Helen McCookerybook by Ruth Tidmarsh

Helen McCookerybook – Songwriter #6

She-punk songwriter Helen McCookerybook is playing at Barnaby’s Lounge on Thursday 19 September 7-9pm. Entry is free but with 5 – 10 pounds suggested donation. She talks about her songwriting to Jude Montague.

I write songs about a variety of different subjects that affect me emotionally, both in a positive and a negative way. Some of them are personal and act as a therapeutic way of dealing with things that have happened in my life, almost like spells and incantations to correct a wobbly trajectory. Often, they start as passing thoughts that drift through my head with a melody attached to them; I then pin them down with guitar chords that I think match the mood of the tune and words.

I reject a lot of what I write, maybe because I think the words are trite or sometimes, too comical. One of my major fears is of being categorized as a comedy singer, because that stops you from ever being able to sing about anything in a serious way. I try to get a balance between humour and truth when I write.

In my head when I’m playing is a whole orchestration of the imagination; this occasionally distracts me when I’m playing live because I can ‘hear’ the arrangement playing along with me. This is partly why I play solo most of the time.

I’ve chosen the song ‘Coffee and Hope’ from my last album Drawing on my Dreams as an example. It illustrates the feeling of wanting to escape but being trapped. It was completed in the January just before the pandemic took hold and I feel that it predicted what was to come, and what is happening now. Human beings have backed ourselves into a corner, subject to the whims of crazy people, yet still we wake every morning in hope that we’ll have some sort of agency to improve things. I imagine us trying to escape the fires we have caused on land only to be stuck on the jetty, unable to cast off our lifeboats to look for safety. I was also thinking of Edvard Munch’s painting, the scream that echoes through everyone’s heads sometimes!

I’m just about to release a new album on the label Tiny Global. This will be the first time I’ve done a solo album on another label rather than my own DIY one, and I’m looking forward to ‘belonging’ somewhere, rather than drifting around. As with Drawing on my Dreams, I recorded it at my kitchen table, which gives me plenty of time to get the music sounding the way that I want it to: simple and direct and clear.

Coffee and Hope

It’s too late now to cast off the rope
The knot is bound
Tied fast to a terrible timeline
Sanity has drowned
But I’m still living on coffee and hope
They keep me sane
They stop me dwelling too long
On what’s pouring down the drain.

Dried up ahead, our shrivelled horizons
Drift into dust
Behind me bridges have burned away
Fire and water, passion and reason
Love, respect and trust
All sense of order has gone astray

And all around me is insanity
And all that we need is tranquility

Could this be a nightmare that I can wake up from
Could it be a dream?
Will I wake up trapped in a painting
Of a Nordic scream?
Oh I’m still living on coffee and hope
Day by day
Though it seems my sunrise mornings
Are drifting far away

And all around me is insanity
And all that we need is tranquility
And all around me is insanity
And all that we need is tranquility

Panic stricken people,
Pestilence and plague
Override humanity
Nature has its ways
Storms in Australia
Melting ice caps,
International failure
Global collapse…
Yeah that.

You can find these lyrics by following this link to Bandcamp.

Helen McCookerybook is playing Barnaby’s Lounge, 46 Robertson Street, Hastings town centre, on Thursday 19 September, with Jude Montague supporting. Tickets are free with a suggested donation of £5–£10 for the artists.

Also in: Music & Sound