HUDDIE LEDBETTER, OR LEAD BELLY, IS DEFINITELY ONE OF my heroes. I’d been reading a very interesting book about his life, with a lot of photos. I was messing around on the piano – the book was sitting on the piano – and looking at it and casting around for ideas. I was just remembering his style, and they used to say his baritone voice was so big that you’d have to turn your record player down.

I started singing in a harder voice, a bit more bluesy, and this song popped out: ‘Hear me, women and wives / Hear me, husband and lovers / What we do with our lives / Seems to matter to others’. It was a ‘teach your children well’ kind of thought, as in that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It came out very easily, and I was happy with that.

When I brought the song into the studio, I tried to keep the inspiration of Lead Belly in my mind. It’s a very simple little song, and I tried to keep that simplicity in the way we recorded it. I played the original bass that Bill Black had played on Elvis Presley’s records, and it has a beautiful tone. I can’t play it very well, so it had to be a simple line; most of the time it has to be open notes. I enjoy playing it, as long as I’m not having to do it all night in a jazz club. I would have to go and practise a bit first for that.

I’m lucky enough to have a nice memory associated with this song. While I was writing it, around the springtime of 2020, my daughter Mary came into the room. She said, ‘Oh, I like that one,’ and then started singing her own take on it. It adds so much if someone says, ‘Oh, I like that one.’ You can’t buy that in a hardware store.

Photographed by daughter Mary. Hog Hill Mill, Sussex, 2020