Music

Of the Morning (2024)

My first album, Of the Morning, was released in June 2024. It’s available to download from my Bandcamp page and to stream from Spotify and other major platforms.

  1. Folksong Writer
    Songwriting can be a lonely, introspective process. This is a simple song I wrote a long time ago as a reminder to always look outside.
  2. Cariboo Miner
    A song about the gold rush in the Cariboo mountains of northern British Columbia, in the second half of the 19th Century. For every miner in the mining town of Barkerville, there was another settler there to meet his needs – for a price.
  3. Back to You (Old York Town)
    Less a ballad, more a moment in time. A song of two lovers separated in space.
  4. Rosemary Lane (trad.)
    A traditional song from the East End of London. Rosemary Lane was renamed Royal Mint Street in 1850.
  5. Somebody Sang Goodbye
    This is a song I started writing after a pilgrimage to Greenwich village, and then took me 20 years to finish.
  6. Time of Our Lives
    About the lying in state of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and the 250,000 people who queued to see it. This song won the Watford Folk Club Song Competition that year.
  7. Of the Morning
    A song of hope, that starts with Odysseus stuck in a traffic jam on the M4 motorway. It’s a song I will never stop singing.
  8. Come Down
    I wrote this for my wife, Ruth. It’s a song about facing the fading of the day – of having someone next to you at the end of the pier.

All songs written and arranged by Matt Davis, except Rosemary Lane (traditional).

The Tree in the Wood (2026)

The Tree in the Wood, was released in early 2026. It’s available to download from my Bandcamp page.

“In the Rain” is a song of hope, among other things. The first verse came quickly, but it took me a long, long time to write the rest.

Everyone has a lockdown story. “Mayflowers Bloom” is particularly sad one that took place, over the winter of 1665-66, in the Derbyshire village of Eyam. I’m not the first to turn it into a song.

“She Moved Through the Fair” is a lesson in compact storytelling.

“Rounding the Horn” and “O’er the Hills and Far Away” are irresistible songs of travelling far from home.

Just as romantic is “Jock Of Hazeldean”, an English-language version of the Scots border-ballad, from a poem by Sir Walter Scott.

In my opinion, “Nottingham Town” – a song of a world turned upside down by civil war – is an even better anti-war song than the Dylan classic it inspired.

“Scarborough Fair” needs no introduction.

And I got “The Tree in the Wood” from the New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. A simple gem of a song, versions of it appear all over Europe.

All songs traditional, except for “In the Rain” and “Mayflowers Bloom”. All songs arranged, performed and recorded by Matt Davis, St Albans, 2026.