Many of you will remember a song from long ago where the singer reels off a long list of all the places he’s been to. It was written by an Australian called Geoff Mack and recorded by a host of singers including Johnny Cash. A few years ago, I decided to write a version from the other side, sung by an old boy who’d never ever left his village. I called it ‘The Artlenock Song’.
I showed it to my friend Nick Evans who recorded it and sent it in to Bernie Keith’s Radio Northampton show. The song was very popular with Bernie’s listeners and he played it every day for a couple of weeks. I have a friend in Sydney who knew Geoff Mack and he told him about my version before he died, and this song comes with his approval.

RELISTED because the previous video developed a fault.
My son Chris joined his first band in 1998. I became their roadie and drove the kit around the various churches where they were booked to lead worship at youth events. The following summer we recruited a couple of members to join us on our summer tour that included performing at two festivals. They also played on my 2000 album. This song dates from 1999. I was so impressed with it that I recorded this version on my 2003 album 'Ain't Quitting'. Please like and share

I wrote this song thirty years ago. I had recently become a Christian and was inspired to compose songs about my new found faith. I’m quite a reserved person and was a bit disturbed by the almost adulation coming from certain people in the church who, in my opinion, had taken their eyes of Jesus. It’s a simple song that I finally got to record a few years later.
This live recording dates from 2015 when my son Chris and I set up the recording kit in a small barn on a cold spring afternoon. Over the next couple of hours, I sang a dozen or more songs which Chris filmed. I edited the recordings into one video, exactly as I performed them with no edits, retakes or overdubs.
This is the 102nd video to be posted to my Bitchute channel over the last two years. I will be taking a break for a while. Please like and share the videos.
Dave Clemo Feb 1st 2024.

This is another demo from our unfinished Gospel album from about eight years ago. My continued ill health meant that my voice was almost non-existent so Karen sang these lyrics which date back to 1996, one of a number of songs that I wrote but never set to music.
The tune is a joint effort between us. I started playing the chords and Karen worked out the tune. I added another guitar and some bass and we invited my friend Teresa to come over to add some violin. She listened to the song a couple of times and then recorded two versions of the solo. When I played them back it was clear that the solos complemented each other so I decided to use them both.
This album will now never see the light of day, but the three tracks that were completed, albeit in demo form, give a glimpse into what might have been.

Dave Clemo Jan 29th 2024

This is another song from my as yet unreleased album of Cornish inspired songs. I wrote the words to the song in 2010 and this recording dates from 2014/5.
The song tells the all-too-common story of a young miner who was forced to go abroad to find work after the collapse of the Cornish mining industry in the mid-19th century. Miners made up the majority of the estimated 250,000 men who were forced to leave the duchy to find work. Some men moved to South Wales and the North East to work in the coal mines, but other went further afield, to the United States, Southern Africa, Australia and Central America.
The Cornish have left their mark in those countries. The Cornish pasty can be bought in parts of Mexico (it’s called a ‘paste’), and the sport of football (soccer) was introduced to Central America by miners from Camborne & Redruth in 1900.

I wrote this song in 1995 and recorded a version for my ICC album ‘Going Back’. To be honest I didn’t enjoy the experience and wasn’t happy about the end result. I included a couple of the songs in my repertoire and basically forgot about it until a few years back when Karen and I were looking for songs for a new CD. We recorded a number of demos, including this track, but my continued ill health and a looming deadline for a book meant that the project was never completed and we went our separate ways.
A few years later I began updating the studio and was able to recover the recording data from the old computer. This track was largely complete and only need a little work so I decided to use it for this video. Hope you like it!

This is another song from my ‘Songs from an Empty Room’ session from March 2016. Our living room had been emptied prior to redecoration and there was a distinct echo as we walked around. My son Chris and I set up our mobile recording unit and over the space of a couple of hours we filmed and recorded ten songs. My guitar was DI’d and miked and my vocal was captured using a number of room microphones. All the tracks were recorded live with no effects, edits or overdubs.
This was the final track to be recorded. I was starting to feel tired and this showed in my voice. I hope that it does not detract from my performance of this Tom Rush song from the 1960s.
I remember being in the audience of the BBC ‘Simon Dee Show’ which was broadcast live every Saturday night from their Lime Grove Studios. The featured artist was US based singer Tom Rush. A few years ago, I discovered that he was a friend of Joe Boyd, a very influential person in the London music scene. He managed a number of artists including Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band and Nick Drake. The song wasn’t a hit but I managed to find a copy of the record to add to my collection. The song resurfaced about ten years later when The Walker Brothers had a hit with it.
I hope the fatigue on my face and in my voice doesn’t detract from your enjoyment of this video.

