Common Sense Dancing: Take Me By The Hand

And so we come to the end of Common Sense Dancing with the last track on disc one of the album, Take Me By The Hand.

It's a simple song that I wrote in around 2016 as a way to end my gigs. Up to that point I had generally finished with a cover of The Moody Blues song, "The Day We Meet Again", and much as I both love the song, and love performing it, I wanted to have something that was

• my own, and
• was imbued with little less melancholia.

So I wrote something about the nervous emotions of the end of a date. And it's proved to be remarkably popular, which is nice! There used to be an open mic night in Sheffield called HOLY ROBOTS, which sadly no longer meets, and the cafe in which it was held has since closed. But at one such evening in the late Autumn of 2017, I recorded all those gathered at HOLY ROBOTS singing the response part of the refrain, and they make up the choir at the end of the song - and what a marvellous sound they made!

The lady's reply is sung by Judith Silver, in whose folk-rock band I played in the mid 90s.

I realise that putting out a song about holding hands in the middle of the Coronavirus Lockdown may not be the greatest bit of marketing I've ever indulged, but it is what it is!

Though the walk through the music has finished, I'll conclude with an epilogue tomorrow, so stay safe, and I'll see you then!