‘JMW’ – ‘Prince of the Rocks’

*Ros and Shaun McCrindle with ‘The Rising Squall’ at Tate Britain*
Photo by Andrew Graham-Brown

Do you recall my post about Bristol City Art Gallery’s crowdfunding campaign to buy ‘The Rising Squall’, J.M.W. Turner’s first exhibited oil painting (shown at London’s Royal Academy of Art, in 1792)? The crowdfunding campaign was successful (over £100K was raised through public donations in a single week) but ‘Bristol’ was unfortunately outbid at the Sotheby’s auction when ‘The Rising Squall’ came up for sale and we could not ‘bring Turner home’.

*Screenshot of images from Bristol Museum’s #bringturnerhome crowdfunding campaign*

My wife and I suggested the crowdfunding idea to Philip Walker – Head of Culture and Creative Industries at Bristol City Council – so I was honoured to be subsequently invited by Phil to film a performance of a new song I’d written about Turner, at Bristol City Art Gallery’s ‘Prince of the Rocks’ exhibition. The exhibition featured rarely seen local watercolours painted by Turner during his ‘teens, including a view of St Mary Redcliffe Church before the spire was added and two very accomplished watercolour paintings of the Avon Gorge at Hotwells, painted very close to where ‘The Rising Squall’ was painted.

The logistics of organising the film shoot would have been far more complicated if the project had been undertaken as a commercial enterprise. We would have needed permission to film in a council-owned space and we would also have needed insurance, risk assessments etc, to film in front of invaluable works of art. (We would also have required considerable sums of money to pay for all the above!) As it turned out, the process flowed smoothly as the project was undertaken as a collaboration between the art gallery, the musicians, a filmmaker, and a sound crew.

*The ‘JMW’ team, including film crew, sound crew, Goldfinches, and Fran Coles*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

Fran Coles is the Collections Care Manager at Bristol Museums. On the day of filming, Fran was there to monitor the ‘light budget’: how much light the Turner watercolours – and other works in the gallery – could be exposed to during our shoot. (She also helped us out with the clapper board during filming takes!) The musical group I performed ‘JMW’ with is called Goldfinches. We have been playing in Bristol for a few years now and it was a pleasure for us to perform the song acoustically in the gallery space, right in front of Turner’s work.

*Goldfinches (the group)*
Photo by Andrew Graham-Brown

The gallery was quite reverberant, so it was essential to have skilled sound engineers to record our performance. Our partner in sound was the award-winning creative studio, dBs Pro. Jay Auborn is the Creative Director of dBs Pro and, on this shoot, he was assisted with the sound recording by two undergraduate students, Louis and Oliver, on a work placement from dBs Institute.

*Jay Auborn from dBs Pro with work placement students from dBs Institute*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

The final essential partner in this venture was an old friend of mine called Andrew Graham-Brown, of AGB Films. Andy has many years’ experience working as an award-winning documentary film maker. He has great kit, and he loves music, so he was the perfect person to capture our song performances (we shot half a dozen or so live takes in all). Andy was assisted by my daughter Grace who also documented the day’s activities on her phone, for a short ‘making-of’ film. All together, we made a great team and the official video of ‘JMW’ should be available online for all to view soon.

*Andrew Graham-Brown (AGB Films)*
Photo by Grace McCrindle

We hope that one day the owner of ‘The Rising Squall’ will consider loaning the painting to Bristol City Art Gallery, so it can be seen in its local context (perhaps alongside the preparatory watercolour sketch in the Tate Gallery’s permanent collection?). ‘The Rising Squall’ is currently on show in London – for the first time in over 200 years – at Tate Britain, in its blockbuster ‘Turner & Constable’ exhibition. It’s a fine painting and not bad for a 17-year-old! (Imagine submitting ‘The Rising Squall’ as part of your A-level Art portfolio!?) In it, Turner seems to have applied oil paint in thin translucent washes, almost like the watercolour paintings he was making up until this point. It’s a very bold and assured painting for such a young artist and it would be lovely to ‘Bring Turner Home’, even if it were only for a short while.

*Click on the image to watch a clip of Shaun busking ‘JMW’ on the steps of Tate Britain*

Bloke on the Water..

Earlier this week, I visited the Cariad IV narrowboat to record a few Goldfinches songs for The Narrowboat Sessions. For those of you unfamiliar with these sessions, they are an initiative run by Mark Holdsworth and his crew, offering “the biggest platform for unsigned, original acoustic music videos in the UK”. Every year, the Cariad crew travel “thousands of miles of the British Canal system recording different artists every weekday of the summer”, raising money for Cancer Research along the way. It’s a very cool and unique project. I took part in a session with John Slattery in August 2022 when we drove up to Shropshire and I remember the silencer fell off my exhaust pipe on the way! We sounded like a tank as I pulled up to a quiet canal-side location to make our recording in the remote countryside.

