as a means of escape from the poverty and inequalities of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the promise and perils of migration in a more universal sense. The narrator has not only migrated overseas, but is encouraging others to do the same and leave behind the ‘devil hunger pains’ that characterised his life in the home country. America is ostensibly portrayed as a land of equality and freedom where he can ‘walk with the best of the town’ and he is freed from ‘misery chains’, with an implicit juxtaposition of the liberty and opportunity in America and the repression and restrictions of life in Ireland. The attractive and enticing image of life ‘over the waves’ is, however, superbly undercut by the song’s refrain ‘Golden Streets, Bitter Tears’, suggesting all is not as it seems. This refrain offers a subtle but compelling hint at what we hope will be a key theme of this project; the promise and peril of the migrant sea journey of the nineteenth century and the often bitter consequences for many who sought to leave or, indeed, return. The song is inspired by migrant letters sent back to Ireland which offered an idealised image of life in the United States and the lyrics draw in part from the original letters and in part from the careful imaginings of the composer.

For a discussion of these migrant letters and the source for the title of the song, see Kerby A. Miller and Bruce D. Boling, ‘Golden Streets, Bitter Tears: The Irish Image of America during the Era of Mass Migration’, Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall, 1990 – Winter, 1991, Vol. 10, No. 1/2, The Irish in America (Fall, 1990 – Winter, 1991), pp. 16-35.

17David Harrington, Berniie NiFhurlinge and 15 others