Description
A CD of songs emphasising the dignity and value of each human being, with a strong rejection of the arms trade and war
My Name is Palestine
Making Holy Dreams Come True
In the Storms of life
Deportees (Plane crash at Los Gatos)
Sing Aaron Sing
This Place
Victor Jara
To the God Whose Name is Mercy
Whose Garden Was This
Let Nothing Disturb You
Love is the Way
Produced by Kevin Duncan
Vocals, guitar and harmonica Garth Hewitt
Keyboards, hammond, bass Kevin Duncan
Backing vocals Abbie Goldbergand Pete Banks
Guitar and bass Dave Perry
Design Abbie Goldberg
Admin and coordination Isobel Webster
Except where specified, all words and music by Garth Hewitt
℗ & © 2019 GingerDog Records
Recorded in GingerDog Studios
With special thanks to Canon Ed Pruen
for the music on Making Holy Dreams Come True
and thanks to Bruce Pont and Dave Perry for the demos and for This Place recorded at The Saffron Room
You can download the lyrics here
“The Accidental CD” – the story of how this album came to be…
Garth had created the vinyl 12″ single My Name Is Palestine as a project for justice. But for those without a record deck le decided also to release the song on CD – as an EP (extended play) to include the B side and three other songs he had been working on. Then as the process for manufacture of the 12” single was going to take a while, record producer Kevin Duncan of GingerDog Records suggested that gave time for Garth to write more songs and make a full album. So the single became an accidental album!
Poets and songwriters
Garth wrote more songs (including one about the soul singer Aaron Neville – called “Sing Aaron Sing) and then recognised this as his chance to record some songs by songwriters he admired, to bring them before a new audience as the songs took on new relevance. At a recent Joan Baez concert she sang Woody Guthrie’s Deportees, which Garth remembered singing himself back in his university days. Joan Baez related it to today, to the border between the States and Mexico, and the song seemed to take on new life.
Garth and his wifeGill also saw Tom Paxton in concert singing his song, Whose Garden Was This? Garth had sung this in some of his gigs in the seventies and again it seemed so relevant to todays climate change issues.
The British poet Adrian Mitchell had written a poem about Victor Jaraof Chile, a songwriter and musician killed when Pinochet came to powerin 1973. Arlo Guthrie (Woody’s son), put a tune to it and performed it, as did other artists. It is a very powerful poem and Garth decided to include it.
Garth also came across a song by poet and musician Tom Kimmel. Garth and Gill’s daughter Abi used to go to St Augustine’s Church in Nashville and, as you would expect from a church in Nashville, they periodically release albums – on one of these was a moving poem/ songThis Place, about church, both its significance as sacred space, and the role it can play for a community.
Finally Garth recorded Kris Kristofferson’s Love is the Way, which starts off with these words,
“Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness,
A tiny blue marble was spinning through space;
Born in the splendour of God’s holy vision
And drifting away like a tear down his face.”
As Garth says “It’sAbeautiful poem from a great songwriter’.
So the themes of Garth’s new album “My Name is Palestine” are the dignity and value of each human being, including a strong rejection of the arms trade and war (featured especially in To the God whose name is Mercy & In the Storms of life)and with prayers and poems on themes of mercy, justice, peace, the companionship of a loving God and hope to complete the picture.”