This summer, Mark and his crew had intended to wend their way down to Bristol (where Goldfinches would’ve joined them) but ill health, followed by a major canal breach in Cheshire, put paid to any ideas of travelling very far from the source. It was not possible for Goldfinches to drive up to Merseyside so, rather than cancel altogether, I decided to attend the session at Ellesmere Port on my own as I needed to drop off one of my daughters in Manchester anyway.

Cariad IV ‘stranded’ at the National Waterways Museum

It was great to see Mark again and revisit his tales of depping on keyboards for the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band and Gentle Giant (among others) and to learn more about his maritime past. (Bristol readers will probably know that the Bonzo’s Viv Stanshall brought the iconic ‘Thekla’ ship – when it was called The Old Profanity Showboat – from Sunderland to Bristol’s floating harbour during the 1980s, so there is a kinship – though a big difference in scale – between Mark’s snug floating studio and Viv Stanshall’s vision of a cabaret theatre on the water.) Working on the crew with Mark on this occasion were Cerys and Eli, of the Manchester-based horror-rock duo Body Water, who’d just discovered their latest single had been played on Radio 1! (Gosh, the talent on this boat!)

And then it was time for me to record my three songs: one brand new one and two from the Goldfinches album ‘Shanti Time’. I started with the new one, ‘Attenborough’, an homage to the broadcasting icon ‘Sir David’, played on my ukelele. This was a debut performance as Goldfinches haven’t had the opportunity to play it live yet and it was a challenge to remember all the words. However, I think I got away with it and the crew seemed to enjoy the performance! I then followed ‘Attenborough’ with ‘Queen of New York’ and ‘Shanti Time’, songs which I’m more familiar with, both performed on Mark’s lovely Washburn ‘Tahoe’ acoustic guitar.

To conclude, it was a shame Goldfinches never got to squeeze into the snug studio to record a set for the Narrowboat Sessions this year but I was happy to take one for the team! We hope to join Cariad IV next summer when the meandering musical journey will hopefully happen once more.

‘Shanti Time’ album review

(The following is part of a longer article by Elfyn Griffith in the July 2025 online edition of Louder Than War magazine. To read the full article, which includes reviews of albums by three other cool Bristol artists, go here.)

“Goldfinches‘ singer/songwriter and guitarist Shaun McCrindle, a former member of The Blue Aeroplanes, has been active in several bands in the city plying his craft over the years. Goldfinches new album Shanti Time was also released earlier this summer. ukgoldfinches.bandcamp.com/album/shanti-time

McCrindle has the gift of the singer-songwriter with songs and tunes that are insistently catchy and memorable, wearing their influences on their respective sleeves.

None more so than the third track Magical Smile – following on from the Irish-jig opener The Old World and the poignant title track Shanti Time, – which has strong echoes of Steely Dan in its feel, structure and vocals. A deep bass and a great break flooding in with those familiar rhythms…

The dramatic comic-opera of Impossible, with double-bass player James Anderson’s gruff old Bohemian vocal insert echoes Topol’s Fiddler on the Roof, while Queen of New York is imbued with a classically addictive underground acoustic hook which sticks in the mind.

Four new albums from Bristol bands… reviewed

The 60’s pop feel of Weird Jean harks to The Coral complete with a Hank Williams twanging guitar thrown in and McCrindle’s evocative and humorous lyrics (‘She took marine biology and with healthy irony she felt herself drawn to the water…’).

The vignette of humdrum existence Indifferent Day and the Spanish epic, again, 60’s groove of Fantastic Creature, precedes the beautiful folky bluesy Americana of The Salt Path, McCrindle joined by the captivating female vocals of Freddie Bullough, and the violin and bouzouki of Paul Meager and John Slattery painting the picture.

Follow them on ukgoldfinches“

The Buddha of Crediton

As the singer-songwriter of Bristol Indie-folk group Goldfinches, I visited Tony Plato at Trobridge House (on the outskirts of Crediton) last summer to discuss the possibility of recording an album with him there, in the home he shares with Gina Williams. Tony is well-known locally, as a regular performer at the Moon Jazz Club in Crediton and also as the drummer of the CowPunk Americana band Yellabellies. As he was showing me around, I asked Tony where he’d acquired a very striking, large wooden Buddha which occupied a window-seat halfway up the stairs. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tony had carved the Buddha himself! This happy discovery led to the Buddha becoming the centrepiece for the artwork of ‘Shanti Time’, Goldfinches’ debut album.

