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Trespassers Will Be Celebrated

from Outsiders by Chris Foster

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Chris' 6th solo album contains a mix of old traditional songs and ballads along with a few from the last 60 years. Comes in a beautifully designed 3 fold digipak with a booklet containing all song lyrics and featuring cover art by Chris. The album was a runner up in the 2008 fROOTS magazine, best folk / world music album of 2008.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Outsiders via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

In 2001 I worked with Sheffield based songwriter and singer Sally Goldsmith, on ‘As We Walked Out’, a show and CD based on the
stories she heard while spending a winter walking with rambler’s groups in the English Peak District.

Following the success of the project, Sally was commissioned to write ‘Trespassers’ which we performed in 2002 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Kinder Mass Trespass. The event, which many years before, had prompted Ewan Macoll to write his song ‘The Manchester Rambler’.

Sally’s song name checks a number of celebrated historical figures, but most importantly, also names people, largely unknown today,
without whom many freedoms we take for granted would not have been won. Of course, the need for us all to keep on ‘slogging up the
hill…’ is just as great as ever.

lyrics

Joan alone on Stanage
Finds the air to clear her head
Lift her spirits, calm her nerves and bring her peace
While the ramblers group is raring
To walk Bleaklow’s boggy wastes
Kitted out with compass, map and fleece
Hassan’s on his first trip with his classmates from his school
He’s never heard the eerie curlew cry
All owe their Sunday freedom to those who went before
The ones who tried to reach out for the sky

Chorus:
Trespassers will be celebrated
Now their will is done
Trespassers will be celebrated
Glorious kingdom come
By those who walk the southern downs
The high and windy moor
Trespassers will be celebrated
Freedom is won

Gill and Tony’s little family
Clamber madly over stones
Delight in rushing streams and frightened sheep
The baby’s in her backpack
Rocking gently through her dreams
And cooing with the beck from deep in sleep
Rose and Madge are wandering, their working life is done
Their time’s their own, they range for miles around
While blokes out on the Roches crawl like spiders up the rock
But know nought of those who won this hallowed ground

See campaigners through the ages
Walk together side by side
Watt Tyler, Benny Rothman hand in hand
Carpenter, Winstanley and the Diggers on the hill
The commoners who dared to seize the land
Stephen Morton, Barbara Castle,
Bert Ward and Terry Howard
The Greenham women cutting down the fence
Elsie Gaskell and the Buntings, young Woodcraft singers too,
Tom Stephenson, MacColl and Thomas Spence

Remember those who stuck at nothing
But kept slogging up the hill
For the right to spread their wings and take their space
Negotiators, demonstrators, all who spun the dream
That you and me might claim our rightful place
Trespassed for us and against those
Who kept beauty for themselves
Who fenced us out for profit and for greed
But now the way is open for us all to share this land
And the beauty and the glory’s ours indeed.

credits

from Outsiders, track released April 23, 2008
Chris Foster - vocal & guitar
Val Regan - fiddle
Trevor Lines - double bass

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about

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Chris Foster Reykjavik, Iceland

Chris Foster grew up in the south west of England. A master of his trade, he was recently described as “one of the finest singers and most inventive guitar accompanists of English folk songs, meriting legend status.” Over the past 40 years, he has toured throughout the UK, Europe, Canada and the USA. He has recorded six solo albums as well as working on many collaborative projects. ... more

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