lead and harmony

A year ago on 29 May, Suzy Bogguss, Gretchen Peters, and Matraca Berg were on tour in England, and they recorded this song on that day. Just listen.



you may also wish to see
Music Road: Road Trip Music in Tennessee

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

music and change

We try in vain to picture life’s next scene, while grace is at work resetting the stage -- that’s Philip Gulley talking, from his book Front Porch Tales.


Just as words -- and silence -- are able to speak to almost anything, so I find is music. Probably neither of these are new ideas to you, especially if you been walking the music road for any amount of time. Worth a bit of thought, though.





music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape
Music Road: cathie ryan: the farthest wave
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
Michael McGoldrick Aurora

Ireland & Scotland: 3 travel tips

Perhaps a trip to Ireland or Scotland is in your plans, or in your dreams ?
Three travel tips:

In Ireland, take a look to the north and to the midlands. Favored destinations for trips are in the south and west, and in Dublin, all very fine places. The quiet of the midland counties and the stark beauty of the coasts of Northern Ireland, as well as its vibrant cities, are more than worth you time, too.

In Scotland, take a moment to consider looking north, as well. Savor the ancient mountains, the quiet glens, and the rugged seacoast of Sutherland, the Black Isle, and though they are a bit of trip, consider a visit Orkney or Shetland.

Listen. As a musician and one who writes about music, you know I am going to tell you to listen to music, and you should. Even if you do not care for music, it’s part of the story of traveling in Ireland and Scotland -- and it may not be at all what you expect. So listen. Listen also to the cadence of speech, which varies all across these lands, and sometimes, from one town to the next. Listen as well to the landscape, and the waters. Listen, and learn.

Listening to music is a great way to prepare for a trip, as well.


This post is part of a project which the people at Tripbase

are putting together. They are gathering best tips from travel writers, and they have collected enough to make seven ebooks already. For each time you download an e book -- they are free to you, and organized by such things as family travel, food travel, and the like-- Tripbase will make a donation of one dollar to help people in developing countries around the world have clean water. One dollar will provide water for one person for a year.

Below is a button which will take you to a page where you may see what the books are about and choose which ones you might like to download, and learn more of the water project also. The tips above are not in an ebook just yet, but in the books you will find travel ideas from our Great American Road Trip partner Vera Marie Badertscher of A Traveler’s Library and many other fine writers and well experienced travelers.

I helpedpeople get clean water

Download Free eBooks

led by Tripbase

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape
Music Road: Music for St Andrew's Day: music of Scotland
Irish Music Festivals: a guide

Road Trip Music in Tennessee

From the blues and Elvis in Memphis to the heartbeat of country and the soul of gospel in Music City through the high lonesome of the Great Smokey Mountains, Tennessee is a state and a people filled with music, and with musical contrasts which yet seem to work together. Right now, middle Tennessee and Nashville are recovering and still hurting from recent major flooding, the worst the area has seen in more than a hundred years. As the Great American Road Trip winds through Tennessee, take a listen to music from two Nashville natives -- and it may not be quite what you’d expect.

















Amy Grant is a fine songwriter -- she has new album out, in fact, and well worth your listening. Her album from a few years back called Legacy...Hymns & Faith will take you deep into the heart of the American South, though. If you grew up in the region, this music played in the background of your daily life, whatever your religious thoughts. If you’re not familiar with the area, listening to this music will teach you more about it.

Matraca Berg is the writer behind many top country hits, and even more songs that make fine album cuts for stars including Patty Loveless, Martina McBride, and Pam Tillis. Her own solo albums such as Lying to the Moon & Other Stories sometimes take a bit of looking for. They are well worth it, filled with great singing and vivid, insightful writing, which is by turns funny, serious, thoughtful, and lyrical.

The Cumberland River winds through the heart of downtown Nashville. Here’s Berg singing Oh Cumberland.




you may also wish to see.
Berg often appears with musical friends Gretchen Peters and Suzy Bogguss as Wine Women & Song

Music Road: Nashville floods -- how you can help
Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee - another way to help Nashville
Music Road: Amy Grant: Mosaic

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Irish exploration: Peadar Ó Riada

Triúr Sa Draighean

Music often rises out of landscape: that’s an idea especially true of Irish music. Peadar Ó Riada tends to think of himself as receiving music, rather than composing it. Listening to his latest recording, sixteen tracks of original music on which he plays concertina, accordion, and whistle, and Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh turn up on fiddle, one can hear both the landscape and the man, and the connection of friends who’ve come along to share the journey.

