SLS: Standing On The Fault Line

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For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that represents Earth Day (which was April 22), or Arbor Day (April 24). His post, Home Planet, tells us all. I was well aware of Earth Day and have posted music for it for the past four years, but had to admit my ignorance of Arbor Day, so I looked it up. The first recorded instance of a tree plantation festival dates back to 1594 in Spain, but the clue to the modern day version is in the spelling: this is an American festival, which started in 1883,  but is becoming much more widely recognised elsewhere, including here in the UK where we had our first officially recognised day in February 2020, though we have had National Tree Week since 1975, usually in November.

 

 

I’m playing a song for each of these days, though one of them is a fairly tenuous connection: but it is an excuse to play a beautiful song! For Earth Day I could play you one of my usual suspects, who have featured in all of my previous posts, but I’m going with the new one I added in last year. This is lovely:

And in case you missed any of the lyrics while they were showing on that video, genius.com has the full set.

I’m With Her is an American band consisting of singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Sara Watkins (violin, guitar and ukulele), Sarah Jarosz (banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin and guitar), and Aoife O’Donovan (keyboard and guitar). They started playing together at the Telluride Festival in 2014, and whist they all have other ventures they have stayed together in this format and have become known as a ‘folk supergroup.’ They have to date released several singles, two studio albums and, very recently, a live record, and all come highly recommended by me. Their first release was in 2015, with a cover of John Hiatt’s song Crossing Muddy Waters – if you don’t know it, do seek it out: it is exceptionally good. 

Standing On The Fault Line is a track on their second album, Wild And Clear And Blue, which was released in May 2025. All of its tracks were written by the band, and this is a typical example of just how good they are: intelligent lyrics, which blend concerns for the environment with thoughts of a relationship. And their musicianship and harmonies are to die for. Wikipedia is a bit light on chart details, saying just that it made #27 in the UK Album Downloads listings, but the album won Best Folk Album at the 2025 Grammy Awards and another of its tracks, Ancient Light, won a Grammy for Best American Roots Song. And who am I to disagree with the Grammy judges?

Turning now to my tree song for Arbor Day. As I said, the connection here is (very) tenuous but this is such a beautiful performance I just had to play it. I did actually play this for SLS in early December, but it is so good I’m giving it another airing:

This is a traditional folk song, so there is no songwriter to credit for it, and the lyrics were on the video so we are spared the need to seek them out. The Trees They Grow So High is a Scottish folk song known by many titles including, as here, The Trees They Do Grow High, plus Daily Growing, Long A-Growing and Lady Mary Ann. A two-verse fragment of the song is found in the Scottish manuscript collection of the 1770s of David Herd, which was used by Robert Burns as the basis for his poem Lady Mary Ann, published in 1792. The subject of the song is an arranged marriage of a young woman by her father to a boy who is much younger than she. There are numerous versions of both the tune and lyrics. In one set of lyrics the groom is twelve when he marries and a father at 13.

Since the 1960s, the song has appeared on albums by many folk-influenced artists, including Joan Baez, who included it on her second album, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 in 1961, as well as Martin Carthy’s debut release in 1965. As you saw from the video, Pentangle included their version, with the gorgeous vocals of Jacqui McShee, on their Sweet Child album, which came out in November 1968, and another of my favourite bands, Steeleye Span, had a version under the Long A-Growing title on their album Now We Are Six, released in March 1974. I know this is a love song and the trees are symbolic – they grow being fed by the remains of her husband buried beneath them –  but it is so beautiful and it gave me an excuse to indulge my love for folk music!

That’s all from me for today, apart from my usual thanks to Jim for hosting the show. I’m off to see what others are playing for this, hoping to see some of the four tunes I have played for Earth Day in previous years but omitted today! Enjoy the rest of your day 😊

33 thoughts on “SLS: Standing On The Fault Line”

  8. Clive, 2 excellent choices for the prompt. The harmonies on the first one, and yes, I remember when you posted the 2nd one before. The singing and the instruments on this are so good. Oh what a narrative!

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  9. Great choices for today’s theme, Clive. I did not know “Standing on the Fault Line”, but the tight three-part harmony was magnificent. I totally enjoyed it. It’s always fun to hear Pentangle and this song was no exception …. maybe not a direct hit but a very nice nod to Arbor Day. Wonderful music!

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  12. I’m With Her, not heard of them but what a beautiful song and lyric. Gorgeous, I will look into them more, thank-you. And though I’m not a purist folk fan, I enjoyed the Pentangle recording, I can imagine the Joan Baez version from just listening to this.

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  15. Both beautiful songs. I really enjoyed your backstory on the Tree’s song. I find the medieval era fascinating- and this song put me in mind of Geoffery Plantagenet and Empress Matilda since he was only 15 when they married him off to her.

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    • I’m pleased you liked them. That history is typical of many traditional folk songs and is one of the things that attracts me to the genre. Plenty of similar tales around, as you say.

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