Album Notes

The following are liner notes from POSING AS HUMAN to give you an idea of what the album is about - the CD comes with a 32 page booklet containing liner notes, lyrics and photos.

Track 1: Don't Stop the World was written during recording in the summer of 2003.
Gerry came to the studio one morning and sang it and we knew straight away that it had to be on the album. It made us laugh as it could so easily apply to any of us.
It is one of those songs that you think is about you because it is about such common failings. No one is perfect, so Kris keeps telling the band, and we all have to make allowances. Allowing each one of our friends at least two major failings really helps keep friendships together. Drummers should be allowed 4.
The way we record is all part of our creative process. We don't rehearse or 'know' a song when we come to record it. We have the words, chords and melody and let the rest just grow. This one grew and grew, blending alternative country, folk and indy rock and reflecting our diverse tastes and interest in this crossover of Scottish and American music.

Track 2: The Way Things Are. Like the sixty or more other songs that we wrote for this album that didn't make the final fourteen, this one was consigned to a cupboard
marked 'boxed set' - those which one day might get
recorded. At least we have the next four albums written. It didn't make it back onto the album until a couple of weeks before we thought the CD was finished. All the rock songs that Gerry, Kris and Deb wrote were dropped in favour of a more alt.country feel which Gerry happened to be
coming up with at the time. The Way Things Are is our first original 'bluegrass' song - inspired by our debut radio tour in America in 2002. Our friend Susan Forbes Hansen, a DJ with WFCR in Connecticut, took us to see Robert Earl Keen and Eliza Gilkyson at the Iron Horse. What a night to remember! Their music became the soundtrack of
our trip. It also got us thinking about the origins of bluegrass and country, and how our emigrant ancestors took their Scottish folk to the 'New World' and ended up
creating a whole new music. So we have come full circle, but this time with us departing America touched by all this wonderful music to return back to the Scottish west coast island of Bute and start writing our new album.

Track 3: The Gallows. There wasn't a dry eye among us when we first played this song. On the album we wanted it to be a song of empowerment, not sentimental and sad. What you hear is a tale of a couple who are fighting for what they truly believe in and are willing to pay the ultimate price for. The night before his execution an anti-government rebel, framed, beaten and tortured, accepts his fate. The next time he will see his love will be in the moments before his death. His lover is aware of this fact but is still supportive of his actions and pledges to be strong for him - showing no fear, shedding no tears and promising to continue the struggle.
This could be any dissident from any culture but the idea here was to extend our interpretation of the plight of the characters in the song 'Loch Lomond'.
This is no sad lament but rather an articulation of defiance in the face of seeming defeat as sadly relevant today as it was all those hundreds of years ago.

Track 4: Both Sides the Tweed combines a lyric from 1707 and a beautiful melody from the great Scottish singer/songwriter Dick Gaughan. We like to cover songs
which really touch us or express our feelings about a particular subject relevant to our lives. The subject of 'union' crops up a lot in the UK these days, as some forces are trying to break the country up and divide people, while at the same time others are trying to make us part of a Federal Europe. The creation of the United Kingdom had its outspoken opponents and this song is asking people on both sides of the border, the river Tweed, to consider that living peacefully with their neighbours while retaining the Sovereignty of their nation, is preferable to anything else. The corrupt 'robber barons' who sold their country for personal profit at this point in Scottish history did not reflect the mood of many of the Scottish people and certainly not the feeling of the writers of these lyrics.

Track 5: Get Away. Breaking up is hard to do, especially when someone who has had years to discuss 'critical issues' waits until you are on the way out the door, and their life, before they finally show any willingness to discuss the problems. Too little, too late - and filled with panic - they attempt to sort out the 'relationship' through emotional blackmail.
When the band first heard the 'demo' it sounded like Robert Smith of The Cure, when Gerry sang it, but like so many of our songs it changed into something entirely
different when we all added our parts to the arrangement.

Track 6: Green Grow the Rashes-o. A timeless celebration of womankind from the pen of Robert Burns. It is a song which we have played live acoustically, and sometimes electrically, seguing into U2, depending on the audience. Rabbie was never happier than in the company of women, and was honest enough not to pretend that only the
finer 'ethereal' elements of love appealed to him. He frequently expressed this in his writing, as well as his many amorous entanglements, which eventually led to
him being publicly vilified by his church for what today would be regarded by many people as normal behaviour. He lived down the coast in Ayrshire and worked for Customs and Excise in Greenock, just across the water from us.

