Musical Pieces on TumbleStone, Numbers 51 to 55

The initial Post to provide an Annotated Index to music on TumbleStone Blog dealt with the First Five. What follows are the five Blog Posts with music in them published between March 2024 and early August 2025.

51) “Early 2024 Fossicking Trip – Part 27, ‘Watch the World Spin in Waves… I Threw Stones at the Stars’ (Isakov’s ‘The Stable Song’), Sunday 17 March” (17 March 2024) – During a couple of bad weather days when I didn’t go fossicking, I picked out 24 of my findings to highlight in this Post. I was listening to music more than usual, and this song – Gregory Alan Isakov’s “The Stable Song” – was in my head and it got incorporated into the Post. “The Stable Song” was released on Isakov’s 2007 album, “That Sea, The Gambler”. A 2024 review called it “one of the best indie folk songs of the last decade… known for its haunting beauty, introspective lyrics, and delicate instrumentation”. As I write in the Post, “The lyricist himself says it’s just a poem about everything. It’s maybe about songwriting and inspiration and success, and, yes, about things in life that mean a lot, like music and stones and diamonds and coal…” Isakov was born in South Africa in 1979 and moved to the United States with his family in 1986. He was raised in Philadelphia, beginning a life as a professional musician in his teenage years, playing occasional gigs while also working as a gardener. Wikipedia notes that “Isakov’s music combines indie and folk, featuring instruments such as the guitar and banjo”. Acclaimed for his lyrics, Isakov’s music often explores themes such as nature, introspection, and personal experiences. He played in New Zealand in early 2024 and, according to UnderTheRadar, comes back in February 2026 for concerts in Auckland and Wellington. Auckland Live quotes one critic: “He’s continuing to make expertly-tooled music… It’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout.” Isakov describes himself as a “horticulturalist/ musician”. He works a four acre farm in Colorado, providing food through direct marketing to local Community Suported Agriculture members, restaurants, and a local food bank (see also The Independent). Another Isakov song previosuly featured in an April 2023 Post, “Somewhere In-Between” – Another Song From My Fossicking Holiday. 

52) “March 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 23, ‘Here is bigger than you can imagine’: A Tectonically Stressed Find from Gemstone Beach and an Afternoon Earthquake, Tuesday 25 March” (30 March 2025) – At one stage in this Post I write: “One of the interesting things about an earthquake is the stark reminder of the tremendous forces at work in the ground beneath our feet, forces over which we have no control at all. We are helpless as the earth moves. It reminds me of a line from Bruce Cockburn’s song ‘Messenger Wind’ – ‘Here is bigger than you can imagine’.” Many stones I find on Gemstone Beach show the results of tectonic stress, always a reminder of forces far bigger than us humans. The song in this Post, “Messenger Wind”, comes from Bruce Cockburn’s 2003 album “You’ve Never Seen Everything”. Bruce Cockburn has long been my favourite musician and I used to play his songs in lectures because of the issues he deals with. He is one of the very few musicians who I have heard live in concert, 40 years ago in Vancouver and then again ten years later in Auckland. I have used Cockburn’s music twice previously in TumbleStone Blog, in June 2016, “Step outside, take a look at the stars…” and in September 2016, “Isn’t that what friends are for?”. He has written more than 350 songs on 34 albums over a career spanning five decades. In recognition of his lifelong contributions to Canada music, culture and social activism, Cockburn has been awarded (among many other things) nine honorary doctorates, received the Order of Canada in 1983, and was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame in 2002 (Wikipedia). In 2011, the Canadian Postal Service issued a Bruce Cockburn stamp, stating “Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn is best-known for using his music to bring attention to important issues, such as politics, poverty and the environment, believing that songs can be a catalyst for social change.” He’s now 80 years old and showing his age but still playing music. In June this year, he visited the Isle of Iona, just a couple of months before I referred to Iona in a Post, not knowing of his visit – such coincidences, many of them trivial, have happened a number of times over the years.

