Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Songs are often a sort of conversation -- a distilled and poetic one, if they’re good, with lasting value and connection, with room for both singer and listener, and holding those qualities across time and language. That’s certainly what was going on as Gordeanna McCulloch, Steve Byrne, and Calum Ailig MacMillan offered songs on the idea of homecoming as part of the Songs of Scotland series of concerts at Celtic Connections on Sunday evening. This is a series of intimate concerts, three musicians trading songs in the upstairs listening room of the Universal Folk Club. This night, the musicians’ choices ranged from a song of man for the isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides recounting how he missed his childhood home now he was living in Canada, to thoughts on leaving for university, to the recurring folk theme of a lover who returns from travels and tests his
sweetheart’s fidelity, to the anticipation of wives and lovers as they await the return of the Bonnie Ship the Diamond from its whaling voyage, to a vision of an ideal Scotland, to that classic song of Scottish homecoming, Caledonia. Sung variously in English, Scots and Scots Gaelic, the music, the voices, and the ideas connected with those in the audience, who were invited to, and often did, sing along.

One of the things all of the musicians mentioned, though, was that they’d each searched long and hard for songs of homecoming, rather than just songs of missing home, and had stretched the idea a bit to include a range of approaches. This was all to the good on the night, and it also got me thinking about different songs of homecoming that they didn’t sing. Here are few of those-- I’d be interested to hear what others you’d suggest.

*Although it was Robert Burns’ birthday night, no one offered his tale of The Shepherd's Wife. A personal homecoming to be sure as the song’s story unfolds, but still -- Jim Malcolm and his wife Susie get at the gentle humor of the song on Jim’s recording Acquaintance.

*Emily Smith sings a different song called Caledonia, this one a variation on the hapless woman rescued by the sea captain's love. It’s on her album Too Long Away

*It’s not about Scotland, but The Barra MacNeils song about Cape Breton, called The Island, is close at hand. It is on Album

*A close cousin in idea of Bonnie Ship the Diamond is country star Patty Loveless’ take on The Boys Are Back in Town.

*Cathie Ryan has a classic home coming song about Ireland, I'm Going Back. A song Gerry O’Beirne wrote which Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh has a fine version of, Western Highway, could work as a home coming song, too.

*American singer and songwriter Gretchen Peters has a reflective song called Careful How You Go on her album Northern Lights

and then there’s Take Me Back to the Sweet Sunny South, which might not work so well in Scotland, but for those us born south of the Mason Dixon line, it’s part of our musical DNA, along with Hills of Alabam’ and Tennessee Christmas.

over to you --

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Music Road: Celtic Connections 2009 on the way

Celtic Connections 2009: images

A zillion different musical ideas flying about the city -- that's Glasgow during Celtic Connection, which continues through the first of February. Musicians from Senegal to Norway, from Shetland to the Borders, from West Virginia to Cape Breton to Donegal, gather for what is one of Europe's, if not the world's, premiere winter music fetivals. It's a festival which allows room for the singer songwriter and the big band, the songs of Robert Burns and the songs of Billy Edd Wheeler -- which may not be so different when you come to think about it. If you're not there in person, you may listen over the radio and internet, and in the UK and Ireland, see television programs about the festival. To find out more about that, and about tickets and schedules, visit the Celtic Connections website. Here's a bit of the atmosphere though images:


















Musicians shown here include Margaret MacLeod, Kathy Mattea, Sarah-Jane Summers, Julie Fowlis, Salsa Celtica, Charlie McKerron, Emily Smith, Jamie MacClennan, and Corrina Hewat.


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Music Road: eddi reader, willie stewart, and the search for haggis

creative practice: winter thoughts

Winter is a time of gathering in, for contemplation, for rest, for renewal. Connection and community take on different aspects in this season of darkness and light, of preparation and celebration for solitude, of leaving behind and for new beginnings, building on the lessons learned and joys celebrated through Advent and Christmas.

