Bread, Love and Dreams
The Strange Tale of Captain Shannon And The Hunchback from Gigha

After signing to Decca in the spring of 1969, Angie Rew, Carolyn Davis and I recorded four-track versions of twelve songs for our debut album at a local Edinburgh studio, Craighall. Our producer, Ray Horricks, took these to Decca’s studio in Hampstead, London, and transferred them to eight-track tape. He then employed an arranger/ conductor, Ian Green, to write and record string parts on the remaining four-track tape. His idea was to turn out songs into a ‘concept’ album. We had no concept of what was going on, and played no part in this.
The album appeared in October, 1969, and didn’t sell. Not long after we decided to disband due to ‘direction’ disagreements and different aspirations in our songwriting. Carolyn embarked on a never-released solo album funded by our publishes Mother Maestro/ Lynx Music, while Ray managed to secure an extension to out Decca contract. He therefore asked Angie and myself to keep on under that banner. We were playing and living together anyway, so we locked ourselves away for a couple of months and conceived Captain Shannon and Amaryllis (or “Mother Earth’, as it was originally called) as a double album.

Though Ray did bread and butter jobs as an in-house producer at Decca, he had acquired a certain status on the folk/rock/jazz/underground scene, largely owing to his work with Davy Graham. He was thus able to enlist Danny Thompson and Terry Cox from the Pentangle to be out rhythm section, and Dick Heckstall-Smith from Colosseum to...

After signing to Decca in the spring of 1969, Angie Rew, Carolyn Davis and I recorded four-track versions of twelve songs for our debut album at a local Edinburgh studio, Craighall. Our producer, Ray Horricks, took these to Decca’s studio in Hampstead, London, and transferred them to eight-track tape. He then employed an arranger/ conductor, Ian Green, to write and record string parts on the remaining four-track tape. His idea was to turn out songs into a ‘concept’ album. We had no concept of what was going on, and played no part in this.
The album appeared in October, 1969, and didn’t sell. Not long after we decided to disband due to ‘direction’ disagreements and different aspirations in our songwriting. Carolyn embarked on a never-released solo album funded by our publishes Mother Maestro/ Lynx Music, while Ray managed to secure an extension to out Decca contract. He therefore asked Angie and myself to keep on under that banner. We were playing and living together anyway, so we locked ourselves away for a couple of months and conceived Captain Shannon and Amaryllis (or “Mother Earth’, as it was originally called) as a double album.

Though Ray did bread and butter jobs as an in-house producer at Decca, he had acquired a certain status on the folk/rock/jazz/underground scene, largely owing to his work with Davy Graham. He was thus able to enlist Danny Thompson and Terry Cox from the Pentangle to be out rhythm section, and Dick Heckstall-Smith from Colosseum to play tenor sax. The sessions took place in Hampstead over a week in the summer of 1970. When they were finished, Decca refused to issue the albums together, as we’d hoped. Instead, Captain Shannon came out in November, with Amaryllis following in July 1971. Barely any promotion was arranged for either, and we concluded they were probably a tax scam of some sort.

After touring Europe with Amaryllis, we decided to put Bread Love and Dreams on hold. We had signed away the copyright to all our songs in perpetuity without being allowed to read out contracts – standard practice in those days. We simply put it behind us and carried on making music together in other guides. But Bread Love and Dreams refused to go quietly. Throughout the 80s and 90s we received ripples of interest from the Bodleian Library, which holds UK copyright deposits. This, we learned, was a results of students requesting copies of our lyrics for their theses. Occasionally, bearded, corduroy-clad gentlemen would appear at our front door bearing battered album sleeves, in search of signatures. Even this year I was greeted at a Tesco’s checkout with “Captain Shannon, I presume?” We have been surprised and moved by the interest in our music, from fans as well as young contemporary musicians, and hope this reissue (a companion piece to Sunbeam’s edition of Amaryllis) will prove definitive.

- David McNiven, Edinburgh, January 2008


Track Notes:

Hymn For Sylvia:
The setting for this song is the Ace Cafe in Neasden, London, circa 1966. I’d arrived at the Caff, as it was known, by an unusual alternative route. In the spring of that year I’d traveled to Barcelona to teach English as a foreign language and learn a few flamenco licks on guitar. Sadly, the job turned out to be a fiction and the money I’d forwarded for my accommodation had been spirited away.

Undaunted, I decided to stay in that vibrant city as long as I could, living on oranges, as they were extremely nutritious and almost free in Spain at that time. I had a Spanish guitar with me and, like a man selling sand to the United Arab Emirates, I managed to bluff my way into playing with a local group. Somehow I made enough money for the journey home, but the troubadour within had different plans. He decided to blow a large portion of the pesetas on Spanish boots of Spanish leather, as he liked the song of that name by Bob Dylan, and hitch-hike back to Scotland.

What I didn’t realize was that hitch-hiking was a criminal offense in