Heart Of Oak

Album: Hollow Meadows (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This track is a heartfelt tribute to all the people who've influenced and nurtured Richard Hawley's life and work. He said the song is about "people who give their time to others unselfishly, out of friendship and love, without thought or reward."
  • One of the people that Hawley has in mind is his friend Norma Waterson. The lyric, "When you sang the Bay Of Biscay. The world drifted away," references one of the iconic folk singer's songs.

    They met in 2010 when Hawley was making a BBC Radio 4 documentary, The Ocean, about the British coastline: He recalled to The Guardian: "She sang 'The Bay of Biscay' in her living room, and I nearly fell through the floor."

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