What are you beginning anew?

music to go along with these ideas

Shannon Heaton’s lyrical Fine Winter’s Night, on Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night

Eileen McGann’s funny Snow Shanty on trilogy: 2000 Years of Christmas

Emily Smith’s reflective Winter Song on Too Long Away

Maura O’Connell’s inspring Blessing on Walls & Windows


and also
Music Road: Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night concert

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

April Verch: Steal the Blue

Steal the Blue


April Verch is a musician from the Ottowa Valley in Ontario, Canada. She plays he fiddle, she step dances, and as this release puts in the spotlight, she sings. The strong fiddle playing that marked her earlier releases is here again. Canada and Ontario in particular draw musical influences from the interaction of cultures from Irish to Swedish to German to Scots to English to French to Cape Breton in the meting pots which were Ontario’s lumber camps -- remote camps where a mainstay of entertainment was fiddle playing and swapping tunes, tunes that people could dance to. All that flows into Verch’s playing and singing and to the rhythm and style she adds with her step dancing, as those who have seen Verch live will agree. Her set list on this recording is a well thought through selection of twelve songs. They include ideas chosen from some of the best writers of bluegrass, including Larry Cordle, Steve Gulley, and Tim Stafford, a piece from rising Nashville tune smith Sarah Siskind, and a song from Mark Simos, whose songs have been recorded by Alison Krauss and Aoife Clancy to name just two, There’s a song from faith based writer Ron Block, who is the guitarist with Alison Krauss + Union Station, and one from upcoming Americana star Hayes Carll, along with an April Verch original. Verch’s song,Independence, stands up well beside the works of these top level writers, an so does Verch’s work as a singer and fiddle player. She brings a bit of herself and her own understanding of the song along, adding to the writer’s intent rather than detracting from it. If you enjoy Alison Krauss, Claire Lynch, or Nanci Griffith, give Verch a listen.



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Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide

Let the Circle Be Wide



Tommy Sands is a musician whose ideas are rooted and grounded in his home in County Down, Northern Ireland.He’s a man whose vision, shaped by the beauty and the community of his native place as wellas by its location in politically troubled borderlands, includes the value of connection, both personal and global. His latest album, Let the Circle Be Wide, celebrates all parts of this vision.

On the intimate level, it celebrates connections of family, which has been important to Sands since he began his musical life performing with his brothers and sisters in the 1960s. His daughter Moya and son Fionán join him here, with both adding their singing and Fionán playing banjo and mandolin, Moya adding fiddle , whistle, and bodhran. Moya’s interest in the history of the sometimes overdone song Danny Boy led back through the history of the melody known as the Derry Air to an earlier song in Irish, called The Young Man's Dream, Aisling an Oigfhir, which has to do with dreaming a new reality. Sands took this as a starting point to translate and recreate the song,which he uses to open the recording. There’s another song based in family which will resonate with anyone who has lost someone young. Sands’ brother, Dino, was killed in an auto accident, and You’ll Never Grow Old is, Sands says, a song which took him thirty years to write.

Time for Asking Why is likely to be the most controversial song on the recording. It was written in the wake of September 11th, and it is, Sands says, "not a song against America. It’s a song for America.” The song Rovers of Wonder brings in international connection through melody and harmony, as several Mongolian throat singers and fiddlers Sands met on his travels join in. There's the familiar song A Stor Mo Chroi, and a funny song about Sean Maguire, a fiddler whose music is celebrated amdist the murals of poltiics along the Falls Road in Belfast. There’s a thought provoking song about the changes warand discord may bring home, in Fields of Daises, and a celebration of coming home, Carlingford Bay.

There are two songs President Obama might like, too, as he begins his work. One is the title song, Let the Circle Be Wide. Sands’ own words are the best description. “It’s a song of welcome I have sing all over the world,” he says. The other is called Make Those Dreams Come True, with nods to past, present and possibilities, and a chorus that resonates into the new year

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listening through the changes

tommy sands: to shorten the winter

now playing: Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light

creative practice: finding a way

"Saint Augustine once said, ‘Love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then do anything you want.’ This liberty is exercised within love’s boundary. Love God and neighbor, then do anything you want. That gives love and joy all kinds of room to weave their spell.

Irony is, love and rules have the same goal --helping folks get along. Though love does it through the pull of the heart while rules attempt it with the twist of the arm. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an anarchist. Rules have their place on life’s roster. I just think love and joy ought to lead the way.”

That's Philip Gulley, writing in the book Front Porch Tales.

Seems like a good thought for marking Martin Luther King Day in the United States.

