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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Featuring 23 tracks over two CDs

    Includes unlimited streaming of The "Dog Show Sessions" Live via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      £14.99 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 28 Show of Hands releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The "Dog Show Sessions" Live, Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed, The Best One Yet, Bristol Slaver 2020, The Long Way Home, Centenary Live At Exeter Cathedral, All At Sea, Wake The Union, and 20 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      £171.59 GBP (35% OFF)

     

lyrics

Working in the rain cutting down wood
Didn't do my little brother much good
Lost two fingers in a chainsaw bite
All he does now is drink and fight
Sells a bit of grass hots up cars
Talks of travel never gets far
Loves his kids left his wife
An everyday story of country life

And the red brick cottage where I was born
Is the empty shell of a holiday home
Most of the year there's no-one there
The village is dead and they don't care
Now we live on the edge of town
Haven't been back since the pub closed down
One man's family pays the price
For another man's vision of country life


My old man is eighty four
His generation won the war
He left the farm forever when
They only kept on one in ten
Landed gentry county snobs
Where were you when they lost their jobs
No-one marched or subsidised
To save a country way of life

Silent fields empty lanes
Drifting smoke distant flames
Picture postcard hills on fire
Cattle burning in funeral pyres
Out to graze they look so sweet
We hate the blood we want the meat
Buy me a beer I'll take my knife
Cut you a slice of country life

If you want cheap food well here's the deal
Family farms are brought to heel
Hammer blows of size and scale
Foot and mouth the final nail
The coffin of our English dream
Lies out on the village green
While agri-barons CAP in hand
Strip this green and pleasant land
Of meadow, woodland, hedgerow, pond
What remains gets built upon

No trains, jobs
No shops, no pubs
What went wrong
Country life
It's a little bit of country life

credits

from The "Dog Show Sessions" Live, released February 1, 2023

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Show of Hands England, UK

Show of Hands are an English acoustic roots/folk duo formed in 1986 by singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and composer and multi-instrumentalist Phil Beer. Joined by singer and double-bassist Miranda Sykes in 2004, and percussionist Cormac Byrne in 2019, Show of Hands continue to perform as a duo as well as in the four-piece band format. ... more

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