Growing up in Bidford during the hot summers of the 1970s inspired Greg to record The Old Railway Track CD
IT’S easy to lose track of time when reminiscing about childhood days in the summer sun but that was Greg Wye’s intention when he recently released his album The Old Railway Track which is a journey into his Bidford past in the 1970s and 1980s.
Greg, aged 49, grew up in Bidford and recalls walking and riding bikes along the former Bidford Railway Station line which was closed in 1949 but was quickly reclaimed by nature and became a haven for butterflies and other wildlife.
“I grew up in Bidford, although I have been living in Yorkshire for over 20 years and recently released an album under my alias Sunshine Playroom, it’s called The Old Railway Track,” said Greg.
It’s about memories butterflying, venturing along the railway line as a boy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I describe it as a hazy, psychedelic dream journey through childhood memories. The second single taken from it is A Trip Down Grafton Lane. It’s about lost summer days and it’s melancholic with a past that haunts.”
The album has 16 tracks across 44minutes available on limited edition CD and features photography of the old railway bridge plus some archive photos of the former Bidford station courtesy of Mike Musson at warwickshirerailways.com. The album cover features a colourful peacock butterfly and songs include titles such as The Ghosts of Trains Passed and The mythology of steam.
”It’s something that’s been in the back of mind for years and it came to fruition during lockdown – it was a germ of an idea,” Greg said. ”I wanted to capture the hazy, sunny and bright days but they’re also tinged with feelings of melancholy and loss on a number of levels. It is the longing for the mythical warmth of childhood summers in the late 70s and early 80s, which are only able to be relived through imperfect memory. Of walking along Grafton Lane, past the chickens in the field opposite Harry’s Farm, onto the railway bridge, then sliding down through a gap in the hedge to the magical world of The Old Railway Track.”
He added that as a child it was exciting but hard to fathom that real trains had once passed along the track and equally thrilling to imagine their ghosts passing through the bracken. The album keeps that memory alive for him and he has written, recorded and produced there whole project in his attic studio.
Greg has recently learnt that his album will be featured in a book ‘Listening to Landscape: hauntology and the echoes of Albion’ by Professor Phil Hubbard. A study of the English landscape through contemporary music.
”A percentage of money raised from sales of the album will be donated to Butterfly Conservation because butterfly numbers are an indication of what’s happening in wildlife and the environment and therefore mankind so we need to look after them and nature,” Greg said.
