Everything’s A Song
Jason McNiff & Gabriel Moreno
‘Everything’s A Song” is the first collaboration between singer-songwriters Jason McNiff and Gabriel Moreno. The two troubadours met in London in 2011 where they formed a friendship based around their devotion to songwriting and their shared passion for the life and works of Leonard Cohen. ‘Everything’s a Song,’ is a result of their conversations and collaborative performances during the last decade. The song celebrates a strand of songwriting based on the marriage of everyday life with philosophical ideas. It is also a manifesto that advocates for a quest for meaning through the exercise of lyric and music composition. Everywhere you look, everything’s a song. It was recorded in August 2023 at Sound and Dust Studios, Hastings.
LYRICS
The scents of summer nights
Growing in the moonlight
The dress that you wore
lying on the floor
Spring that comes at last
And it’s gone too fast
And on the hill you see
The gathering enemy
The cracks in your heart
when love departs
The barmaid arranging flowers
You’re staying in the pub for hours
And in the night you see
Winking merrily
The shapes of your thoughts
stuck in their default
And as you walk along you wonder have I got it wrong?
The pebbles of your fears
LIE IN THE SAND for years
The genteel crowd claps
All round the cricket match
There’s a western meadow-lark
She is waiting for the dark
You’re already in the woods
The deep dark woods
The last train goes by
In the blinking of an eye
walk home from the pubs
some of us in love
But in the night you see
Winking dangerously
The leopard of your dreams
Playing with your wings
And as you walk along you wonder have got it all wrong
A call you can’t deny
Floats across the sky
You’re bit between the teeth
by impostors of belief
A dress blows in the wind
The half Italian wind
the words of the dead
they’re alive in your head
a key forms in your mind
It works for a while
The truth comes in disguise
But you know it by its eyes
You don’t know what it’s for
Or what’s behind the door
As you try to make your mark
there’s a leopard in the dark
And as you walk along you wonder have I got it wrong
The Broken pier, the fallen post,
The rising wave, the holy ghost,
The seagulls beak, the ashtrays edge
The vintage hat, the humble ledge,
The captain’s stare into the sea
The song’s a pool for hopes to swim.
—-
Jason McNiff
JASON MCNIFF is a troubadour who has made eight albums which people call Folk, or Americana, or Alt. Country. There is an Englishness in his guitar playing however, and you might like to think of Bert Jansch or Wizz Jones meeting John Prine & Townes Van Zandt. Time Out writes, “McNiff’s quiet, intimate, fragile-sounding vocals draw you into his world, an almost timeless place, through which he drifts, a romantic loner, a dreamer, at home with the blues.”
He is often touted as one of the UKs most overlooked musical treasures, as a songwriter and finger picker. His latest album ‘Dust of Yesterday’ came out in 2021 and was album of the week in The Times.
Gabriel Moreno
GABRIEL MORENO is Gibraltarian singer-songwriter, currently based in London. An irresistibly engaging performer, he combines a latin exuberance and passion with a rare lyrical calibre (he is also an accomplished poet, with 12 books published to date). He has thrilled audiences across South America, the USA and Europe, including recent sets at UK festivals Wilderness, The Great British Folk Festival and Purbeck Valley Folk Festival, and has been championed by the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Cerys Matthews, with his sonorous baritone and poetical lyrics often seeing him compared to such luminary wordsmiths as Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Bill Callahan.