There are jigs, reels, hornpipes, and a pair of polkas, along with one song. They arise, as he explains in the liner notes, from and through varied circumstance. From that he has created musical comment and thought and conversation which carry on beyond that immediate place and time. The song, which finds Ó Riada using his voice as much as an instrument as for a conveyer of ideas through word, arose from a combination of ideas to mark a friend’s passing. Waiting for Connie came about while waiting for a session, while Bob and Bernie came to Ó Riada on watching two friends leaving after a visit. Fiddler Martin Hayes mentions in the notes that he could easily have thought these were tunes for an earlier time, and that is true. They hold the connection and energy of the three playing on this recording too. Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh each in differing ways reach for the edges and go to the heart of tradition in their own work, and that is present here as well.

“We recorded this ourselves three,” says Ó Riada, and that they did, in Ó Riada’s home in Clare, just the three playing and letting the recording run. That’s a fine way to listen, as well: just let the music unfold and see where it leads.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

music and preparation

A classic gospel song which you could take in any of a number of ways...
and I'll bet you will be singing along with Rani Arbo and the men of daisy mayhem before it's done. Give a listen.






yuo may also wish to see
Music Road: music for parents & children: Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: One Woman and a Shovel

Road trip music: Kentucky

From its river front cities in the west, through the bluegrass at the center, over to the mountains and forests of the east, the lives of the people of Kentucky lend themselves to many sorts of music.

That’s something Pam Gadd, who's from the northern part of Kentucky, really gets. It comes to the fore on her album Benefit of Doubt. She’s a singer, banjo player, and songwriter whose music crosses borders among country, folk, and bluegrass. She doesn’t make that many solo albums, more often spending her time backing up other artists, playing in bands, and teaching, but if you’d enjoy country flavor with a dash of blues and bluegrass, and some very fine playing and singing, check out her work On Benefit of Doubt. There are songs of hope, heartbreak, highways, and hound dogs, among other things.

Patty Loveless gets Kentucky too. Growing up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky as the daughter of a coal miner, then moving to the city, forging her way in country music to the top of the charts, she’s always had a mountain edge to her voice -- it’s one of the things which has made her work stand out. In recent years she’s been thinking about those mountain days, and has recorded two albums which focus on that, Mountain Soul and Mountain Soul II. They’re both essential listening as as gateways to understanding Kentucky.

If you’d like to hear what Loveless does with this music, here are several videos to check out

the gospel song Daniel Prayed
with Ricky Skaggs, who is also from Kentucky

You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, powerful song of the mountains

on a lighter note, The Boys Are Back in Town



Other Kentucky musicians whose work you’ll want to explore: Bill Monroe, Sam Bush, Dale Ann Bradley, Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: reflections with Adrienne Young

Music Road: now playing: Crooked Still: Still Crooked


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there.
Kentucky at A Traveler's Library
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Patty Larkin: 25

25
Patty Larkin has always been her own woman when it comes to songwriting, creating music that might sound like an old folk song, or a new Latin beat, or a jazz riff, or a pop ballad, or a thoughtful contemporary songwriter piece. She’s also a top notch performer, by turns funny, intense, powerful, and soulful, a brilliant guitarist and a singer always in service of song and idea.

One of the things Larkin did early in her career was play music on the streets around Harvard Square. “You have to catch people’s interest,” she said, “or they move on.” There’s a bit of that ever changing, ever engaging street player idea lingering through the tracks of 25. She lives these days at the edge of the sea on Cape Cod. There's a bit of the ever changing nature of living by the waters present here, as well.

It’s a double CD, with 25 tracks, and it’s the way Larkin chose to mark twenty five years of recording. She picked out songs from across the range of her musical history, well known ones and lesser known ones too. After recording her own singing and guitar, she sent each track out ot one of twenty five friends she had invited to contribute however they wished to the song. Those she invited include Martin Sexton, Greg Brown, Rosanne Cash, Chris Smither, and Jennifer Kimball.

What emerges is, to borrow the words of another songwriter, a festival of friends. “Twenty five years, twenty five love songs, twenty five friends,” says Larkin, and it is, at the core, just that: all the celebrations, questions, changes, and understandings that come along with love explored through words and music and friendship. Notable tracks include Coming Up for Air with Jennifer Kimball and Good Thing with Dar Williams, but there’s a lot to explore here. Take your time..


you may also wish to see

the festival of friends idea is Carrie Newcomer’s
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

Music Road: Tish Hinojosa: Aquella Noche

a selection of recommended songwriter cds

music and community

Music creates and celebrates community.

This is as true on stage as off, I think, and sometimes true across miles and distance.

I remember turning the radio dial as a kid to bring in the faint signals of the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts, and stations from Quebec, and Mexico, and other parts of the world. Today through internet radio I listen to music from Glasgow and Dublin and Belfast and the Highlands. There is a certain community in that -- one only has to think of all the social media going on to know that is true. Finding an unexpected community of interests is a good surprise -- great on line, better, even, in person. Musician Shannon Heaton (she's the woman in the photograph at the lower left below) had an experience of that in person connection. Have you?




















you may also wish to see

Music Road: Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton

photographing music: connections

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday

Shannon Heaton is one of the founders of the Boston Celtic Music Fesival, which is profiled in
Irish Music Festivals: a guide

Music Road trip in West Virginia

West Virginia has a landscape that is at once both beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful, for the mountains, the forests, the rivers, heartbreaking because these days so much of that, and the balnce of nature within them, and the lives of the people who call West Virginia home, is being lost to mountain top mining.