When I planned my album of Cornish-inspired songs back in 2014 I realised I had to include the song that is regarded by many as the Cornish national anthem. Vince Gorman, Rai Clews, Stevie Poole and I recorded the basic track in an evening, with the vocals added the following night.
Looking back, I wish I'd got the pronunciation right on a few words, for instance- it's the River TamAR, not TamER, but I hope this doesn't detract from your enjoyment as you sing along!
I created this video using various clips I found on the internet. All credit to the original posters.

This is a track from a recording session that Karen & I worked on back in 2016/7. After the positive reviews we had for our first CD we decided to record an album of original songs rather than the cover versions we sang on the first album.
The lyric dates from 1997. I still have lyrics from thirty years ago that haven’t yet been turned into songs, and we looked through them to see if there were any that we could use. We selected these lyrics and we tried singing them in a number of styles, eventually settling on this tune.
I was having real problems with my voice, constantly coughing and unable to reach any high notes, so I left the singing to Karen. I contacted my old friend Teresa Brown and asked her if she’d add some violin to a couple of tracks. She came to the studio, had a listen to what we’d recorded and then played along with the track a couple of times. I was very happy with the results.
Events took a turn. My voice was not getting any better and I kept postponing the sessions. In the end we had to abandon the project. Karen started working with another guitarist, and I decided to take a break from music in order to start working on the first of my autobiographical books.
After a couple of years my son and I decided to update the studio, with new computers, audio interfaces and updated programmes. As part of the studio shake-down I revisited the old recordings. At the time of writing this, three tracks were found to be complete enough to turn into videos. This is the first, with more to follow.

I was privileged to play bass for Australian singer/songwriter Nicki Gillis when she toured the UK in 2009/10/11. Alas, ill health following treatment for leukaemia put an end to my touring days, but Nicki and I kept in touch.
My next project was an acoustic band. The Dave Clemo Band (DCB) played the local pubs and clubs. We played quirky acoustic covers of classic rock songs. I played guitar and mandolin and sang; Vince Gorman played guitar, cittern and bodhran; Dave Walker played double bass and Chris Clemo played cajon and suitcase drum kit. We decided to make a CD to sell at our gigs. We recorded the tracks in our home studios.
A year or so later Nicki was back in the UK on tour and I asked her if she would sing a duet with me on a track for the forthcoming album. We chose this classic Status Quo song and the DCB got to work.
The lack of regular gigs put an early end to the band and we went our separate ways.

My good friend Jerry Arhelger passed away earlier this year. We’d been friends since a series of unconnected incidents brought us together.
It was 1994. I had been made redundant from my job as a bookshop manager. My redundancy insurance paid my bills, and so I took a year out to work on my music. I became friends with Pat Wallace (RIP) and we would sit in my back garden chatting about music. One day, right out of the blue, he said that I should meet up with Jerry Arhelger, an American singer who regularly came to the UK to play churches, clubs and festivals. Pat thought that we would get along together. I thought no more about it until I was contacted out of the blue by a lady who lived on the Wirral. Jerry was in the UK and needed a place to stay in Northamptonshire. So a couple of days later Jerry was in my living room, chatting over a mug of coffee. He stayed with us for a couple of days and we wrote a couple of songs together. We kept in touch, meeting up whenever he was in the UK.
In the late 90s he was diagnosed with cancer and was very ill for several years. After a miraculous recovery he returned to the UK in 2007, spending a few hours in my home studio where he sang some songs for a possible album. We toured the UK in 2008, playing churches up and down the country. He returned to the US and we never met face to face again.
In 2016/7 I revisited Jerry’s recordings and added a bit of guitar, mandolin, bass and vocals as required. He sent me a couple of songs that he had recorded (including this track) and I worked on those as well. The end result was an album called ‘It Only Takes a Moment’ that was released on all the download sites.
Jerry died in April 2023. I made this video as a tribute to his memory. I love this song and I hope you do too.
I am privileged to have had Jerry call me friend. Rest in peace old buddy.

