Long time friend of AUK, Liverpool based Barry Jones has taken a break from his Southbound Attic Band to record a set of songs of sparse acoustic charm, with just guitar, his voice and harmonica. The title track for the EP, ‘A Broken Heart (For Cynthia)’ was inspired by some YouTube footage of a visit John Lennon’s former wife Cynthia made in the 1990’s to Mendips, Lennon’s former Liverpool home, where they both lived for a while when Julian was a baby in the early 1960’s, just as Beatlemania was taking over the world.
However the song we’re sharing with you today from the EP is the quietly reflective and innately beautiful ‘Lost Resort’, the story of Formby By the Sea, a resort planned twelve miles north of Liverpool at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. A few buildings remain, but the grand plans, including a new railway line and station, were never completed. Barry told us: “I’ve lived here in Formby for over 50 years. When I lived with my Mum and Dad the lane at the bottom of our garden led to the site of the Lost Resort and there were many tales of a ghost which haunted the area, so I combined the two things, inspired by my many walks there during Lockdown. The idea of a spirit of the Lost Resort dancing alone to the echoes of music of the fin de siecle period is the basis of the song. I referenced dances of the period like the Machiche, also known as the Brazilian Tango, and The Hesitation Waltz, to evoke the sense of time. The black and white images of the video are an attempt to convey the abandoned and eerie nature of the area where once holidaymakers would have caroused into the night, like in the much more successful resort of New Brighton, over the water, where the lights reflect on the water mocking Formby by the Sea, The Lost Resort.”