53) “August 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 2, A Stop on My Way: Lots More Sand on Kakanui’s Seadown Beach, Wednesday 30 July” (31 July 2025) – In this Post, I explain the inclusion of a song in the following way: “So I continue on my way south to Gemstone Beach, through Milton and onto Balclutha for Thursday night. Friday sees the last stage of the trip to the Te Waewae Bay coast. Cue the latest addition to my Spotify playlist, added because I heard it on a recent episode of the New Zealand-made TV programme “The Brokenwood Mysteries”. The song is ‘On My Way to You’ released in 2015 by New Zealander Don McGlashan [‘you’ being Gemstone Beach, in my current case]. It’s a good song to drive to, with a travelling beat.“ Don McGlashan, born in 1959, is one of New Zealand’s best known and most highly regarded songwriters. He was a band member of Blam Blam Blam, The Front Lawn, and The Mutton Birds, before going solo in 2003. He was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2023.

54) “August 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 4, Between the Beauty and the Pain, Gemstone Beach, Saturday 2 August” (4 August 2025) – I decided early on in this trip to try to include a piece of music in every second Post. I had been listening to a number of songs by The War on Drugs and one of them, “Strangest Thing”, released by them in 2017, provided the theme for this Post. The song’s lyrics include “Am I just living in the space between / The beauty and the pain / And the real thing“. I started the Post as follows: “Hunting for stones is often an activity located somewhere between the beauty and the pain. A fossick can be a painful search for beautiful stones, depending on the weather or other circumstances.” The War on Drugs is a US indie rock band formed in 2005. One of its founders, and the person who has remained constant throughout membership changes, is Adam Granduciel, its frontman and primary songwriter. Wikipedia quotes Granduciel on the origin of the band’s name: “My friend Julian and I came up with it a few years ago over a couple bottles of red wine and a few typewriters when we were living in Oakland… It just came out and we were like ‘hey, good band name’ so eventually when I moved to Philadelphia and got a band together I used it… I always felt that it was the kind of name I could record all sorts of different music under without any sort of predictability inherent in the name.” I find their lyrics to be thoughtful and I really like the instrumental settings to their songs – the way the music builds in “Strangest Thing” is a good example. One fan has said, “They wear their influences (Dire Straits, Springsteen, Rod Stewart, …) on their sleeve, and their lyrics rarely tell a coherent story… I really appreciate their way of blending classical rock music with ambient sounds, their ‘wall of sound’, where each note appears to have been crafted to the uttermost precision.” Other songs by them that I enjoy include “Thinking of a Place”, “Under the Pressure” and “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”.

55) “August 2025 Stone Collecting Trip – Part 6, A Simple Song, A Simple Stone, Gemstone Beach, Tuesday 5 August” (9 August 2025) – When I first became obsessed with stones, I decided to stick with ones that I could find on beaches with reasonably easy access. I resisted the temptation to buy some of the many stunning stones that can be found in shops or online. I discovered that the beaches I went to often gifted me extraordinary stones, especially when they are viewed close-up. So this Post early on includes the statement: “When I see a close-up photo of a stone, its history and complexity and beauty are all revealed, and I can but marvel. A simple stone, that turns out to be not so simple.” The song that inspired the terms used in this observation is Passenger’s “Simple Song” (2017). I had heard it a few weeks previously and vaguely recalled it from some years back – I liked it, especially its gentle tune, so it got added to my Spotify “Liked Songs”. I thought its lyrics were quite superficial initially but after a while I grew to appreciate its depth – “Well, I know it’s far from simple / But simple ain’t worth worrying about“. Passenger is Michael David Rosenberg, an English indie folk singer and songwriter. He used to be in a band called “Passenger” and just kept the name when he went solo in 2009. His best known song is “Let Her Go” (2012), which topped the charts in 16 countries and accumulated more than 3.9 billion views on YouTube.

The Index to the next musical pieces used in TumbleStone Posts has not yet been published.