photographing music, again

Continuing on the exploration of music into images. Listen for the music in the silence.

Photographs from gigs in Glasgow, Cambridge, Austin, Nashville.



































check out other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday


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Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Music Road: Celtic Connections 2009: images, continued

Saturday Sessions: Carrie Newcomer on teaching & learning

Indiana based singer and songwriter and workshop leader Carrie Newcomer reflects on what makes a good teacher.

"A good teacher is a partner who understands and echoes the voice of your internal Editor/Champion," Newcomer says, "and not your internal Critic."

"What I mean by this is your internal Editor/ Champion is always on your side, and it’s excited that you want to make art. It wants you to grow and keep creating. It says, 'Let's study what is working, consider carefully what isn’t working, and then find a way together to make it better.' The internal Critic wants to shut you down and keep you from creating. The internal Critic shames you and slams you, but offers no useful information on how to get better.

"At a certain point I gave myself permission to not complete a workshop experience if the teacher only echoed the internal critic. But I’m very grateful for my experiences with teachers who work with my internal Editor/Champion, for with those teachers I not only learn more, but gain new energy for making art.

you may also want to see

Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

Music Road: Wilderness Plots: the dvd

2010 Songwriter's Market: Where & How to Market Your Songs forthcoming in October. Newcomer was one of several artists I spoke with for an article about how to get the most out of songwriting workshops.

Gretchen Peters: One to the Heart, One to the Head

One To The Heart, One To The Head


The west is a landscape of transformation and mystery, a place where, if you’re there, your background is transformed, and if you return to the home place, you arrive changed. This is as true, I’ve found, whether the west in question turns out to be the highlands of Scotland, the western counties of Ireland, the Rockies and the Sangre de Cristos and the Llano Estacado of the United States, or the high plains and the northern Rockies of Alberta.

Mystery and transformation are stock in trade in the work of songwriters Gretchen Peters and Tom Russell, so it’s all the more interesting that when they got together for an album of songs about the west, only one -- Russell’s song Guadalupe-- is an original by either of them. Barry Walsh, whose keyboard work illuminates many of the tracks, contributes a fine original track too, and all the rest are covers.

Covers of songs by writers who really know their west it turns out, and know it from differing yet intersecting perspectives. The story opens with Walsh’s reflective instrumental, North Platte. It moves forward with the intriguing triad of Mary McCaslin’s Prairie in the Sky, Bob Dylan’s Billy 4, and Ian Tyson’s Blue Mountains of Mexico. Stephanie Davis’ contemplative song Wolves, about the loneliness and resignation that living in the west sometimes requires, is another outstanding cut. Actually they all are, from Russell's mystic and shadowed tale of pain and longing in Guadalupe, the tinge of bar room wisdom in Sweet and Shiny Eyes, to Rosalie Sorrels My Last Go Round, which could be said to look at the same story as Guadalupe from another place along the journey.

Peters lived in Colorado for some time, and Russell has lived in far west Texas. They each hold the perspective of an artist grounded in American west, along with the perspective of artists who have traveled the world. It’s a project filled with imagination and integrity, which comes through clearly in the song choice, in Peters’ lead singing, and in the collaboration with the musicians who work with her. It’s a collection of songs which will linger with you well after the playing is done, and one to which you’ll want to return.





you may also want to see

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Dakota Lullaby: Albert & Gage

Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s recording of Gerry O Beirne’s song Western Highway is one view of the idea of the west from an Irish perspective that’s worth checking out.

2010 Songwriter's Market: Where & How to Market Your Songs for an interview with Peters.

remembering Woodstock, remembering Derry

Forty years go this month, it was Woodstock. What a long strange trip it’s been --

slide show with music and commentary from Joni Mitchell; and others, from the BBC

Life magazine’s photographer talks about
photographing at Woodstock, and the people he met there

Gallery of Photographs of Woodstock

I was not at Woodstock. But I have to say, the snippets of music with the BBC slideshow shot me straight back to those times, though most of it is music that I’ve rarely thought of since then. It was a different world -- and the same one. We carry the history forward within us. It changes with us, and we change with it.

Forty years ago this August, things were not so mellow in other parts of the world. South Africa, Viet Nam, Alabama... Northern Ireland. As peace and love were being celebrated in Woodstock, anger and fear filled the streets of Derry.
An Irish time line
and a song for those days.


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Remembering Woodstock (American Chronicles (History Press)

Music Road: Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide

pride of new york

Pride of New York

County New York has nurtured almost as many Irish musicians as County Dublin and County Clare. As with those counties on the isle Ireland, the music of Irish New York has a distinct edge, born of mixing and mingling of Irish backgrounds and styles and of the energy and exploration that fill the boroughs of New York.

