A North Derbyshire music legend’s teamed up with The Heights of Abraham to celebrate the Matlock Bath tourist attraction in song.
John Gill, who’s known to generations of Derbyshire children for bringing musical performance into their school day, wrote the gentle guitar tune ‘On the Heights of Abraham’, which lists all the fun activities on offer at the hilltop park.
“I found myself with several gigs up at the Heights,” David explains. “They’ve got a new live music policy up there, and being a songwriter and living on the slopes of the Heights of Abraham and knowing it really well, I thought it would be quite a neat idea to write a little song for me to sing up there, and that’s how it came about.
“It’s only a couple of minutes long but there’s actually quite a lot of stuff packed in there.”
Among John’s whimsical lyrics, he sings: “We went up to the sky we went down underground. When we went up in the cable car, we could see for miles around… So much to see, so much to do on the Heights of Abraham.”
For the choruses, John is backed by a group of singing children.
“The children are mostly from Matlock Bath,” he told us. “I got a group of children together a few years ago. I’ve been slightly delayed by Covid but recording an album of new children’s songs for the last three or four years, and I’ve just started getting back to the production of that. So I’ve got a list of mostly local kids, and that’s our little choir, the ‘Wi’kid Singers’. I got them in to do this one.”
David Thornton from the Heights said: “John has been performing on our amphitheatre stage on many occasions this year, and our visitors love him.
“When we heard the song he’d written about the cable cars we couldn’t resist the temptation to make our own video of the song.”
John enjoyed making the video back on a sunny day in June – much of it on the famous cable cars.
“We did four or five trips up and down, then we went in the entrance to one of the caves. The video was done by David Thornton, one of the ents guy up at the Heights of Abraham. He did a really good job tying in the images with the very busy lyrics!”
The singer-songwriter is a familiar face – and voice – to many people who’ve been educated at Derbyshire schools in the last few decades, coaching new talent and bringing performance to school halls at lunchtime with his ‘garage shows’.
“I ran ‘garage shows’ in schools for many years, doing pop, rock, hip-hop and all kinds of music.
“In fact, I’m still doing that now. I run a garage show [on the] second Thursday of the month down at the Fishpond here in Matlock Bath, where we get guests to perform a… loose-fitting cabaret show, let’s call it that. Still enjoying it immensely.
“And some of my old garage show students are still around, still doing shows together.”
John’s delighted to be performing on The Heights across the summer.
“As tourist attractions go, you’ve got to say it’s just a class act – it’s so well-organised, so well-run, everything is good quality. And the team of people they’ve got working up there – it’s such a pleasure and a privilege to be working with them.”