Two albums make a soundtrack for this duality. Still Moving Mountains -- The Journey Home finds artists, people who live in the mountains, and people who care about them, in a collection of music and short interviews explaining, illuminating, and getting at the heart of what is going on today in, as the classic song terms them, the green rolling hills of West Virginia.

Kathy Mattea is one of those who speaks out on Journey Home. Though her career as a Grammy wining country artist has taken her to Nashville, West Virginia is her home -- she grew with grandparents who worked in the mines, and heard the songs and learned the stories of miners’ life when she was young.

Her doorway into country music has always been through the folk and bluegrass side of things, but songs of the coalfields weren’t ones she felt she was called to do, or could do, until several years ago when a mountain mine disaster recalled to her how she felt facing such events growing up. So she decided to make an album, with some songs she’d known all her life, and some newer ones that speak to the lives of those who work the mines and live in the mountains. She called it Coal, and there’s more about her thoughts on the subject, and the music, here.

you may also wish to see
Mary Black and Emmylou Harris sing Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia
some years before the Coal project, Mattea wrote of her own feelings on leaving her home state in the song Leaving West Virginia
Music Road: Kathy Mattea: Coal
Kathy Mattea’s website she thought the Coal album was going to be a sort of side project for her. as it turned out, there was more.
Music Road: ten songs
to learn more of what the people are singing about in Still Moving Mountains. visit JourneyUpCoalRiver


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop on by to see what's on tap for West Virginia at A Traveler's Library, and for more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

For Reasons Unseen

Hanneke Cassel talks about the world through her fiddle. As she’s grounded in Scottish style fiddle playing (she the former US champion in the style, among other things) that world often includes Scotland seen in various ways, from traditional tunes to her own new ones. There are some of each on this recording

Cassel is also a world traveler with her fiddle. In the past she’s written about the Red Sox and and rural Tennessee, as well as Ireland and pop movie heroes, all without saying a word, mind you. Here she offers, among other things, tunes for a friend’s wedding, a sister’s birthday, a lullaby, a tune called the The Goat Whisperer, and a tune and song learned on her travels in China. A mixed bag, sounds, like, but what it actually sounds like is a lively story and an unfolding conversation where you’re eager to hear the next way things will turn.

If you’ve heard Cassel play in person, or listened to one of her earlier albums, you’ll know she offers a sure touch, vibrant energy, strong faith, and a sense of humor through her music, and if you’ve yet to make her acquaintance, this album is a fine place to begin. She’s just been on a trip to Kenya, where she shared tunes and songs with the people at One Home, Many Hopes. Tunes to come from that, as well, no doubt.

Meantime, every track on this recording is well worth more than one listen. Especially take note of Blackberry Festival Footrace, The Crane Estate, The Dusky Meadow set, and For Reasons Unseen/Rong Hua. Musicians sitting in with Cassel include Natalie Haas, Christopher Lewis, Alasdair Fraser, and Brittany Haas.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: voices: Hanneke Cassel

Music Road: Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: the farthest wave

music & world travel

Each traveler experiences the world in different ways -- through sight, sound, color, rhythm of language, angle of light, conversation, time, architecture -- and of course, music, as well as all sorts of other things. Music, light, language, and history are what we focus on most often here along the music road, and most often in Celtic lands. You’re reading, though, from all around the world, areas as different as Iceland and Kenya, Belfast and Bangkok, Chinatown in San Franciso and Shanghai in China. You travel the world too, through music and through geographic journeys.

You may have noticed over there on the right hand side of the page, there’s a logo telling you that Music Road is a featured blogger on Lonely Planet. You’ll find the voices and views of this group of travelers, of course, featured on individual destination pages at Lonely Planet.

Another way to explore the varied interests and wide ranging locations of this select group of travelers is to visit World Travel where you may view a changing rotation of stories from these travelers and writers and photographers from all parts of the world. Explore and enjoy.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Road Trip Music in Virginia

Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape

Music Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Road Trip Music in Virginia

Virginia is a state of contrasts, from the bustling suburbs of DC to the winding roads of the Shenandoah Valley, from the elegance of Colonial Williamsburg to the down home vibe of the Carter Fold. One song that gracefully and gently expresses all that is I Do Love Virginia. It’s sung by Sissy Spacek, and written by Paul Reisler, Terri Allard -- and class of elementary school kids in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area.

