Mustard’s Retreat’s Living in the Dream

mustardsretreat9I could just write: wow, another well thought out album from Mustard’s Retreat. But that would be a bit wee!

David Tamulevich and Michael Hough the duo who make up Mustard’s Retreat have been around for a few years now about 42years! In fact they now have 13 Albums to their credit. Judging by the photos in the cover notes, they may be a lot older, greyer, and leaner than pictures on previous albums, but they are still hungry enough to produce brilliant entertaining albums. As singer-songwriters this gets harder year-by-year, as often you can see, a lot of singer-songwriters are way past their best. Not so the case with Mustards Retreat.

The material on this album proves  Michael and David can still ‘cut the mustard’ when it comes to writing some good songs. There are 14 songs on the album and all but 6 are written by the duo. Two of these are traditional ‘Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy’ from the Copper family collection and ‘Blow the Candle Out’ traditional but with some new lyrics and chorus added by Michael Hough.

The others are ‘Let the Mystery Be’, Iris DeMent fabulous song and a couple I haven’t heard before ‘Waiting for the Hatch to Rise’ by Jim Smith. Adding some variation to the album, there is also some poetry ‘My Candle Burns’ and ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ set to a musical background by Michael. Also a set of tunes ‘Grace/Cotter Creek/Bobs Moving Day’ to complete the variation.

David’s songs all seem to centre on love – nothing wrong with that.  My favourite track, and deserves an extra mention is ‘The First Flower’ with words guaranteed to touch your heart.

As I said before, another great album from Mustard’s Retreat and one I am sure fans of the band will enjoy. You can buy it here.

(Yellow Room Records, 2011)

Peter Massey

Born in 1945, Peter Massey, Senior Writer, is now living in the city of Chester, England with his wife Sandra. Now medically retired he worked for 35 years in the shoe business. He has been a semi-professional musician and singer performing mainly traditional / contemporary folk songs for over 38 years as part of the duo (and sometimes trio) 'The Marrowbones'. His musical interest started at the age of 14 with Rock 'n' Roll and by the time his seventeenth birthday came along he was already playing rock 'n' roll and R&B in and around the local dance venues and clubs such as the Cavern in Liverpool. Thankfully he was saved from the evils of rock 'n' roll when he discovered real music and folk clubs. His collection of recordings houses over 3500 folk songs alone. Other interests and hobbies include Computers and Amateur Radio (he has a class A G4 call sign) His latest project is 'The Little Room Studio' dedicated to making 'live' recordings of folk artists and producing their work on to CD using a portable digital recording studio. To date he has written and composed over 12 folk songs and co-wrote with Gordon Morris another 10 that have been recorded on CD. The song writing has continued and they have another 10 songs in the pipeline not yet recorded to CD. Favourite music / bands at the moment are Steeleye Span, The Battlefield Band, Little Johnny England and Fairport Convention, (in that order), and much admires the work of Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Roy Bailey, Vin Garbutt, and Bob Fox, to name but a few! You can visit the crummy Web site here and read about The Marrowbones and how to get your free songbook.

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