Music at the 'Cold Frontier' Trivia Quiz

Answer: Family firms

A song which combines some amusing lyrics with good advice. "It's always they that did not pay / that stand at the bar and drink all day." and "How strange the band that claim they wrote / their songs when they can't play a note."
This recording includes several current and former members of The Joyce Gang, described by Steve as an Exeter-based band, and on their own website as "an Anglo/Irish roots band based in England".

Answer: Silver coin

"A silver coin I will leave for you. You can spin it in the air. On any country it chooses to fall, the coin will pay your fare." I am not sure that a Roman coin is quite that valuable, even with budget airlines like easyJet. (Who would probably charge you extra for using something as old-fashioned as a coin.) In the notes with the CD, Steve Knightley says he wrote this after a 'trip to warm and sunny Italy', where he started thinking about how a soldier of the Roman Empire would have felt being sent far away from his home to the 'Cold Frontier' of the empire in the British Isles.

Answer: Someone's pocket

Possibly a ghost story, one could also interpret this as a straight murder but without a body. On his first night away from home, young Billy falls for a girl, and the rest is the plot of the song.
On Dartmoor, it seems people can just vanish into the mists. Maybe Conan Doyle was basing his famous story on something closer to fact than fiction.

Answer: 'Love' and 'hate' on knuckles

The relevant lyrics are: "He was about my size, red around the eye, smelling of glue and beer. A dotted line on his throat 'cut here' said the note." and "Well the scars on his head went well with the web of the spiderman tattooed on his ear." No mention of 'love' and 'hate' on his knuckles.
This song is apparently based on a true incident.

Answer: Honeycomb

This song was written by Cyril Tawney, a well known songwriter in the English Folk Revival. The lyric answering the question is "it was sweet and hollow like honey comb".
To indicate the tone of the song, here is the last line: "When my body's landed I hope she dies of shame."

Answer: Rotten boroughs

"But if the face of these counties had frozen in time.
We'd still have the poorhouse and children down mines.
Slave ships off Portland and labourers bound to the soil."
Steve Knightley wrote this for a short TV series, being inspired by travels through Devon. The song looks at how things have changed and are changing for people. Not always for the better, but not always for the worse. To quote the refrain, "the wind changes for all of us".
For clarification, Portland is the Isle of Portland on the Dorset coast and 'Rotten Boroughs' were political constituencies; although formerly important, the number of electors had decreased drastically. Some MPs were being elected by less than 50 people.

Answer: Higher pasture

This song describes various instances in the life of a sheep farmer over the last few decades, written from the perspective of a hill farmer's son and taking in the difficulties caused by Chernobyl. "Our dogs would drive the sheep to higher pasture." Watching a shepherd controlling their dogs is an experiencing not to be missed, incredible.
A sheepfold is an enclosure, often of stone, that sheep up on moor and fell can huddle in to protect themselves from the wind and snow.

Answer: Some dignity

According to the song notes, this was inspired by a comment after a concert, "if you have to ask the question 'are we alright' it's probably too late to save the situation". Steve Knightley has also done a French language version of this song.

Answer: Stuart

All the answers listed are names of men who explored the vast areas of what is now Canada. But in the song Stuart is not mentioned by name, although he can claim a supporting role in the lines: "I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest / Who cracked the mountain ramparts and showed a path for me."

Answer: Predicting trends

"Drink to the fortune of your friends, don't waste time predicting trends."
Both Steve Knightley and Phil Beer are multi-talented with a mastery of a range of unusual instruments. On this track Steve is playing a 'cuatro' which I believe can be best described as a "four string South American guitar". (This isn't the only track he plays it on and Phil Beer plays one on "The Flood".) Steve more commonly plays a 'mandocello'. Martin Allcock (of Fairport Convention) describes a mandocello on his website as being "to the mandolin quartet what the cello is to the string quartet ". So now you know.