Song to be used as part of WWI commemoration.

I WROTE this song about World War One. And when I wrote it I didn't really think about the fact that it was the centenary year of WWI and I didn't realise that the public was about to be bombarded with a media onslaught of rewritten history. History with 21st century anti-foreign patriot mentality, media products with a positive entertainment-pride spin and somewhere some sense of  genuine empathy for the mass slaughter of human beings in the name of barbaric power hungry Empires.

I just had the simple and perhaps over used idea of telling my grandad's story mixed in with snapshot lines about my own dad and a best friend's grandad's experiences. And I wrote it for the sake of writing a song as good and sincere as I could manage. The song is called "When The Whistle Blows" and is focused on contemplating your last moments alive before going over the top in the WWI trenches.

I also wanted to confront my own feelings about death and the loss of close relatives. How I still picture them and see them in dreams. What would they say to me now?

It turned out that it was topical and now it's been used as one song among others as part of a WWI Centenary "Preston Remembers" described in local council literature as a

 a partnership project that will join together the activities, exhibitions and events that are happening from 2014 – 2018 in Preston to mark the centenary of the First World War.

 http://www.prestonremembers.org.uk/about/find-out-more/

I will be playing this song live in the Guild Hall Foyer in Preston this Friday the 13th June, between 1.45 and 2.45pm.It will also be used as part of a historical film to be shown at a live performance and later in schools.

(to listen to a song click on the link for free streaming...https://soundcloud.com/mike-kneafsey-songwriter
or visit this site http://www.reverbnation.com/musician/mikekneafsey)

Ironically I ended up rewriting it to take out the word "shit" and to have the song take the perspective of a Lancashire soldier not an Irish man fighting as someone recruited from a country run by the British Empire.

I didn't have to think long about agreeing to these changes as I'm born in Lancashire of Irish extract and wrote those words as a fictional story based around my own relatives experience. I'll change it back when I sing it anywhere else. Plus I have a soft spot for the work of local councils with an ethos of providing educational services as part of a democratically elected body paid for by the taxpayer. It's part of our communal life and part of our shared wealth.

When The Whistle Blows, written by Mike Kneafsey

Out in the wind and the weather
Trying to find the feeling in my face
Digging a hole for my body
To keep it in one piece

I was a boy from the village
Press ganged and made to stand in line
Swimming in oceans of madness
I pray that it's not my time

PRE CHORUS: When you're facing a ll your fear
And a second takes your life
I say to myself, what do I know,
who am I? To take my one last look at the sky?

You were a mad Jack the captain
Fighting for the English against the Hun
In mud and bombs and clouds of yellow poison
Which way should a man run?

So put up the ladders get ready
Hold onto your rifles if you can
A million may die on this day today
For a piece of land

CHORUS: 

So think on all you know
And when that whistle blows ...it's over we go.

Running from Leyland to London
A man with no armistice in mind
The police and the priests they cannot catch you
If you make yourself hard to find

Gave up all my children to their future
Scattered all their lives and blew them free
Here's to good whiskey and the crucifix
Long may they carry me

So think on all you know and when that whistle blows
it's over we go...

And when you made it home
The town band played you in
Took you from the trenches to the mill
They teach us to serve
Put us to work
And then they train us to kill.

So put up the ladders get ready
Hold onto your rifle if you can
A million may die on this day today
For a piece of land.

So think on who you know
When that whistle blows
It's over we go...

 http://youtu.be/RYpeMWSfVLE  

Here's a youtube link to a live performance of the song When The Whistle Blows taken last summer at the Picnic In The Park open air gig run by Preston City Council in Avenham Park.

My grandfather Jack Kneafsey  was photographed in full officer uniform though I don't know whether its the Irish or British Army as I've been told he was an officer in both. Maybe he served in the new Irish army after the Irish Free State (26 of Ireland's 32 counties) became liberated from Britain in 1922. He was definitely, previously, a captain in the Royal West Kents in WWI. 

 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=D4383858

I'd never seen what he looked like before. And I don't know anything like the full truth of it.

I was also told by relatives that he won medals, served in the trenches and earned himself the nickname "Mad Jack." By all accounts he was quite a ferocious, hard drinking chap.

I wrote the song based on my imagined scenarios and my own knowledge of history combined with hearsay and family stories. It is not intended as more than an emotional interpretation with my own experiences of life providing any real feelings of a real fear of death. I'm using my imagination.

Plus my other grandfather on my mother's side of the family, ended up as soldier and then a mill worker. Along with other relatives from Yorkshire who also served in the military or worked in mills. My own father served in World War Two and my friend's Irish grandfather served in WW1 claiming he'd been press ganged from his village. He also took part in a mutiny. I used their stories as inspiration as well.

The main thrust of the song - the chorus itself was really about me finding a photograph of my grandfather and wondering what it was that he lived through. What made him the man he was? What was it like to face up to the likelihood of your death, steel yourself and force yourself to stand up and run into a living nightmare of destroyed flesh and bone in mud and violence.

What would it do to a man to come out the other side of that having witnessed so much bloodshed? How could you live after that? And how did it effect your children and their children? The generations to come brutalised by a war over imperial territory, where human beings were nothing more than fodder for the ambitions of a few.

I also felt that it was inspirational. 

If a man could be prepared to stand up and be killed then he might be prepared for anything in life. The chorus is also intended as a general digging deep for courage in the face of death.

But since I wrote the song and the feelings are mine first and foremost I can honestly says it also makes feel the bitter anger of knowing that the ruling classes would happily treat us, the millworkers and soldiers, the grandchildren of millworkers and soldiers as fodder. Military fodder or low wage fodder. As part of a big plan which shows no compassion for our humanity or our rights to a free and meaningful existence and a real wage. And a German soldier or an Irish soldier is no different to an English soldier. They are all just people being used as fodder to fight for the territorial ambitions and egos of our rulers.

We're either cheap labour to be grateful or expendable hardware to be used in a war. 

(a scene taken from the film version of Friday Night, Saturday Morning - very apt - don't let the bastards grind you down).

Incidentally....

I will be doing some solo sets at private functions this July as well as playing at Cloudspotting Festival.

Please click on the links and like our Facebook Page. https://www.facebook.com/SweeneyAstray

We also have an EP for sale - http://sweeneyastray.bandcamp.com/releases

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And an official website...http://www.sweeneyastray.co.uk/

Sweeney Astray (double bass/vocals - Hannah Dacey; drums  - Anna Ashworth; lead vocals/guitar - Mike Kneafsey) will play their next live gig at the Oddbar in the northern quarter Manchester on August the 3rd. 2014.

Here we are playing the Oddbar in 2013.