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Cold Coast of Iceland

from A Yard of Ale by Stuart Forester

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    A Yard of Ale is the second album by Stuart Forester released on Melonstone Records, May 2013. Ten original songs plus an interpretation of the traditional English folk ballad The Factory Girl and a cover of the Mike Waterson ode to the ragged glory and ultimate decline of the UK fishing industry, Cold Coast of Iceland.
    'You feel as though you’ve been listening to these songs and this voice for all your life.' Dai Jeffries, R2 Magazine.
    Comes shrink wrapped in full colour artwork gatefold card digipak with 12 page lyric booklet and full colour artwork on the cd itself.

    Includes unlimited streaming of A Yard of Ale via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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lyrics

Cold Coast of Iceland 3.13 Mike Waterson

Coming from Hull and with a history of trawler fishing in my family, this powerful song resonates with me. It speaks of the ragged glory and ultimate decline of the this once mighty industry of the east coast and of the UK in general. Written by the late great Mike Waterson, I‘ve given the song a guitar arrangement.

Me name is Jim Parkinson, Hull’s where I’m from, some call me a hero some call me a bum
But I’ll sing you a song the way songs should be sung of them heroes that fished off of Iceland

You can talk of your soldiers your sailors so fine, your men in the steel works your lads down the mine
But there’s many the hero wasted his prime catching cod off the cold coast of Iceland

Now I’ve three fingers missing well ain’t that a shame and me left leg is gammy that means that I’m lame
It’s a small price to pay to be part of the game catching cod off the cold coast of Iceland

And it’s bye-bye St. Andrews as we head for the ground where the cod and the haddock and them red fish are found
And it’s out with the gear and we work the clock round catching cod off the cold coast of Iceland

And your wage is a gamble so you earn all you can, there’s rules to be broken so you break every one
And you stand and you freeze and kid on you’re a man, catching cod off the cold coast of Iceland

When the trip’s over and Sinbad’s ashore he’ll have a few pints and then he’ll have a few more
Then it’s home to the missus or else visit some whore to forget about fishing off Iceland

Then came the cod war and we lost every round and the fishing was over ‘cos we’d lost the best ground
And a cloud of despondency fell on the town, no more fishing for cod off of Iceland

Now on the docks where them trawlers were seen, in cold glass and concrete a brand new museum
It’s called Trawling Deep Water GB PLC and all of my heroes are memories

credits

from A Yard of Ale, released May 1, 2013
Written by Mike Waterson
Stuart Forester - Guitar & Vocals

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Stuart Forester Scotland, UK

Stuart Forester is an English acoustic roots songwriter in the folk tradition who has quite some stories to tell. Born in Cumbria but raised from a a few months old until the age of three in trailer homes in Canada he grew up in Hull, East Yorkshire and then spent many years in London. He now lives in rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland where his latest album The Good Earth was recorded. ... more

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