New Eerie Pirate Pop Single

Many moons ago, when we all looked a little younger, we met bestselling author Kate Mosse at Mr Bs Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath and wrote a couple of songs inspired by her collection of short ghostly tales, The Mistletoe Bride. Fast forward a few grey hairs and Beth and I are easing ourselves out of the delightful professional abyss that is having another baby. I noticed that Kate had been booked to appear at this year's Wigtown Book Festival (where we now live) and turning to a bit of rare self curation I got in touch to see what she was working on. A new pirate novel, jeopardy, disguise and strange happenings on the high seas, called The Ghost Ship. Perfect!

Kate and crew wanted us on board (ha, sorry!) in time for the launch of the book and so while the sun has been shining we've been covered in an imaginary haar of sea fog beavering away on a new song inspired by it. For a couple of days I whirled through various choruses and strumming patterns, singing melodies, round and round. And then promptly lost my voice just before we were due to record. The only remedy was to detune the whole guitar down a couple of notes so I could scrape through. The clacking sound is the sound of a heavy bracelet on my wrist hitting the guitar's wood. Beth overdubbed cello and vocal. When we listened back to see what other instruments we might add we actually decided to keep it simple. I think a violin part might have made it in, but otherwise it's all pretty simple, recording wise. I've still no idea what time signature it's in though. Classic Bookshop Band pop song fodder!

We also cobbled together a music video of sorts from footage we took during the recording sessions.

The song is out now, available on all streaming services, but if you'd like to support us more directly you can purchase the digital download at Bandcamp for £1, send us a coin via our virtual TIP JAR or even join our Patreon Fan Club.

Hope you like our strange offering. And if you'd like to see us play it live, we'll no doubt be playing it when Kate comes up to Wigtown at the end of September.

Ben & Beth

The Bookshop Band