The Ovenbeg
Wednesday morning, 1924
Saltburn-by-the-Sea, just offshore
Beached by the pier, sails all shred
A schooner by the name of SS Ovenbeg
Saltburn stirred, everyone went down
To see the ship, the talk of the town
The crew were helpless, they couldn’t put it right
Their only hope to float her off the beach that night
And as night fell and the tide came up
So did the wind and waves
With a heave and a crash (smash smash smash)
The sea slapped her aft (bash bash bash)
All night long the weather steered
The Ovenbeg into the pier
With a heave and a crash (smash smash smash)
The sea slapped her aft (bash bash bash)
One day Saltburn had a pier
The next day it had two
When the SS Ovenbeg broke through
Thursday morning, there she lay
With a useless load of china clay
She’d left Cornwall, Scotland-bound
But in the late spring gales she’d run aground
The pier was cut clean in half
The bandstand stood without a band
It took five years to fix the mess
Caused by the skipper of the Ovenbeg
And as night fell and the tide came up
So did the wind and waves
With a heave and a crash (smash smash smash)
The sea slapped her aft (bash bash bash)
All night long the weather raged
The Ovenbeg had met her fate
With a heave and a crash (smash smash smash)
The sea slapped her aft (bash bash bash)
One day Saltburn had a pier
The next day it had two
When the SS Ovenbeg broke through
Oooh, the Ovenbeg broke through
Oooh, cut the pier in two
© 2024 JG Songs
On the night of the 7th/8th of May, 1924, a ship called the SS Ovenbeg broke through the pier of the town I live in. I wrote this song to commemorate the centenary of that event which left the town with a 200 foot gap in its pier that took five years to repair. You can visit the East Cleveland Image Library to see photos of the ship and the resulting gap here: http://www.image-archive.org.uk/?s=ovenbeg. The best image is towards the bottom of the page.
I mixed this at home on 27 tracks in Reaper 6.18 with the following:
- Vocals: Doubled lead vocals and three-part backing harmonies recorded on a RØDE NT2-A condenser mic. Vocals run through Izotope Nectar 4 with lead and backing vocals treated separately.
- Strings: One central guitar part, two doubled guitar parts, two different Nashville-tuned parts, two mandolin parts in harmony all recorded acoustically with a stereo pair of RØDE M5 mics. All normal guitar parts run through Izotope Neutron 4.
- Drums: EZDrummer 3 Main Room Studio > Basic Small Mic Michael Ilbert preset with That Bluesy Shuffle drum family grooves. All parts run through Izotope Neutron 4 separately.
- Keys: EZKeys 2 Studio Grand > Boogie Room with Reggae > Rock Steady grooves (I was surprised to find a reggae keyboard part was the best fit for a shuffle groove but you live and learn!)
- Mastering: Izotope Ozone 11 > Pop
