"Bay Tree" by Stone Bear

It's been a little while since I last wrote of a Stone Bear release but here they are back with "Bay Tree".

In the meantime they seem to have been keeping themselves busy with various projects, some musical as drummer Jeff Dennis has been providing drums for Roddy "Radiation" Byers' Skabilly Rebels as well as Stone Bear.

I suppose the immediate thought when I heard the name of the new track was how it related to 2019's "Ole Cherry Tree" (a staple of their live set now). We knew the duo love the blues but are they also dendrophiles?

In fact "Bay Tree" is an acoustic offering entirely dissimilar to "Ole Cherry Tree" (though of course that in no way diminishes the "tree lover" theory) and what strikes me first is that this must be the furthest they have travelled from the Blues: at least from its strict musical formats. The words are a meditation on life, death, interactions with nature, the landscape & the endless cycles of nature. The tree symbolises such long term attributes as strength, wisdom & courage & the track goes far to reflect these in its imagery.

It's a beautiful song (and the band have shown their melodic prowess many times before as well as the more delicate side of their playing) and sung by David John with admirable (and close mic) restraint.

Renowned as they are for their capacity to revitalise the blues traditions with authenticity & obvious love, it probably does them no harm as a band to show that there is more to them than that genre & being based in Warwickshire it's somehow fitting that they've come up with something closer to our own Nick Drake than Howlin' Wolf this time.

Not that it matters: they write strong & complete songs, each of which stands up in its own right and "Bay Tree" certainly does that.