Four New York based and bred players, all highly accomplished in their own rights, put a natural Irish new York spin on a baker’s dozen of sets of reels, jigs, hornpipes, and slip jigs, with the occasional waltz and march thrown in for variety, music itself which was often composed or passed along in the New York Irish community. The musicians draw you in to conversation so well that you can easily imagine you’re sitting in on tunes handed round at a session. Billy McComiskey plays accordion, Brendan Dolan does keyboards,. Brian Conway is the fiddler, and Joanie Madden plays flutes and whistles. Among them they count work with Brendan Mulvihill, Daithi Sproule, Mick Moloney, Cathie Ryan, Liz Carroll, Cherish the Ladies, and Trian, to mention but a few, as well as several All Ireland championships.

It’s the in the moment freshness of their collaboration which really shines here, though, well engineered and mixed by Keith Chirgwin and mastered by Emily Lazar. You’ll find your own way into which of these sparkling cuts you enjoy the most, of course. Two of my favorites are the Redican’s/The Gatehouse Maid/ The Road to Garrison set of reels and Madden’s flute solo, the air Slan Le Maigh.



you may also want to see
Music Road: Green Fields of America

Music Road: Billy McComiskey: Outside the Box

Music Road: Voices: Cherish the Ladies

creative practice: listening

The band Better Than Ezra is coming out with a single called Just One More Day, arising from band members’ times of losing loved ones and wishing for more time to say things to them.

Though I've not yet heard the song, I tend to look in a different direction. In such a circumstance, I’d rather listen. Sometimes, I’ve been granted the grace to do so.

Some of both, I suppose, might be a good answer. What do you think?

music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: creative practice: healing

Music Road: creative practice: winter thoughts

Music Road: listening through the changes

Saturday Sessions: Del Suggs on teaching music, part 2

Del Suggs makes saltwater music, a folk infused style of work that’s taken him across the college circuit in the US, gained him airplay in Europe and Australia, and drawn comparisons wit. Jimmy Buffet and James Taylor. He’s also a respected teacher of both music related skills and leadership topics. Here’s what he had to say about what he learns from teaching.


“It's amazing how teaching a topic really opens your eyes to the content-- ideas that you skimmed before now jump out you! While it may be a truism, it's still accurate: the best way to learn something is to teach it.

Teaching is full of "a-ha" moments, when you see the light come on in a student's eyes and you know you've just connected them with the subject. It's really magical when it happens.”

you may also want to see
saltwater music: del suggs

Saturday Sessions: Eddi Reader on writing melodies

ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

music and landscape: bluegrass, Ireland, New England

Music often evokes landscape, and often arises from it. That’s a subject up for discussion often here along the music road. With a name like music road it’d almost have to be you’d think, and I’ve been listening to two quite different -- yet in their own ways related -- albums which travel in that territory.

Bryan Sutton is guitarist who is based and grounded in bluegrass. For his album Almost Live he’s gathered musical friends including Chris Thile, Tim O’Brien, Russ Barenberg, and Bela Fleck in combinations and situations which fit the spontaneity of the albums title and idea. There’s the high lonesome sound of the mountains, the lively dance of the evening’s gathering, a hornpipe inspired by an island in Maine and a two guitar tune named after another island.

That’s a journey worth the taking, as is the one Irish composer and keyboardist Denis Carey offers on his latest album Moving On. From the liveliness of a Cajun ceili to a set of keys on the counter to a day on Cape Breton to the haunting farewells of emigration, Carey invites to a conversation which needs no words to be eloquent. He too has friends along to share the craic, including Zoe Conway, Manus McGuire, and Mairtin O’Connor. Look for more of what I think about this fine album in an upcoming issue of the folk and world music magazine Dirty Linen.

A book from yet a different landscape but which goes along with these ideas is Robert Todd Felton’s A Journey into the Transcendentalists' New England. Part travel guide, part exploration of history, and part visual exploration with photographs and maps, it’s a thought provoking journey into the world --past, and how the geography and architecture of it live today -- of these New England poets and thinkers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau.

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Irish music, Irish landscape

World Ocean Day: music of the waters

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Saturday Sessions: Karen Mal on writing songs

"I was a late bloomer, as a songwriter. I never thought I had it in me, to be a songwriter. Sometimes I think part of that is because I had a classical music training. You’re examining these unbelievably wonderful pieces of music, and what can I possibly say that can compare, that hasn’t already been said? What I’ve learned about that is, it’s a little bit like the way DNA works. How is it possible that there are all these billions of people in the world, and nobody really looks exactly alike? The DNA code is not very big. There are thirteen tones in our musical scale,” Mal continued, “but when I started to realize that nobody else has seen the stories, the adventures, the experiences, the love, the losses, the friends, the tragedies, the visions -- just the stories that make up my life as I’m walking on this earth -- nobody has seen and experienced those things in the order that I have, at the time that I have, with the people around them that I have -- when you start to think about how many variables there are in just that, it starts to make sense that I might have a perspective that’s unique.

