Sorry about this! It's just a small parody on ballad structures, set to a new tune in the broad tradition of Border Scottish ballads, but not resembling the original 'Battle of Otterburn' or 'Chevy Chase' melodies. For those who do not know the original very long ballad, Douglas (Earl) crossed the border into England to hunt a prey (deer) but ends up in a fatal skirmish. Chevy Chase, the title, simply means the 'hunt in the Cheviot hills'.
My version describes a typical night in Kelso town centre. Any bits of English that you find oddly archaic are probably analogs of lines in other ballads.
It fell around the summer-time on a high high holiday
Douglas walked the city streets at night to find a prey
He had with him a hunting knife and a razor that he'd bought
His hat pulled down to hide his eyes and a habit to support
As the clubs were turning out, an hour before the day,
Some went east and some went west but one man chanced to stray
Down a darkened side-street a short cut for to find
Douglas stepped out next to him and grabbed him from behind
For a purse of silver, and a plastic card,
He pressed the razor to his throat but I fear he pressed too hard
Through the night the sirens sound and the blue blue lights
they flash
And they run him into ground and the chase ends with a catch
Blood upon the razor blade, prints upon the knife
Douglas did all kinds of shit but now he's doing life...
You can find the mp3 and streaming RealAudio on my mp3.com page
The guitar is a Lowden O-10. The strings are British hand-made Newtone in 11-50 weights, with the bass string tuned down to D. The mike is placed with its 90 degree stereo spread aimed vertically, about 18 inches in front of me, midway between the guitar and mouth-level. The recording is made directly on to a Sony Minidisk 50 portable recorder on auto level, in a fairly 'bright' room 22 x 16 feet with a 12 foot ceiling and large glass windows which increase the presence a bit. However, the close miking means not much of the reverb from the room is present. The guitar itself adds most of that, picking up not only its own sound, but the singing as well. The strings are about a week old. The action is quite low, and the guitar is played gently, bare finger. The final instrumental to fade has a little more attack. The chord sequence of the song is: G, G7/D (played with a high G on the top E string, the F on the 6th fret of the B string, and the bass D on the drop D sixth string), Dm, Am; C, G, D major.
David Kilpatrick, October 1999