This is a track from my second album ‘Running on Empty’ that I released in 1995. I can remember how and when I wrote this song. I had just recorded my first album ‘Change of Heart’. I had absolutely no idea of the record industry and song publishing, and was looking for a company that would act as my publisher. I got in touch with a Christian publisher called Daybreak Music. They were based in Eastbourne on the South Coast of England. They told me that they offered a service to aspiring songwriters, so I signed up with them and released the first album on cassette. Income from the album was going to support the work of two missionary friends of mine who were going to Poland. The album sold very well and I turned my attention to recording some more of my songs. I had quite a few by then.
One day I was contacted by Andy Crawley. He had a studio in a nearby town. I visited him and we agreed to start working together. I rang the publishers a few days later to give an update. I was asked to call back in about twenty minutes as my contact couldn’t come to the phone. I was sitting at my word processor (remember them?) and wrote the words to this song while waiting. The words just flowed and the tune followed a day or so later.
I played the song to Andy at the next recording session. Andy’s studio was in an upstairs bedroom and was spacious for a couple of musicians but couldn’t accommodate a full band with drums, etc. His set-up included a sixteen-channel desk, JBL monitors and a Fostex E16 tape recorder. He also used an Atari ST 1040 computer for recording all the midi instruments including keyboards and drums.
Andy set up a click track and I sang and played the song onto tape. He then programmed all the drums and keyboards. I think I played bass. I called my friend Teresa Brown and asked if she could play her violin on the recording. A day or two later she came in, listened to the track, put on some headphones and played the solo in one take. Almost thirty years later she remains a friend and has enhanced a host of my recordings with her playing.
Anyway, that’s the story. I set the recording to video clips I found on the internet. Credit to the original posters. Let me know what you think?

I remember hearing The Byrds’ version of this Bob Dylan song broadcast on one of the pirate radio stations in the mid-1960s. I was a Dylan fan but must admit I preferred the Byrds version of the song.
I don’t think I ever performed this song live more than a handful of times (if that) in the fifty years since I first heard it, so in a way it was a strange choice for me to include it in my ‘Songs from an Empty Room’ project back in 2016. I’ve already posted a couple of videos from the recording/filming session, so I won’t go into too much detail about it, except to say that most of the songs I recorded that afternoon look back to an earlier time, a time of youthful innocence, a time when we really thought we knew it all. As the song goes- ‘I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.’
I found the words on the internet and sang the song a few times in the days leading up to the recording session. On the afternoon of recording, I sang a verse or two to get the sound levels right and once my son Chris was happy, he started the recording and switched the cameras on. I mixed the audio and created the video using Sony Vegas software. What you see and hear is the performance exactly as it happened with no edits or overdubs.
Comments welcome

This is another track from my as yet unreleased Cornish album that we recorded back in 2015. I have to give credit to Graham Hart, whose rock version of the song was the inspiration for the arrangement.
The song celebrates the exploits of Richard Trevithick the inventor of the first successful steam powered road vehicle. On Christmas Eve 1801 his ‘Puffing Devil’ successfully carried six passengers along Fore Street in Camborne, continuing up Camborne Hill towards Beacon. The terrible state of the road contributed to them setting another record- the first recorded wheel slip by a powered vehicle. The engine ended up in a ditch, so Trevithick and his friends went to a local hostelry to celebrate. Alas, when they returned to the engine, the unattended fire had all but destroyed it.
The other verses appear to describe the sexual morals of the local landowner’s young wife.
On the recording I played guitar, bass and mandolin. Vince Gorman added some guitar; Rai Clews played cajon and our good friend Stevie Poole (RIP) added some button accordion.
A few years ago, the Trevithick Society constructed a full-size replica ‘Puffing Devil’ and the video shows footage of it travelling through the streets of Camborne on the annual Trevithick Day.
Hope you like it!

This is another track from The Broken’s 2000 album ‘The Moment of Truth’.
The song is based on Psalm 36. I began the song in December 1995 and Dan Harris & I put the finishing touches to it a few months later.
Four years later we played it for the first time when we went into Premier Studio in Corby to record an album as a swansong to a project that began in Summer 1999 with appearances at Cross Rhythms and Kingston Christian music festivals. In 2000 we supplied the music for a big event at our local football ground, recorded the album and went our separate ways.
We recorded the album over two days. The first day we recorded the basic track. On the second day we recorded the vocals and lead guitar solos. Towards the end of the day, we invited a few friends to sing the choruses. It was the first proper recording session for the younger members of the band and they acquitted themselves with distinction. What do you think?

