Anyway, this is nothing like what you'd normally expect from David Gilmour's music. He's primarily known as the lead guitarist for Pink Floyd, but there isn't even a hint of lead guitar playing here, and there isn't a single Pink Floyd song. Instead, it's made up of cover songs (with a couple of exceptions) sung by Gilmour and his family while they were all in lockdown. The name "Von Trapped Family" is a joke they made, combining the Von Trapp family singers, made famous through "The Sound of Music" move, with the word "trapped," since they were feeling trapped at home due to the pandemic. It has a feeling like a family singing songs around a campfire.
Note that the family involvement is no small thing. David Gilmour sang lead on the vast majority of the songs, but not always. For instance, he alternated lead vocals with his daughter Romany Gilmour on the song "The Magpie." Furthermore, his wife Polly Samson sang competent harmony vocals on most of the songs, though note this was a very casual affair and occasional mistakes were made by all involved. Other family members joined in from time to time, with other backing vocals and other instruments, such as harp.
More, annoyingly, there was a baby present for some of the songs, and that baby occasionally cried out or even tried (badly) to sing along. Luckily, this was only very occasionally, and I managed to edit out most of the baby noises. That was particularly a problem for the songs "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," "So Long, Marianne," and "Hickory Wind." I had to do a lot of careful editing on those, which is why they have "[Edit]" in their titles. And I edited pretty much all the songs at least a little bit, just not as much as those troublesome three. But there were times I couldn't get rid of the baby noises because they happened at the same time as the singing.
Here's a list of the original artists for all of the songs:
01 Yes, I Have Ghosts - David Gilmour
02 So Long, Marianne - Leonard Cohen
03 Bird on the Wire - Leonard Cohen
04 On an Island - David Gilmour
05 Fingerprints - Leonard Cohen
06 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen
07 Hickory Wind - Gram Parsons
08 Thanks for the Dance - Leonard Cohen
09 Dominoes - Syd Barrett
10 If It Be Your Will - Leonard Cohen
11 Octopus - Syd Barrett
12 Who by Fire - Leonard Cohen
13 Diamond Ring - Erik Darling
14 Nature Boy - Eden Ahbez
15 The Magpie - David Dodds
16 Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens
If you look at that list, you'll notice a lot of Leonard Cohen songs. No less than seven of the 16 songs were written by Cohen. There's a very good reason for that. Gilmour's wife Polly Samson is an author, and right as the pandemic hit, in April 2020, she published the novel "A Theatre for Dreamers." It's based on true accounts of the life Leonard Cohen and other musicians and artists lived in Greece, years before Cohen started his music career. These home concerts were largely done as a way to promote the book.
In researching the book, Samson spent several years doing a deep dive into the life of Cohen and his friends. As her husband, Gilmour got into it too, for instance doing a lot of research for the book. As part of that overall effort, the entire family grew to be extremely familiar with Cohen's music, making it easy for them to sing many of his songs.
The other songs are a pretty eclectic bunch. There are two Gilmour originals. "On an Island" is from his 2006 solo album by the same name. "Yes, I Have Ghosts" was cowritten with Samson and is directly tied to the content of her novel. Although there are no Pink Floyd songs per se, there are two written by Syd Barrett, who briefly led Pink Floyd to fame in 1967 before dropping out later that year. These songs are from his brief solo career that happened after that.
As I write this in November 2023, all of the videos of these songs are still up on YouTube, if want to see these performances. They're taken from longer videos that mostly consist of talking with Samson about her book and Gilmour about his music. Those are still available too.
This album is 49 minutes long.
01 Yes, I Have Ghosts (David Gilmour & His Family)
02 So Long, Marianne [Edit] (David Gilmour & His Family)
03 Bird on the Wire (David Gilmour & His Family)
04 On an Island (David Gilmour & His Family)
05 Fingerprints (David Gilmour & His Family)
06 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye [Edit] (David Gilmour & His Family)
07 Hickory Wind [Edit] (David Gilmour & His Family)
08 Thanks for the Dance (David Gilmour & His Family)
09 Dominoes (David Gilmour & His Family)
10 If It Be Your Will (David Gilmour & His Family)
11 Octopus (David Gilmour & His Family)
12 Who by Fire (David Gilmour & His Family)
13 Diamond Ring (David Gilmour & His Family)
14 Nature Boy (David Gilmour & His Family)
15 The Magpie (David Gilmour & His Family)
16 Morning Has Broken (David Gilmour & His Family)
For the cover I wanted something that showed David Gilmour with some family members, since this was a family project. So I took a screenshot from one of the videos. He's holding a guitar in the middle. His wife Polly Samson is sitting next to him, petting their dog. I believe that's their daughter Romany playing the harp. There were others in the video, but they got cropped out.
Many thanks, my friend. Happy weekend.
ReplyDeleteThis is very cool. Thanks for putting this together. I saw some of the Christmas songs. I think they did Silent Night.
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