‘Shanti’ is the Sanskrit word for peace, a mood the album explores throughout many songs: it is also commonly found in the Eastern chant ‘om shanti’, used in Buddhist and Hindu prayers. As such, Tony’s Buddha seemed a perfect fit for the album cover and we photographed it from a low angle on the lawn in front of the house to exaggerate its size. But what about the Buddha itself? How was it made? I’ll leave it to Tony to pick up the story from here.

*Vaughan Gallavan sawing the Monterey Pine for Tony, in 1986*

“It was cut from a fallen Monterey Pine in Morchard Bishop by a friend, Vaughan Gallavan, in about 1986. He followed the chalk lines I drew on the section of the tree. I carved it in the front garden of our cottage in Crediton using a small brass Buddha that I brought back from India in 1980 as a guide. This Buddha is naked which means technically it is portraying a Bodhisattva, as Buddhas are normally draped in a cloth. I would get friends to pose for me, so it has Gina’s sister Anne’s knees, Steve Clarke’s back, my hands, etc as I wanted it to be somewhat androgynous. I knew this sort of pine had strong radial rays and so got Vaughan to rough out the piece I used so as to try and make the rays radiate from where the heart would be. I give it a new coat of linseed oil every decade or so.

I chose the cupped ‘Dhyana mudra’ position for the hands as it is the mudra for peaceful meditation. I gave the Buddha to my Mum who was converting a barn in Snodhill, Hereford, and it sat on a special shelf by her stairs for 35 years. She had been a practising Tibetan Buddhist for many years and would say her morning and evening prayers to it each day and I knew she would appreciate it the most. I knew it would be hard to part with it, so we held a Buddha farewell party and invited all our friends to say goodbye to it. It was a wild party in the end with many explosions! The Buddha came back to us here when Mum had to leave her house about 5 years ago and I think of her love for it and her prayers every time I pass it, as it lives half way up our stairs now. It was the first proper sculpture I made, apart from a whittled chinese dragon I made with a penknife. I have since mainly made things from copper or bronze.”

*Tony’s Buddha in its current home at Trobridge House*

Goldfinches are thrilled to announce that Tony’s Buddha will ‘manifest’ at our album launch gig at Crediton Arts Centre on Friday 6th June. It should be a very special occasion, bringing together the band’s Bristolian songs with the ‘genius loci’ of where the album was recorded. Our opening act for the evening will be Crediton’s very own Triffles, who describe themselves as “suppliers of sundry songs silly, sarcastic and (sometimes) sincere”. We hope to see you there.

Tickets are available now from the Crediton Arts Centre website.

Song Journeys: ‘The Salt Path’

As the film adaptation of Raynor Winn’s book arrives in UK cinemas this month, I thought it timely to publish a short video about the evolution of my song, ‘The Salt Path’, which was written after I read the book during the first UK Lockdown, in Spring 2020.

Do you remember that first month, from March into April? The weather was amazing but we weren’t allowed to wander far from home. It made Winn’s book even more compelling as her descriptions of nature and the great outdoors are so vivid and evocative. Reading it became a vicarious walk as well as an emotional journey.

I hope you enjoy this short video. Does anyone else recall these sky drawings (they happened at least once during Lockdown in our area) by a creative pilot, attempting to spread some joy? This one was filmed over Bristol; I wonder if they happened all over the country?

I haven’t watched the film of ‘The Salt Path’ yet. I guess I will but I never pictured the author and her partner ‘Moth’ as Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That might be a bit too ‘Hollywood’ for this quintessentially English journey. We shall see..

It’s Shanti Time!

*The ‘Shanti’ crew*
Photo credit: Shaun McCrindle

You may know that the focus of my songwriting over the past few years has been Goldfinches (formerly Shozzo) a Bristol trio featuring the gentlemen seated in the photograph above (from L-R: double-bassist James Anderson; singer-songwriter Shaun McCrindle; and guitarist John Slattery). Standing behind us are four musicians who helped us record fifteen songs for our debut album, in a large country house in Devon, in July 2024. From L-R they are: sound engineer Paul Bateman; fiddle player Paul Meager; drummer Tony Plato; and vocalist Freddie Bullough.

The story of how this unique project arose is an interesting one. Tony and his partner Gina were unexpectedly given Trobridge House after years of loyal service as landscape gardeners and care-givers to the previous owner. (The exact details of how this happened would make a story only they are qualified to tell!) When Tony suggested to me that we have a jam at his house sometime, I came up with the idea of recording an album there with Goldfinches, featuring Tony on drums.