Karen and I began working together in 2015 and immediately hit it off with our audiences, playing open mikes and a couple of mini festivals. We decided to record a very limited edition CD of the best songs from our live set, including our cover of this Beatles classic..
Unfortunately, my health issues put an end to our collaboration in 2017, but I look back on our time together with affection. Karen's a very talented singer.

This is another track from my Cornish songs project. There is a plaque on the wall of the Seaman's mission in Newlyn that tells the story of the amazing voyage of Richard Nicholls and his six-man crew who sailed their lugger 'Mystery' from Newlyn on November 18th 1854 and arrived in Melbourne, Australia 116 says later.

History does not record if they sailed back.

I played guitar, mandolin and bass and sang all the vocals. Vince Gorman played cittern, Stevie Poole played button accordion and Rai Clews added some cajon.

Please feel free to share the video.
Thanks.

Dave Clemo & Friends- Princess Flora

I first heard ‘The Princess Royal’ on the 1972 album ‘Morris On’’ which featured folk rock luminaries Richard Thompson, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Barry Dransfield and John Kirkpatrick. I had just joined a traditional folk group after several years learning my trade with a rock group in West London. I had been a fan of Fairport Convention since 1967 and loved their album ‘Liege and Lief’. ‘Morris On’ was an ever constant on my record player and I loved their version of ‘The Princess Royal’ Morris dancing tune so much that I taught it to the folk group as we played folk clubs, pubs and sessions around West London in the early 70s.
I grew up in Cornwall and was familiar with the Furry Dance which takes place in Helston every May. I created this mash-up of the two tunes as part of a projected album of songs and tunes inspired by my Cornish roots.
I scoured the internet and found a clip of a group of Morris dancers. Their dancing more or less matched the tempo of my recording, likewise the film of the couples dancing down the street in Helston seemed to fit as well, so I put this video together using Openshot software
I played guitar, mandolin and bass, Vince Gorman played guitar and cittern, Rai Clews played cajon and the track was finished off with the late Stevie Poole’s button accordion playing. Hope you like it!

I’ve been working with Vince for about 12 years, during various incarnations of the Dave Clemo Band, The Tartan Painters, at Whitby Gospel Music Convention and as a duo, sometimes with Vince leading and other times with me.
Back in 2014/5 I started making videos of my various music projects and Vince & I recorded a number of my compositions, including this one.
I wrote this song a few years ago after chatting to some friends about the relentless expansion of the towns into once fertile farmland and green belt. Somebody uttered the phrase ‘I can remember when all this was fields’, and that gave me the inspiration for the first part of the song. About twenty- five or so years ago my wife and I would travel to churches up and down the country to play concerts and take the Sunday services. More than once we found ourselves in old mining towns that were hollowed out shells, with no industry, no jobs, no hope. I grew up in a seaside town when the local power station would sound the hooter to denote the end of the shifts and I’ve included that in the song.
So that’s it. Hope you like it!

The Crossrhythms Festival of 1998 was an unforgettable experience for the Clemo family. It rained non-stop and the site became waterlogged. Sue and I had been booked to open the show on the main stage on Friday morning, play another set on Saturday afternoon, take part in a late night radio broadcast and finally close the show on Sunday late morning.
It was our 14 year old son’s first time on a big stage and to mark the occasion he brought a white T-shirt and some pens and went around collecting autographs from the other artists and speakers.
By mid afternoon on Saturday the rain was almost horizontal and people (with a few noticeable exceptions) resembled drowned rats. One keynote speaker stood by the side of the stage waiting to go on. He looked immaculate. I don’t know how he did it. Chris asked him to sign his T-shirt which he did, adding ‘Proverbs 3v5’ below his name.
We survived the weekend and a few weeks later I wrote this song based on the Biblical verse. We recorded it for The Broken’s 2000 album.

This is another track from my 2007 album ‘Covered’. My son Chris played drums; Jay Jones played electric guitar, Chris Fordham added bass and I played acoustic and electric guitars and sang vocals.
My wife Sue and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago so I’ve put together this video and dedicated it to her.
Hope you like it!

