Pete Ryder: His Barometer Is Right (But The Weather Is Wrong)

Friday 22nd April 2011

Tony Cummings catches up on the continuing intriguing history of veteran folk man PETE RYDER



Continued from page 1

Sian Harry
Sian Harry

The compilation even contains Ryder's entrance into the realm of.ahem.rap. He told me "'Squirrels' (one of the two new recordings on the CD) is about grey squirrels and red squirrels. We all think of grey squirrels as bad and red squirrels as good. I was driving out of Ripon a few years ago and I ran over a grey squirrel. I didn't try to but it ran in the road. I felt sorry but then I thought it's a grey squirrel, I've contributed. Then a fortnight later I was in Westmoreland and ran over a red squirrel. He was standing in the road just over the brow of the hill, I couldn't miss. I thought oh dear, I've evened it up now."

One of the subjects that particularly fascinates Pete and which was reflected on 2008's 'Faith And Superstition' album is the intersection between biblical faith and mere superstition. He said, "I have two things going on. A bit of me is a reformer. Some years ago I went to another old church at Blytheborough in Suffolk and they've got these wonderful carved wooden angels in the roof and they had one of them down for repair - it was riddled with musket bullets. I thought what's happening here? There was a chap went round under Cromwell, William Dowsing, and apparently his soldiers had been trying to shoot down the angels from the church roof. William Dowsing was an iconoclast - he broke things. He kept a diary; his friends have put it on the web. He went to such and such a church, he broke so many windows, so many Pope-ish inscriptions. He felt they were getting between the people and God, and I can sympathise with him. Archaeologists see him as an arch vandal destroying things. I ended up thinking about him a lot and writing a song called 'The Defence of Master William Dowsing', which is on 'Faith And Superstition'. I'm really interested in the idea of where faith and superstition merge. In me I have both things. I want to reform, I think there are things we need to break, we need to be iconoclasts, perhaps there are things in society that are getting between man and God. But at the same time I want to be part of something that's been going for 2000 years and that I can't judge the boundaries of. Jesus says let the wheat and the tares grow together. In the past I've tried to judge who is in and who is out. I see both things in me. The songs almost seem contradictory - they're not, they're both in me. A part of me gets a bit tired of trying to fit them together logically."

Pete was fascinated by a visit to Breton churchyards he'd made recently looking at carved "Calvaries". "A carved Calvary there is not only the crucifixion scene but the whole New Testament in granite figures half life-size - hundreds of figures, wonderful carving. The Protestants say they worship these carvings. They don't. They are telling a story with visual means and they include the Gospel story but they also include Breton legends, as Viking-period carvings in this country mix Christian and Norse imagery. It's very interesting. There's a wonderful one there - a huge dragon's mouth, a hell mouth. Jesus is there and by the hand he's taking out the people, he's rescuing them from Hell."

In the complicated issue of where faith ends and superstition begins Pete admits that there are areas where he doesn't know where he stands. He recounted, "Yesterday, on the way to the south I went to Hailes Abbey. It's about 10 miles north of here near Winchcombe and right through the medieval period they reckoned they had a phial of the holy blood of Christ and people came to worship that. There were long queues waiting to visit because they had this. At the Reformation it was said that they killed a duck every so often and put it's blood in the phial. But then again, Reformers would say that, wouldn't they? So we just don't know. It is the blood of Christ that saves us, but people wanted something concrete they can put their hands on, they want something in a glass phial they can control, they can get money for. Pilgrims would come. It was a rich abbey. Now it's humps and bumps and a few bits of wall."

In 2005 Pete released the album 'Philately, Philosophy & Felicity'. He spoke about the CD, "I couldn't resist the pun that philately will get you everywhere. But it does: I was a stamp collector and a lot of what I know about the world - an awful lot goes in when you're eight, nine, 10. I have a confession to make about that song. I drink very little. I was teetotal till I had my heart attack at 60. I went on a plane with my wife to Tallinn in Latvia and I'm very nervous about flying and I asked the doctor should I take some sedatives or half a bottle of red wine. He said go for the red wine. So at five in the morning I deliberately, medicinally drank half a bottle of red wine, got on the aircraft and while I was on the aircraft I managed to spill my free orange juice right down my trousers and into my shoe. I went to the loo and instead of pressing the soap button pressed the one that said 'Alert cabin crew'. On the same journey I wrote the lyrics to three very good songs in the little notebook I have."

Pete is the first to admit that he is not the finest singer in the world. He chuckled, "A newspaper did a review of me once and said Ryder's a narrow gauge vocals are something of an acquired taste." Also, his word-heavy songs, with their wide ranging subjects taking in everything from moments of history to theological ponderings to abstract flights of fancy, don't connect with every audience. He said with admirable candour, "I sometimes find myself playing to people when I realise it's not going to work. I was asked to sing to Sunderland University Christian Union and I went there thinking these will be people such as I would have sung to at university. I'm me; it's where I come from. And I got there and they were virtually all people for whom English was their second language. After my first song, I looked up and all the chairs had been moved back about three paces. The audience simply looked scared. At the end they all scurried away and left me on my own. I keep finding myself being asked to sing to children or to old folks and I'm worried that it will go over their heads."

The singer/songwriter does have a smallish cognoscente of supporters however. Even if he didn't he says he'd continue to write. "If something excites me, I often write a song about it. I would write these songs and record them if nobody else ever listened to them. But I want to be useful in my time on this planet. And stuff that excites me, I want to try and communicate. Sometimes it's quite difficult because I'm idiosyncratic."

So how much of that is the creative drive, ie, wanting people to understand and appreciate his art, and how much is it a spiritual drive wanting to communicate truth? He responded thoughtfully, "I think they're tangled together. I think they're both there but I think as with all things your ego is tangled and we've got to live with ourselves. Even the greatest preachers, I'm sure, have some very mortal parts. And it's a struggle. You've got to try and be honest with yourself and say a bit of me is selfish and egocentric, another bit of me I hope God is trying to communicate through. We're all tangled." CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
About Tony Cummings
Tony CummingsTony Cummings is the music editor for Cross Rhythms website and attends Grace Church in Stoke-on-Trent.


 
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Reader Comments

Posted by Arthur Champion in Gloucestershire @ 18:20 on Apr 25 2011

Pete dares to be who God's made him to be including the as yet undiscovered Bob Dylan of Christian lyrics...



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