Track 7: I Will Love You Always. On Posing as Human you will find some stories which carry on from our debut album, Uncertain Wonders. It was not a conscious decision to try and write sequels - it just happened. The threads weave
their way through all the songs, tying them together, from story, to musical influences, to artwork. This was a song that we had real trouble recording because we kept
getting choked up by the story. The soldier and the Lady who tell their tale here are those two lovers who were separated in Time and Tide. This song reunites them for
a final night of passion. He pledges his undying love for his 'Queen' only to be told that she must marry another man to appease her father whom she will not disobey.
He is aghast since the only thing that kept him alive through many years of hardship was the thought of spending the rest of his life with her. Time and Tide was the song
that first got us airplay in America by way of Fiona Ritchie's syndicated radio show, the Thistle and Shamrock, which goes out via satellite all over North America and
Marilyn Rea Beyers show on WUMB in Boston.

Track 8: Fading Fast: This is definitely the most experimental song on the album, we always like to have one. Tongue firmly in cheek, it tells of a classic man-woman dilemma: the man just wanting to quit all the talking and have sex whilst the woman wants something more deep and meaningful. In this tale our hero is finding all the candles and incense too much as he listens to his date droning on about the latest life-changing fad that she is into. This guy ain't staying for coffee - never mind tantric sex.

Track 9: Posing as Human: The title came before the song, coming from a line in the book, Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje (who also wrote The English Patient) based on the life of the cornet player Buddy Bolden. Buddy was one of the legendary Jazz pioneers from New Orleans. Apparently he was one of the first band leaders to play the improvised music that later became known as Jazz.
Jazz and the blues were a big influence on us when we were growing up - Kris's father was even a Jazz drummer, so it was hard to avoid.
RISE first came about after Gerry and Kris played together in a local Jazz band on the Isle of Bute. We realised that we had a lot in common. We would play Pink Floyd riffs
through old Jazz standards, unbeknown to our band mates, and talk non-stop about music and movies. We then joined up with our friend Debbie to form the band Precious.
Through various line-up changes we played folk and rock as well as Jazz and pop, and then started writing our own songs.
Posing as Human goes some way towards expressing our feelings on people's inhumanity to their fellow beings.

Track 10: I Will See My Love Again is a modern jig which continues the story about the man transported to the New World in our song, True Love's Eyes, from Uncertain Wonders. Here he recites a litany of the misfortunes he will endure and surmount because he is determined to return some day to his lover and the land of his birth. It is the only thing which keeps him going through his life of torment. This song could apply to any of the people who
lived through the clearances, were sold into slavery or sent to the Colonies.

Track 11: Welcome to the Real World. Accepting the reality of living what we believe, instead of simply saying what we don't really believe, is what this song is about. Musically it hints at our love of the blues and southern rock music played by the likes of the Allman Brothers, Lynrd Skynrd, Black Oak Arkansas and many others. 'Swamp rock' we called it during recording.

Track 13: Woe to Live On. The inspiration for this song was a movie directed by Ang Lee called 'Ride with the Devil'. It tells the story of a Missouri man, Nubbin-fingered Jake Rodell, the son of a European immigrant who fought as one of the Southern 'irregulars', popularly known at the time as 'Bushwackers'. After his involvement in the massacre of civilians in Lawrence town, Kansas, he reconsiders his reasons for fighting. It is a fantastic film, rich in wonderful dialogue of the time. Most importantly to us this film makes no attempt to demonise the South but tells a tale of an ordinary southern man of honour and integrity fighting a terrible civil war.
Our previous album, Uncertain Wonders, got its title from this same film, from a line that Jake Rodell (played by Toby Maguire) speaks to his friend when considering the positive aspects of losing part of his finger in an ambush by Kansas 'Jayhawkers'. He says that if he dies and his father comes looking for his body, he will easily be able to identify it and won't be filled with "uncertain wonders".


Track 14: Trust Me is another of our contemporary Bluegrass songs (which again went into the 'boxed-set' cupboard only to make the final short-list very late in the day).
This one tells of the misery and hopelessness that sometimes come about when competing in the 'rat race' of modern Western society. Like a discussion between the
material self and the Higher Self. It is inspired by yet another movie (obviously movies play a big part in our lives), in particular the one character played by both Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in David Fincher's 'Fight Club'. In the movie the main character becomes
disillusioned by his lifestyle, seeking to make sense of it all and replace the soulless existence of
materialism with a new way of life.


In the end, any song is what it means to you personally and these notes are intended just to give you an idea of how we were thinking when we were writing our songs and making this album. Our sole purpose is for you to enjoy hearing it.
Thank you for listening.