Back in the summer of 1994 my family took a holiday in Norfolk UK. Most days we would take a trip out around the county to explore the sights and one day we stopped at North Walsham. The church is unusual in that the bell tower collapsed a couple of hundred years ago and was never restored. As we walked around the town we chanced upon a Christian café/drop-in centre/youth club in a former pub. Unsurprisingly, it was called ‘The Carpenter’s Arms. Soon afterwards I was inspired to write this song. The arrangement was inspired by Linda Ronstadt’s version of ‘Blue Bayou’.
A few months later I recorded an album of my songs at Andy Crawley’s studio. At that time he was using his Fostex E-16 reel to reel recorder together with an Atari computer for the midi programming. He programmed the drums and percussion while I sang and played acoustic guitar and bass. Dave Anderson came in one afternoon and added the lead and pedal steel guitars. At that time I didn’t have a backing band so the album wasn’t promoted to the best of its potential. A few years later I added a solo guitar version to my live repertoire and still sing it from time to time. People like the song so I must have done something right. What do you think?

This track is from my 2003 album ‘Ain’t Quitting’. This was the first album where I recorded the basic tracks in our home studio before taking the raw data to my friend Andy Crawley for him to work his magic.
At that time the desk and computer was in a separate room to the live area (something that was rectified a few months later when we had the stud wall that separated the two parts taken down. I had originally designed the studio so that whoever was engineering was shielded from the live band and the sheer volume they were generating. (My son liked his music LOUD back then.)
On this particular day I had some free time before the next session. This track wasn’t on the original recording schedule but I decided to see what I could do with it. I’d written the song as a chorus to be sung in churches (the occasional and very welcome royalty payments suggest that a few churches picked up on it- thank you), so this recording was very experimental.
I set up the mikes and plugged my guitar into the DI box, went back into the control room to hit the ‘record’ button and came back, counted myself in started playing. Take 1 was done. I set up another track, put on some headphones and began recording the second take. The playback in the headphones was ear splitting! It was like my old rock group days when my band was so loud that we played on instinct and we were very tight.
So rather than stopping to adjust the volume I carried on, playing on instinct. I knew the song so just improvised some solos. Then I recorded another overdub. This time I had two guitars in my phones and still couldn’t hear what I was playing. I just went for it, soloing as best I could. I added a vocal and listened to the playback. It was a cacophony of sound but in a good way. The whole process took less than an hour. I took the track to Andy. A few days later he called me to say that he’d edited it down to a single guitar and vocal with a single guitar solo. I listened to it and to his surprise declared that I preferred the original! So Andy very kindly topped and tailed my recording, adjusted some of the levels and left it as it was.
It sounds like a free for all at a jam session, when all the players are in tune with each other and the music, and free to take it wherever it went.
And that’s OK by me. What do you think? Comment below.

After the Dave Clemo Band folded in about 2013 Vince Gorman and I continued to work on various projects, helped out by cajon player Rai Clews from time to time.
This video dates from about 2014. Vince and I set up in my home studio and we played the song live in one take. Vince is wearing his stage outfit as we thought we might make a show reel to promote us. I wrote the song a few years earlier and included it on my 2013 album ‘Hard Times’. There is another video of that recording on this channel.

I spent much of 2010 undergoing treatment for leukaemia. I was able to negotiate with my specialist to stagger my last few rounds of chemotherapy in order to play bass on Nicki Gillis’ 2010 UK tour. My son took time off from his own job to drive my van and hump the gear. All I had to was to sit in the van or dressing room between shows and put my energy into performing on stage. I finished the tour, had my final bout of chemo and was given the all clear in October.
That winter I started going to local open-mike events and gradually built up my stamina. I knew most of the other musicians and one night I invited two of them to form a band to play our versions of classic pop songs but with a twist.
We played them on acoustic instruments. Instead of a lead guitar, I played the solos on a mandolin, and we chose songs by one artist and played them in the style of another.
I sang lead vocal and played acoustic guitar and mandolin; Dave Walker played his double bass, and added harmonies. Vince Gorman played acoustic guitar, cittern and bodhran. The line up was completed when I asked my son Chris to play cajon. He later played a drum kit that he’d made, where all the drums and cymbals fitted inside a suitcase that doubled as the bass drum.
The idea for this song’s arrangement came from the first line of the lyric, where Jarvis Cocker sang ‘She came from Greece.’ It was a no-brainer. We played it in the style of ‘Zorba’s Dance.’
At first we performed at Open Mike events where we sang two or three songs and soon built up our repertoire so that were playing two 45 minute shows in local pubs, with the occasional all-day mini festival thrown in. The group broke up about 18 months later due to so many local pubs and music venues closing down.
We recorded this track for our debut album. Many groups released a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation, so I suggested we did the same. The only problem was that we hadn’t had a single ‘hit’, so we called the album ‘Other People’s Greatest Hits’ instead.
So what do you think? Does the arrangement work? Let me know below.