“From a Lullaby Kiss”

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I first heard “From a Lullaby Kiss” less than two weeks ago. That’s how quickly these things can happen.

I was sitting on the floor at the back of the Knight & Spiers gig I was organising at Whitchurch Folk Club, when Peter Knight started playing it. It was the only piece in the gig that featured his vocals, and it struck me rather dumb. I was a bit teary-eyed by the end of it.

I woke the next morning with the words pretty much fully formed in my head, on one hearing only. I went to find it on Spotify or one of the other streaming channels, but “From a Lullaby Kiss” only existed on Youtube (you can find it here). I heard it through a couple of times, righted any wrongly remembered words, picked up the guitar… and this is what came out.

It’s a beautifully simple, quiet and humble suggestion, rendered in song, that we might live our day-to-day lives without taking them for granted. It took me some time to be able to sing the line, “It’s a life that I’ll miss when it’s time for the taking”, without my voice wavering all over the place.

I played it for a few days until it was, as they say, “under my fingers”. Recording it took about an hour – searching for that elusive live take and then adding a Rhodes piano to it in order to flesh out the atmosphere. I love the sound of an acoustic guitar and voice, alone, but sometimes adding that Rhodes sound aural equivalent of giving the player a comfy sofa to snuggle up in.

And that was that, really. A new recording for you to listen to. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it’ll encourage you to go and find Peter’s original version. That’s available by clicking through to his website, here.

You can find my version on Spotify, Amazon, Google Play, Deezer and Apple. All the usual places. However, it’s not on Bandcamp this time, as Bandcamp doesn’t allow for easily paid royalties on cover songs.

One day… fingers crossed.

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