Our Kind of Spirituals, No. 78: Steve Tilston, “Sometimes in This Life”

DannyCollins will be here and gone in a flash, but Steve Tilston is here to stay.  

Danny Collins is the new Al Pacino movie, about a dissolute musician who forty years after the fact receives a letter written to him by John Lennon telling him that he is a major talent.

In fact, Lennon did write such a letter, and the by-the-numbers press for the movie has recounted how it was written to one Steve Tilston, an obscure folk singer who, alas, has remained obscure.

In fact – in actual fact – Tilston is a major figure in the post-Sixties English folk movement, in which quality counts as much as popularity; and his 1987 record Life By Misadventure is certainly in the top ten of the several hundred folk records in my own shoebox collection.   It’s a perfect record: grown-up, original, ruminative, and (unlike many folk records) unfailingly musical, with a light touch on the folk roots.

This trio arrangement of its concluding track brings out the song’s communal, call-and-response quality.

“One day we’ll reach out and touch the stars / Some times in this life are beautiful / One day we may see  just where we are / Some times in this life are beautiful …”