“I’ll never forget when I started coming around to that It’s about finding poetic, compelling, exciting ways to show people things that they are already thinking about. It’s really just about showing people’s humanity back to themselves, the love stories, the navigating through obstacles, the stories where people have difficulties and things to reconcile. We never get tired of that, of hearing those stories.” And, Karen Mal said, “songwriting is the hardest thing in the world I’ve ever done. But the best feeling in the world when it’s right and you know it. And then you’re sure you’ll never again write another song,” she added, laughing


Kaen Mal's website

you may also want to see

Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

Music Road: Saturday Sessions: Emily Smith on songwriting

Music Road: Dakota Lullaby: Albert & Gage

music for a summer road trip

It may be August, but one of the albums that’s catching my ear a good bit these days is one whose songs are framed in ideas of winter.

Gretchen Peters’ Northern Lights offers a mix of traditional traditional holiday carols and newer songs. It's a set which includes In the Bleak Mid Winter alongside John Jacob Niles’ Appalachian based song I Wonder As I Wander and Peters’ own looking across the centuries and thinking about faith and connections song Waitin’ on Mary. Whatever the season, it’s a good listen. You might also want to know that Peters is doing live concert in Nashville which will be streamed on the web, tomorrow, Saturday 8 August. There’s more about that at her website. Peters is also talking about song writing in a tele class later this month -- click on the banner on the right hand sidebar calle Art of Song for more on that.



There is a lot of excellent new music on my desk, including CDs from Claire Lynch, Rhonda Vincent, a middle eastern family band from Indiana, new Native American recordings, The Pride of New York [a n Irish American super group which includes Joanie Madden and Brendan Dolan], Sara Milonovich, and others. You’ll get to hear about all of that in the coming days. Right now, though, in addition to Peters, I’m drawn to the work of these artists whom you 've met before along the music road:

Eddi Reader and Emily Smith are both Scotswomen with excellent and very different sorts of song writing styles. The link will take you to a video of them singing together at Celtic Connections last winter.

Carrie Newcomer is working on recording a new album just now, and preparing for a trip to India. The Geography of Light is the one of her albums I am listening to most often this summer, especially the songs There is a Tree, about, roughly speaking, what it is and is not like to be an artist and a person of faith, and The Clean Edge of Change and Map of Shadows, both about change. If you’ve ever thought you’ve ad a little too much of e mail you’ll also appreciate her funny take on that in Don’t Push Send.


There’s a gently funny song on Fine Winter's Night, too, called Julius the Christmas Cat. Ever wondered why there are no cats in famous paintings of the Nativity? Matt and Shannon Heaton give you the clue in this song, and yes, it’s another winter album. You can play them any time of year, you know. Try it, if you’ve not. The Heatons’ recording Lovers’ Well is also claiming my attention this summer. You’ll hear more about that coming up along the music road, but meanwhile, here’s a taste of what it’s about in a guest post I did for Irish Fireside, along with bits about two other excellent Irish albums you’ll like to know too.





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a preview of the Milwaukee Irish Fest, coming up next weekend, at Wandering Educators

Music Road: ten songs

Music Road: music for a spring road trip: six albums

String Sisters: Live

String Sisters

Live

They really are sisters in music, the six inventive, creative fiddle players from related but different traditions in the Celtic and Nordic worlds who join up for this live recording, made at a gig they did in Norway. Emma Hardelin is from Sweden, Annbjorg Lien from Norway, Liz Carroll and Liz Knowles from the United States, Catriona Macdonald from Shetland and Mairéad ni Mhaonaigh from Ireland.

It’s a joyous and varied journey they offer, mainly sets of tunes, with many of the tunes being original ones from members of the group. Shetland, New York, and a trip to Japan meet in the back stories of the opening set, and later on there’s a Swedish traditional song [sung by Hardelin] paired with a jig Knowles wrote one year at Celtic Connections, inspired by the similarities she heard among Irish, Scottish, and Norwegian styles.

It was at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow that the String Sisters first got together, in fact, for what was thought to be a one off gig. They liked working together so well it turned into in tour. You’ll see why they decided to do that as you listen to Mairéad ni Mhaonaigh sing Ta Mo Chleamhnas A Dheanamh/The Matchmaking Song, and to the exuberant playing on Lien’s The April Child, matched up with Macdonald’s The Joy of It. Top notch players, and top notch collaborators as well, with music which offers more interest with each listening.

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Hanneke Cassel (video)

Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

Ellery Klein & Ryan Lacey: Kick into the Beat

Saturday Sessions: Tim O'Brien on songwriting

Grammy winner Tim O'Brien has always been interested in history. His music has include bluegrass, blues, folk, country, and swing, and he has investigated his family's Irish background
in song too.

About songwriting, he says, "I have various ways I go at it. The main way for me though is to work on, to study on, topics. I read a lot, or I watch movies, or whatever it is, or observe a lot of times over a lot of years. Then all of a sudden I get a way into something, a way to put something I've been interested in all those years into a song. It's usually some sort of phrase that sings right, what my English teacher called prosody."

This is part of an ongoing series here at Music Road. Join us on Saturdays for ideas from your favorite musicians about teaching, learning, and creating music.

You may also want to see
Music Road: four ideas: songwriting

Music Road: Saturday Sessions: Emily Smith on songwriting

Music Road: words and music, continued

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