*Tony Plato, at Trobridge House*
Photo credit: Shaun McCrindle

During the early Noughties, Tony and I played in the John Matthias band, with Paul Bateman. We all attended Exeter University, alongside Thom Yorke and John Matthias. In fact, Paul committed one of Yorke’s earliest performances to vinyl when he recorded him, John Matthias, and the rest of the Exeter University band Headless Chickens on the Hometown Atrocities EP track, ‘I Don’t Want To Go To Woodstock’.

*Thom Yorke and John Matthias performing in the Ram Bar at Exeter Univeristy, c.1989*
Photo credit: Shaun McCrindle

Fast forward to July 2024, and Goldfinches arrive at Trobridge House, on a lovely summer’s day, for four intensive days of recording. Paul and Tony have begun work on converting several of the ground floor rooms into temporary studio spaces. In the main recording room there are large mattresses providing sound buffers between the different areas where the musicians will be playing. Paul has set up his recording consul in the lounge. Our guitar amps go in the library whilst James will record all his bass parts in the entrance hallway. We will be eating and sleeping at the house so there are no distractions from working on the album. We have a lot to do!

*Sound engineer Paul Bateman*
Photo credit: Shaun McCrindle

We record fifteen songs in a variety of genres onto Paul’s KORG hard disk recorder. However, as the grounds at Trobridge House are supremely peaceful, Paul records ‘The Salt Path’ entirely live and acoustic outside on the lawn, using a single ‘Zoom’ recorder. We record some other songs live in the house too, reflecting our intention to create a spontaneous folk-rock sound like the Waterboys’ achieved on their album, ‘Fisherman’s Blues’, another record recorded in a large country house and one of the inspirations for ‘Shanti Time’ (an influence acknowledged in the album artwork).

*Shaun, Freddie Bullough, and Paul Meager rehearsing ‘The Salt Path’*
Photo credit: John Slattery

We return at a later date to retrieve all the projects from Paul and and transfer them to our own hard drives. The intention is to continue working on the album with Jay Auborn, a composer and producer at dBs Pro in Bristol, with whom I have collaborated previously on two Rock n Roll Angels albums. Jay is a specialist in working in unusual acoustic spaces and is the perfect collaborator to recreate the acoustics of Trobridge House during mixdown (if we can meet our funding deadline!).

This brings us up to date with where we are now. James Anderson has organised a gofundme page to help raise money to pay for the time we need with Jay to turn our Trobridge House recordings into a fully-fledged album (as he did so well on Rock n Roll Angels’ ‘Peaceful’). Click on the Buddha image above to go to Goldfinches’ gofundme page. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. To watch a short video about our four wonderful days of recording at Trobridge House just click here. Keep up to date with Goldfinches by following them on Facebook, @UKGoldfinches.

Om Shanti. Peace.

Pavilion Set podcast with Simon Robinson-Po

It was a great pleasure to join my old Copter and Blue Aeroplanes bandmate Simon Robinson-Po on his Pavilion Set music podcast sofa. We started out with a reading from Patrick Duff’s new memoir, The Singer, and then riffed on many things Bristolian before embracing music beyond the southwest frontier. The show is an hour and a half long. I don’t have the timings but here’s the tracklisting:

The Singer – Former Strangelove frontman Patrick Duff reads an extract from his new memoir, followed by an extract from ’Sixer’, by Strangelove.

(chat)

Graceadelica by Dark Star

Way You Feel by Copter

(chat)

Earthquake by This Is The Kit

Help by Rozi Plain

(chat)

88 Out by The Blue Aeroplanes

Not With Standing by Get The Blessing

Money by Emily Breeze

(chat)

Goin Down South by North Mississippi Allstars

Nothin Too Much Just Out of Sight by The Fireman

(chat)

Don’t Hide by Frank Leone

WEAK by Bunny Hoova

(chat)

Helen is a Reptile by Jemma Freeman & the Cosmic Something

Backyard Skulls by Frightened Rabbit

(chat)

Salvador Sanchez by Sun Kil Moon

Note: Salvador Sanchez is from ‘Ghosts of the Great Highway’, not ‘Ghosts of the Western Freeway’, as I say in the podcast (I mixed up a Sun Kil Moon album with a Grandaddy album!)

Northern Country by Heidi Berry

(chat)

Dayligone – Reading about the Three Cane Whale song, from ‘Journey of Song’ by Shaun McCrindle

(chat)

Elin’s Photograph by Strangelove

The Kiss by Judee Sill