Rise Up Singing: Episode 3 - River

(If you're reading this on Facebook, you'll be wondering where the video is. That's Facebook's problem. You'll have to click on "view original post" and get over to my blog to see it.)

Words and music by Bill Staines
Rise Up Singing chapter: Time & Changes, p.226
Verse:
D - G D / - - A - / D - G D / - A D - ://
Chorus:
D Dmaj G A / / G - A D / G D G D / G A - G - D

My version (in G)
Verse: same as above, transposed to G
Chorus:
G - C D / / C - G - / C G Am Em / C D C↓ G

As you can see, there's a little difference between my version and the book's, but not too much. You can play the song with the same melody either way, so it's just a difference of taste. That, and Rise Up Singing seems to draw out the last line of the chorus more than I do. No big deal. Still, if someone else knows the song more precisely the way Bill Staines does it, please post it up too for comparison.

This is the third song I've recorded from the Rise Up Singing songbook, with the end goal of recording all of them. I'm most interested in the ones that aren't widely known these days, and the problem there is that in most of those cases, I don't know them either. So I'm simultaneously trying hard to dig up recordings, and learn the songs as quickly as I can.

For those who have a little bit of cash and want to bypass this process, Annie Patterson, who co-edited Rise Up Singing, sells her own lovingly-made CDs of these songs here at www.quakersong.org/teaching_discs/ . I hope if I direct you to her site, she won't feel like I'm trying to undercut her business, which, in all honesty, I wouldn't ever want to do. There you can also find out how you can help get Pete Seeger nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. So check it out. I'm still going on with the project, though. I have a high enough chance of failure and a low enough quality index that I don't think there's much danger of me cutting in on Annie's turf.