released November 5, 2020

Produced and Played by: John Wesley Harding, Eric Kupper, Pete DuCharme and Mike Leahy

The Cast of Assembled Players, Producers, Mixers and Engineers:
John Wesley Harding, Eric Kupper, Pete DuCharme, Mike Leahy
Recorded at:
1, 2, 5, 6, 8-11: Hysteria!, Weston, CT (27/28 June 02)
Mixed by Eric Kupper
3, 4, 7, 12: Music For Picture, Union Square, NY (16/22 July 02)
Mixed by Pete DuCharme

LINER NOTE

Gentle listener –

This album was previously called Delayer – which is funny if you like Yes. Even if you’re not a ‘yesman’, I think you can still enjoy it by picturing the title in Roger Dean font #1. But then the title changed, as titles do. Swings and Roundabouts: "What you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts". I remember my headmaster at school saying it. Everything balances out in the end. Most specifically, in a playground. "What you lose on one venture, you recoup on another – it’s a way of restating the law of averages" is how Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable puts it.

Though the delay of The Man With No Shadow was not strictly part of Plan A, it wasn’t hard to work out how to turn it to our mutual advantage – put out an entirely new and different album of unrecorded songs. Some of these are songs that people had asked me to put on CD because they had heard them live (Darwin), some are songs too odd to play live without getting them down in a recording first (Thank You, You’re Welcome), and others are songs that I like to play live but wouldn’t quite belong on one of my more ambitiously produced records, unless I gave them an inappropriately grand arrangement – when really they just required to be played out loud with a microphone dangling somewhere near my mouth (For An Actress).

So that’s what I did, with a little help from my friends. Twelve new songs right here, right now. And twelve more new ones just around the corner – already made, ready to go. Swings and Roundabouts! Enjoy.

JWH. Brooklyn, October 2002.

Merry-Go-Round
Written one evening in Chicago, in the kitchen of Sheila’s old apartment while I was waiting for Dag. When he arrived, we wrote a song called How We Wrote The Song ‘Bloodyfinger’, which I don’t think survives. But this one does. Much played by Robert Lloyd and myself in the famous duo format.
Vocals, Guitars, ‘Sitar’, Bass: JWH
Pipe Organ, Percussion: EK

The Governess
Written in Seattle. Minnie Driver played The Governess in a movie of the same name, but this isn’t about her. When I sing this song, I always see a woman in voluminous dark skirts racing as fast as she can up a hill. If you’ve ever fallen asleep during Masterpiece Theatre, then you might well have woken up and written something like this.
Vocals, Guitar: JWH
Harpsichord: EK

The Common Kiss
Probably the oldest song here. I wanted this to be on three albums that it never quite made its way on to. We could have done this song at least 32 ways: here’s the 33rd.
Vocals, Acoustic Guitars, Bass, Piano, Percussion: JWH
Electric Guitar: ML

Dreamfader
I played Dreamfader quite a lot towards the end of the Awake tour. At the time, it featured Kirk Swan, once of Dumptruck, on guitar and here it features Mike Leahy, coincidentally also once of Dumptruck. I’d like to dedicate it to Kirk, because if we lived nearer he’d have been jamming all over this recording. And if Robert and I lived round the corner from each other, Robert would be on every track too.
Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Pump Organ: JWH
Electric Guitar: Mike Leahy

Darwin
Written in Seattle and played live but never put down for posterity until now. And here, for better or worse, it is. I think that the last verse owes a debt to a song called Cockroaches On Parade by Harry Waller that I heard on the Tribute To Steve Goodman LP (an album that I remember as being the first time I’d ever really heard of a tribute album – those were the days). It is, at least, the only in-depth song that I can think of about cockroaches. Having said that, the idea for the last verse was suggested to me by Shelley Jackson and she’s almost certainly never heard that song.
Vocals, Guitar: JWH

Love’s Reign of Terror
I wrote these words on a plane from NY to SF, and then I recorded it at CvS’s studio in The Tenderloin: he left the room for some coffee and by the time he came back, somehow, I had the whole song in front of me, tune and all, and we recorded it immediately. Oh, there is a connected quote: "Are not vile acts committed as often with the heart’s help as without it?…. Will we ever be done with the imbecile Sentimental Inquisition, the Heart’s reign of terror?" Milan Kundera: Testaments Betrayed. 1995.
Vocals, Guitar: JWH
Drum, Organ: EK

Meet The Sheep
Written at my house on Vashon Island, WA. This song isn’t about audiences by the way. It’s about what suppliers of entertainment think about audiences. Not me, though. Oh no. This is one of those songs where I just decide to stick with one idea and not muddle it, or myself, with a second one.
Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Bass, Percussion: JWH
Electric Guitar: ML
Congas: PD

For An Actress
To my horror, I have just been informed that there actually is a remake of Rear Window and that this fact makes For An Actress, by default, about Daryl Hannah. I’d just like to say right here that it isn’t about Daryl Hannah and I’ve never met Daryl Hannah (or Minnie Driver – though I would far prefer to meet Minnie Driver). I have of course followed her film career closely, all the way from Splash! right up to Roxanne. (And her singing career, by the way – though, if it involves more than backing vocals on Jackson Brown’s cover version of The Incredible String Band’s First Girl I Loved, I couldn’t rightly say.)
Vocals, Guitar: JWH

Don’t Rain On Me Today
Written in Seattle, this song has already made it on to a record called New Quadrophonic Highway, as kindly covered by Russ Tolman. I wrote this in Seattle after listening to a lot of Fred Neil. I’d like to send this song out to Nige, who was always its greatest champion. This song, by the way, isn’t about Gwyneth Paltrow, as those other two weren’t about Minnie or Daryl.
Vocals, Guitar: JWH
Vibes: EK

Thank You, You’re Welcome
Written in Chicago, at the dining room table in Sheila’s new house. It started out as me trying to play Angie by Davey Graham and then turned into something else entirely. I wasn’t waiting for Dag Juhlin this time either – I was waiting for Chris Mills.
Vocals, Guitars, Bass: JWH
Drums, Piano: EK

The Fall Of The House Of Harding
Written on a long car trip from New York to Austin, TX with my feet up on the dashboard. (I was the passenger.) Not precisely the true story of my family, obviously. One of my sisters, I would like to mention, is an actress, though none of the songs on this album are about her – including the bit in this song which refers to ‘my sister’.
Vocals and Guitar: JWH

World Of Light
In which we all die, one by one. Written in the back of a quiet van on tour some time last year. For Radical Gentlemen everywhere.
Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards: JWH
Loops: PD

All songs by John Wesley Harding, published by TOWNSONGS/ASCAP