Gulley is an author and also a Quaker minister. The short pieces in Front Porch Tales could have been, maybe were, sermons told as stories. In each, he starts with a story, often one in which he pokes fun at himself, and ends up with some reflection on a purpose of faith -- not always getting here the way you might expect. His tales are set in small town Indiana, as is a series of novels he’s written, with a main character who is -- guess what? a Quaker minister, in the town of Harmony.

music to go along with these ideas

Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light faith, hope, love, and questions -- and email gone astray

Caroline Herring: Lantana southern gospel and southern gothic both run through Herring’s stories in song

Tish Hinojosa Our Little Planet country and folk with heart integrity, and originality

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea
melodies of familiar hymns on Scottish style fiddle and guitat

aidan o'rourke: sirius

Sirius

Aidan O’Rourke plays with both the traditional group Blazin’ Fiddles and the ‘trad with a twist’ trio Lau. He learned his fiddle playing first in the highlands of Scotland, and he also found an interest in jazz. These two streams run together in the music he’s composed for Sirius. The music here grew out of a new voices commission from the Celtic Connections Festival, and includes melodic and lyrical instrumental piece inspired by landscapes O’Rourke has seen on his travels. They feature saxophone and trumpet as well as four fiddles, percussion, and other instruments, all led by O’Rourke’s highland based, Donegal influenced, creative style. Outstanding tracks include Falun Fine (Outbound) Lochaber Drive, and The Santa Cruz Redwoods, but it’s best just to let the ten cut journey unfold at its own pace.


O'Rourke will be playing with Lau and at several other concerts at Celtic Connections.

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season of change: music for autumn 2008

tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

Robert Burns’ work still touches people’s hearts after more than two centuries, and in countries far beyond his native Scotland. His themes ranges from the wry wit of The Shepherd’s Wife to the haunting beauty of My Heart’s in the Highlands, to the connections of friendship in Auld Land Syne. As Scotland and the world gear up to mark the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth, here are several equally creative Scots musicians you’ll want to get to know.

Jim Malcolm's
latest recording is a collection of songs by Robert Burns, in fact, including that lively Shepherd's Wife in a duet with his own wife Susie, the eighteenth century antiwar song Logan Braes, and a vivid song of Scotland’s landscape, Westin Winds, along with more widely known pieces such as Ae Fond Kiss and Killiecrankie. Check out Malcolm’s own work, too. Not for nothing has he been recognized with top song writing awards. And he has a delivery so natural that he might be having a conversation with Burns himself.

Emily Smith
mixes songs from the tradition with her own compositions, and best of all she loves to source or set them in her native Dumfriesshire in southwestern Scotland. Her latest album, Too Long Away, has all of that in generous measure, with rollicking ballads of history, acute observations of day to day life, stories of legend, and a quiet look at a summer evening. There’s a Burns song too, one that finds the raking and rouging poet writing from a woman’s point of view.

Corrina Hewat
plays the harp, both the small acoustic sort and the big pedal kind. In her own work she doesn’t draw distinction between folk and jazz, considering them both equally interesting and equally part of the same musical exploration. In addition to creating her own work (her latest album is called Harp I Do) she shares her gifts as a singer in the trio Grace Hewat Polwart, and composes for tlarge ensembles including the folk orchestra The Unusual Suspects.

Julie Fowlis
sings in Scots Gaelic, a language she grew up with in North Uist, but which is spoken by fewer than one percent of Scottish people. She does that so well the Scottish Executive recently honored her by naming her Scotland’s first Ambassador for Gaelic, in recognition of her work bringing the language to people in Scotland and beyond.

As you tune up for Burns night and beyond, give these musicians a listen. And stay with us here along the music road: especially during this year of Homecoming Scotland, we’ll be featuring the work of many musicians from Scotland, Scottish America, Cape Breton, and other parts of the Scottish tradition.

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Music Road: Now playing: Eddi Reader sings Robert Burns

Music Road: now playing: Hanneke Cassel (video)

The Barra MacNeils: Album

The Barra MacNeils

Album



Cape Breton music is a swirling mix of Scottish, Irish, and Canadian influences, salted by the sea and warmed by the connections of community. All of that is fully present in this collection, a well thought out two disc set drawn from across the group’s history on record that yet comes across as set you might find, if you were lucky, on an extended evening up on that island on the far northeast coast on Atlantic Canada.

There a re instrumental sets in plenty, and songs as well, contemporary, traditional, and original all finding their places. Their arrangements of traditional tune sbring the music full force into the twenty first century while staying true to the roots of it. There are inspired covers of songs by contemporary tunesmiths including Dougie MacLean, Tommy Sands, and Allister MacGillivray, and truly original pieces such as Dance with Daily and The Island. It’s a trip through the story of this family band, and a short lesson in the range of Cape Breton music, as well. Outstanding among the twenty eight cuts are My heart’s In the Highlands, The Queen of All Argyle, The Maids of Arrichar, and Chasing the Sun. But every cut is worth more than one listen.

