BRENDA HESLOP - SONG ARCHIVE

MORE SONGS FOR YOU TO HAVE A LISTEN TO -

Now Don't You Cry
Every Beat Of My Heart
The Old Church Door
Under The Curse
Golden Bells
Nightmare
In Amongst The Roses
You And Me
Is It True?
The Pillow Of My Lord
Going, Going, Gone
Even For You
Pieces
The Mortgaged Heart
Baby Blue
You Settle My Mind
You Are Gone

These music files change regularly SO LOOK OUT FOR MORE SONGS!!

DON'T FORGET, THE LATEST SONGS ARE ON BRENDA'S MYSPACE SITE - BRENDA HESLOP MUSIC

ALSO - More songs and downloads in Lyrics, and a full biog and pics below.

FULL BIOGRAPHY

Brenda's background lies in the windy hills of Northumberland in the far north of England. Born and brought up on a hill farm, she spent her youth living and working among the sheep with her collie dogs, often on horseback, inspired by all she saw around her.

But she wanted to write things down, singing other people's songs wasn't enough so she started to put her thoughts to music and her first songs began to be written. They seemed to touch something in the audience, she seemed able to tell others what she saw and felt.

She went to a recording studio and there was Geoff. She played him some of the songs and he was so impressed that he gave her time to record and a little room to write in.

They got together with Rod Clements of Lindisfarne and other musicians and recorded the first album - The Music Of My Heart. They sold quite a lot and bought a piano.

The songs came thick and fast on guitar and the new piano and it wasn’t long before they were recording the second album – The Mortgaged Heart. Geoff had played guitar on the first album, but now he sang harmonies. This album was issued and distributed nationally, being back up by more television appearances and a radio station tour of Britain and Ireland.

The third album was titled The Moving Cloud. By then they had put together a session band of Rod, Paul Flush and Paul Smith, and a sound, with a lot of close harmonies coupled with piano, bass, drums and slide guitar.

During the next few years, Brenda wrote material for another 5 albums.

The Tender Coming, was put on general release in April 2005. There were 12 new songs, all arranged by Geoff. All the vocals and instruments performed by Brenda and Geoff, with a bit of help from Steve 'Wee' Brown on bass, Stephen McNally on border pipes and percussion, and Jill Heslop on backing vocals followed by is 'Golden Bells' RRD 005, released in October 2008 - another 12 songs, but in this case all the arrangements and accompaniments were done by Geoff, on a host of instruments. The songs on Golden Bells have very much a 'back home' feel, as Brenda has recently returned to the area she loves.

The latest album It Couldn't Last is a collection of new songs Brenda has written and is performing with her band Ribbon Road - having just been released it has already picked up a lot of airplay leading to Brenda being named 'Songwriter of the Week' on The Iain Anderson Show on BBc Radio Scotland.

Brenda still uses her surroundings to inspire her use of imagery. The metaphorical use of the sea, wind, storms, tide and sky to describe feelings are evident in the lyrics on ‘The Tender Coming’, as are the hills and the skies of Northumberland in 'Golden Bells', but she has been writing with this emotional honesty for over twenty years.

'I started to write to make sense of the things that happened in my life… I’ve searched and searched for the truth. I realised there were other people in the world who had suffered these and other things… I hope that they could take a CD away and listen to it, and maybe they could admit to themselves how they felt. It doesn’t mean you have to have answers, because I never had answers, but I have the questions'.

'It’s not just inspiration, it’s a thing you have to be responsible with. You’re dealing with things like peoples’ feelings, broken hearts, the core of a person – you just can’t wade in there, you can’t walk over peoples’ lives like that'.

She has continued to write to make sense of her experiences of 'life and death and the bit in between' - there are three more albums’ worth of material to be recorded, and pieces for a musical, ‘The Triple Fool’. They have just released the new album ‘Roadside Dreams' RRD 007, which contains 11 new songs by Brenda.

'Brenda is one classy writer and vocalist - her albums are slow burners that reveal their charms on repeated exposure...' Rock and Reel