Musician
A long time ago, in a town called Blackburn, on a road called Selborne Street, there was a house full of beautiful, degenerate party people...
Verse 1
Peace,
As the dawn picks out the places where we lie,
Our positions of abandon from last night,
We all drank and tripped and still lie where we fell;
Under a spell.
I remember us the night before,
Light and colour and the rising floor
And each of us rising on a high tide,
Each of us full of love and wide-eyed,
Each of us fucked-up, drunken chic;
We broke the back of the working week;
Each of us brighter and wild and alive
And building it higher and higher and higher,
Each of us bright, each of us bold,
Each of us burning the night with our soul
And I swear my heart could burst with pride
When I think that you're my tribe.
Chorus 1
And I love you all, I love you all,
And when we get wasted we stand tall,
Everything that made us small;
We stand strong against it all.
Verse 2
Peace,
Ooh, the smoke has cooled and settled on us all,
The couches and the ashtrays overflow,
And from somewhere in the room, a gentle snore;
From near the door.
We took the week and we fucked it off,
Picked up the pills and dropped the lot
And smoked a stack and drank ourselves blind,
Sliced and diced and thrice-blew our minds.
We broke the chains of our house arrests,
The cubicles and reception desks;
Fuck the sane, fuck the mundane,
Fuck every hour of this life that's the same,
An endless parade of a grey waste of days,
Blow it away in an ecstatic haze;
There's an ache in my jaw, a fire in my skin,
There's a hole in my head with the light screaming in!
Chorus 2
And I love you all, I love you all,
When we get wasted we are all
Fire and light; we burn in the night;
We transcend the grey and the pain and the shite
And I love you all, I love you all,
In the quiet moment before dawn,
One thing you will never know;
I spent most of my life alone.
Middle eight
And every playground slight
Melts away in the night.
Every schoolyard pain,
Like tears in the rain
And I love you all,
I love you a-a-a-all.
I love you all,
I love you a-a-a-all.
Chorus 3
I love you all, I love you all,
When we get wasted we stand tall,
Everything that made us small;
We stand strong against it all.
Verse 3
Peace,
As the morning burns the curtains from behind,
But no-one in this room pays any mind,
Until someone stirs and reaches out a hand
And cracks a can.
This is my most requested song and one of my absolute favourites to play. One of the most vibrant local scenes is an event known as PAC, or the Panjenix Acoustic Club, and it takes place in a wonderful venue called Imposta Coffee in Accrington. Often when you play there you can hear a pin drop, so attentive are the audience -- but not when I play this tune! When I sing Tribe, they are all in uproarious, full-throated song as they sing the chorus back at me, which is... Beautiful!
This is an anthem to fighting the banality of life with hedonistic excess and a true group of friends -- your tribe. And indeed it very much is a love song to the wonderful people that used to fold and twist our minds into various bizarre shapes with me, back then. I'm incredibly lucky to have so many of them still in my life, now, and I love them as fiercely as ever I did.
There is, however, a darker element (of course!) in here, as well. One late night, I was having a deep-and-meaningful conversation with a new friend, a rather lovely German lass I was jamming with at the time. The conversation got around to the excesses I used to indulge which prompted her, in a disarmingly direct and Teutonic manner, to ask: "But why were you all so destructive?" I couldn't answer for everyone, of course, but I have for myself, in the hints throughout Tribe. You can either listen out for them or just enjoy the anthem -- or both. A song can be two things at once, can't it? :)
A good friend of mine paid me the compliment of saying it was his favourite song ever and booked me for the last couple of Luddstocks, a private festival that became one of my absolute all-time favourites as soon as I played there. He also did me the huge kindness of passing it along to another local festival to see if they'd be interested in putting me on. Well, they were, and it turns out I'll be playing Tribe at Tribal Gathering 2024 later this year. So that's nice. Thank you, Mark!
This video was another of the trio that I recorded with Dan at Showvault, for their Salon Sessions, which features many more incredibly talented and original musicians, so definitely go give them a listen.