The Barra MacNeils are part of the celebration of the connections between Cape Breton and Scotland at this year’s Celtic Connections Festival

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Cape Breton Radio Live take 02
Crooked Still: Still Crooked

four ideas: songwriting

* Have a conversation. “I wouldn’t want to co-write with somebody I couldn’t have a good conversation with,” says Grammy award winner Tim O'Brien. Tim O’Brien, The nashville based bluegrass, country, and old time jack of all instruments adds, “Listening to conversations is a good way to get song ideas.”

*Go fishing. Boston based bluesman Chris Smither says, “I don’t always write everyday, but I spend some time in my writing mind, my writing head, every day. It’s like fishing: you have to keep your line out there in the water...”

*Take a nap. “That sounds so bogus,” says Gretchen Peters,
whose songs have ben recorded by Faith Hill, Patty Loveless, George Strait, and others. “But when a song a isn’t working, taking a nap is the best thing. I wake up, and a lot of times the solution in right there.”

*Make space. Irish American singer and songwriter Cathie Ryan says “Songs come in all different ways, of course. I had the song In My Tribe come all at once, while I was out hiking in Monument Valley. .I think the reason it came that way is that I was away from all the cell phones and schedules and business you often have to deal with as a musician.”

What are your best tips on the creative process? and do you enjoy this sort of article? please comment below, and thanks.

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ten songs

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aine minogue: winter: a meditation

Winter: a meditation

There’s always a visual component to music, whether it’s the sight of musician at work, what’s going on around you, or some totally imagined landscape that the music suggests, or a combination of all that. Aine Minogue, who plays and composes Celtic music, decided to offer a set of visions to go along with and extend her musical ideas for the winter season.

The eleven tracks on her dvd range from dancers suggesting ancient myths to landscapes both contemporary and those seeming older than time. There are forest scenes at sunset and at sunrise, and scene of snow. There’s the burning fire of the Jezebel carol, which may suggest yule logs or an even older ceremony; there are half glimpsed dancers and half heard song on the journey too, and the familiar Christmas dance melody of Noelle Nouvelle.. All this is led by Minogue’s music on the harp. well supported by fiddle, whistle, cello, and percussion. the ideas and imagery leave space for winter holiday meditation, whatever holiday you may celebrate, and invitation to walk the paths of what you may learn from this season of darkness and season of light.

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Boston Celtic Music Festival , coming up 9 and 10 January

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

a short film about Julie Fowlis and sending good wishes to Julie, who is up for best folk singer of the year at the BBC 2 folk awards. the awards will be announced on 2 February

eddi reader, willie stewart, and the search for haggis

A song about friendship, written by Robert Burns and sung by one of Scotland's besst, Eddi Reader, seems a fine way to start off a new year, especially a year in which we celebrate Homecoming Scotland. It's the 250th anniversary of Burns' birth, What other poet do you know who has statues made to him in Vermont, Ontario, Glasgow, and Canberra, just to name a few places? If all you know of him is that you've just sung Auld Lang Syne at the new year, a song that's sung round the world every year is only part of his legacy. Check out the song in this clip as your next place to learn about the poet's range.

Reader says one of her thoughts in doing Burns music (she's a Scot, as of course, he was, and she's done his work with orchestras and as well as in more informal settings) is to do it the way someone might might have sung the songs in a pub in the 18th century, and you just happened upon it. She seems to have that nailed in this clip from the Cambridge Folk Festival.

We'll hear more from Reader here along the music road as the year unfolds, and from other Scots musicians as well. On this clip, notice (how could you not? he's the fiddle player) the work of John McCusker. He's a Glasgow native, as is Reader. Both have family from Ireland, too.



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hunt for the elusive haggis through webcams of Loch Ness, the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Glasgow's George Square, and other places, prizes on offer if you see one before Burns day

Music Road: Homecoming Scotland

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

happy new year

here's to a new year filled with music, creativity, and peace.
thank you for walking a while along the Music Road.
check out best music, 2008 -- top choices include recordings from Kathy Mattea, Barry Walsh, Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhloaibh, Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lweis, Mary Black, and others.
come join us in the new year for more great music, creative inspiration and several surprises --



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The Boston Celtic Music Festival is on the way, 9 and 10 January.

Homecoming Scotland

2009 is the Year of Homecoming in Scotland. you'll recognize the song, I think, and probably some of the singers.
stay tuned here at Music Road for more on the year of homecoming.

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Music Road: Now playing: Eddi Reader sings Robert Burns

Music Road: tuning up for Burns Night: Jim Malcolm
Eddi Reader: Aye Waulkin' O: video