They were all participating in Kid Pan Alley, a project Reisler started on the national level some years back. The Charlottesville area collaborations resulted in an album called I Used to Know the Names of All the Stars, a collection of songs both whimsical and serious, funny and somber, sung by nationally and regionally well known professional musicians who live in the area.

Allard, who spearheaded the Virginia project, is one of those. With a smoky alto and a gift for writing songs which tell vivid stories in just a few words, her music walks the territory between folk and country. A fine introduction to Allard’s work is the album Live in Charlottesville. Songs of hope, resilience, and good fun filled the air one winter night for the recording of that album, and there's more about that when you follow the link.

If you've been thinking about the floods in Tennessee, Allard does a very fine version of the flood song Louisiana 1927 on the recording, too.

Virginia is, or has been, home to many musicians. A site which will take you on a journey through a number of the places important in the state’s musical history is The Crooked Road.

Other musicians with Virginia connections for your soundtrack include Robin and Linda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pasty Cline, The Carter Family, and Jesse Winchester. If you’re looking for Irish and Scottish music in Virginia, one very good place to find out about it is from the web site of Sunspot Productions.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Terri Allard
Music Road: Robin & Linda Williams: The First Christmas Gift
Music Road: music for mothers and children



This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop by and see what the Library has in mind to inspire travels through Virginia.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Nashville floods -- how you can help

Nashville is a homeplace, a heartbeat, a crossroads of music.

Many of the artists you travel with here along the music road, American, Canadian, Irish, and Scottish, have spent time in Nashville at one point or another, played their music there, made their homes there. In these last few days, middle Tennessee has been hit by major flooding. The sun is out now, but the rivers are still rising, and help is needed.

here is a story about ways to help

another way

sending our good thoughts out to all in Music City, and especially to the Nashville based artists we've crossed paths with along the way on the music road.

The Schermerhorn, The Country Music Hall of Fame, The Opry complex, and The Opryland Hotel are among those places affected by the floodwaters...

here's a bit of what that's like
in a fine story from the Tennessean's (Nashville newspaper) Peter Cooper, himself a musician. thanks, Peter.



you may also wish to see

another time, another flood, a different song -- but the same hurt



Music Road: Hands Across the Water

Music Road: Bluebird Cafe: a story

music for parents & children: Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem

All of the four band members in Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem are parents. As they traveled around the world and as they played their music on the home front, that got them thinking about music kids and adults could share.

Most of the roots and folk music band offers would fit that category, with four distinctive lead singers who often engage in collaborative harmony and backing vocals and who are also creative acoustic musicians on fiddle, bass, percussion, and guitar, mixing original music with songs from across the range of international folk. When they decided to focus on doing shows specifically for kids, the band’s sense of fun came front and center -- and so will yours, as you listen to their latest release, Ranky Tanky..


Rani Arbo, Scott Kessel, Andrew Kinsey, and Anand Nayak rearrange and reinvent classics including The Green Grass Grows All Around, and Purple People Eater. They’ll have you up and dancing -- whatever age you are -- with the title track. There's a very funny excursion to the zoo on They All Ask’d for You. There are quieter bits too, including Wildflowers and the gorgeous lullabye written by Malvina Reynolds, Morningtown Ride.

It’s music of substance, and music of fun, offering natural ways to connect, to celebrate, to laugh, and to think. Good for listeners of any age.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Mother: music celebrating mothers and motherhood from Susan McKeown, Cathie Ryan, & Robin Spielberg
Music Road: Road Trip Music visits Connecticut which features another album from Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Music Road: music for mothers and children a roundup of albums you may not have heard...

Also, folk music legend Pete Seeger celebrates a birthday today -- he turns 91. His next album will feature work he's been doing with children. More on that to come. Happy birthday Pete! and thanks for all the music, and all the inspiration.

Cinco de Mayo: music

Cinco de Mayo is the anniversary of a historic battle in the Mexican state of Puebla which has transformed, over the years, to a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage that’s marked especially in the United States.

Tish Hinojosa is first generation Mexican American. Her album Aquella Noche was recorded one Cinco de Mayo several years back at the Waterloo Ice House in Austin, Texas.

It makes a fine soundtrack for marking the holiday, although if you’re expecting raucous Tejano style songs, you’ll not find them here. Hinojosa does not follow that pop culture and rock infused style, but rather is a Texan who sings in both English and Spanish, writing her own songs and sometimes, as on the this recording, mixing in her favorite border and Mexican classics as well. There’ll be more on Hinojosa and her music when the Great American Road Trip: Music travels the southwest, and there’s more to explore at the links below as well.

Meanwhile, take a listen to the dance song Cumbia, Polka, y Mas, the classic Reloj, and the intriguing title song as you prepare your Cinco de Mayo celebrations.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet
Music Road: music for mothers and children
Music Road: ten songs
a selection of recommended songwriter cds