Galway Afternoon

Joe and Joanie Madden’s album A Galway Afternoon will have you smiling straight away.

Through the magic they create with flute and whistle and accordion, and the love between father and daughter, they have you in a sunny -- or maybe not so sunny -- Galway afternoon, right from the opening set of jigs. They kick things off with The Greenfields of Woodford / The Hole in the Hedge/Seamus Cooley's and travel on through a well spent hour of more jigs, many reels, a hornpipe or two, an air, and a set of waltzes.

You’ll have met Joanie here along the music road before, in her role as founding member of the top notch band Cherish the Ladies, her work with the Pride of New York group, and her generous ways of lending her flute and whistle skills to support other musicians. Joe, her dad, was born in east Galway, and emigrated to New York, where Joanie was born and raised. In New York, Joe had a band which turned into a thirteen piece orchestra and lasted for three decades. Though Joanie points out that he was a bit hard on her while she was learning her music, it was, she says, because he knew she had gift of the music in her.

The pair were in Galway one June a few years back. Joanie convinced her dad to go into the recording studio and lay down some tunes. Studio work was never Joe’s favorite thing to do, but it’s clear from the music here that he got into the spirit of things and let the music lead him on to give his own gifts of energy and passion. You hear that clearly on The Little Thatched Cabin / The Coal Miner / The Ormond Sound set of reels, and all through the tunes, really.

Joanie’s solo on The Boys of the Lough is a fine showcase for her talents, which are also apparent through all the tunes. Her brother John adds energy with drums, well shown on the tunes in that set and on other tracks as well. Charlie Lennon and Gabriel Donohue also join in, on piano and guitar.

As life plays out, back home in New York Joe Madden took a fall not long after that afternoon in Galway, a fall that was to bring his life to close. In her liner notes, Joanie writes that he was happy his legacy would go on, and glad that they had taken that afternoon in Ireland to put their sharing of the gift music down for others to hear. It is a record filled with the joy of music, and of sharing family and friendship through music. Real stuff, real Irish, straight up, and just your right companion for a sunny afternoon or a rainy evening.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East
Music Road: pride of new york
Music Road: Music road trip New York City: Irish Musicians

Road Trip Music: southern California

Southern California: a land of movie stars, palm trees, borders with Mexico, beaches, sprawling cities and small towns, sunshine and wind. As the great American road trip, powered by book and film suggestions over at a Traveler's Library, heads to southern California, on the music side of things I’m taking note of the fact that southern California is also a land of bluegrass.

Vince Gill, Chris Thile, Stuart Duncan, Sweethearts of the Rodeo: bluegrass and country greats who have all spent time in the southern California bluegrass scene. So has Alison Brown, from whom comes the soundtrack for this section of our trip.

Brown is a much awarded banjo player and composer, and cofounder of the independent record company Compass Records. For her own music, she includes a healthy helping of bluegrass, and adds in confident work in jazz and in Celtic music as well -- sometimes all in the same piece. All of this comes into play in the album I recommend for your listening on this part of the trip, The Company You Keep.

It is always good to see Brown at work, too. You can do that on her recent dvd Alison Brown Quartet - Live at Blair with Joe Craven. That’s a concert recorded at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Several tunes from The Company You Keep are part of the concert, and there are several of Brown's earlier pieces as well, including The Wonderful Sea Voyage of Holy Saint Brendan and Goin’ to Glasgow.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: The Last Star: Heidi Talbot
Music Road: Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After


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 in southern California.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Irish and American

Irish and American: that can be a challenge, as much as it is a connection. That’s often especially true when it comes to music.

It is challenge we explore often along the music road and that I explore elsewhere as I write about Ireland and Irish music, as well. As we are now well into Patrick season, that time of year when shamrocks pop up in the oddest place and both beer and rivers sometimes turn green. here’s the first of several articles with a look at musicians we’ve met along the road who follow this path.

Liz Carroll grew up in Chicago, taking classical violin lessons and absorbing Irish music from family and friends. She won her first all Ireland championship on the fiddle when she was eighteen. It is as a composer she’s made her strongest mark, writing tunes that are played in sessions and passed along around the world.

Eileen Ivers is a fiddle player too. Her specialties include exploring the edges and margins where Irish rhythms meet the sounds of other lands, and tracing the interconnections of immigrant communities as heard in their music, always with Irish music at the heart of it. She saw those connections early, growing up in the Bronx, in New York, and traveling back to Mayo in Ireland to spend summers with her grandparents.


There’s more ahead about Irish and Irish American artists just around the corner -- have you a favourite?

you may also wish to see

Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle
Music Road: Road Trip Music visits Pennsylvania

music and connection

Music arises out of silence, and out of solitude, and also out of connection.
I have been thinking about those paradoxical ideas quite a bit lately. Music -- at least the sort of music we consider here along the music road -- is often a bridge between silence and connection, between solitude and community. Those ideas too are worth deep consideration. which makes it all sound rather serious, and it may be, at times. Music is also a deep source of renewable connection to those we love, and to joy.

music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
Music Road: a bodhran story
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Celtic Connections 2011: images, part two

Listen to the music through the silence...












these photographs are from the Celtic Connections Festival 2011 in Glasgow. they were made with the kind permission of the artists, and are copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

artists are from Scotland, Kathleen MacInnes, and from Ireland, John Doyle and Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh.

yuo may also wish to see
Music Road: Scott-Land at Celtic Connections
Music Road: Celtic Connections 2011: images
Music Road: harps and Celtic Connections


and

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

Long Time Courting: help kickstart their recording

Long Time Courting is a four woman band, based in the Boston area, whose members each bring a love of traditional Irish and American music as well as an interest in contemporary material to a group that has been delighting audiences across New England for several years.

All of the women sing, and their harmonies are a strong feature of their work. Each is also a talented instrumentalist, and their instrumental collaborations are as engaging as their singing. Sarah Blair plays fiddle, Liz Simmons handles guitar, Shannon Heaton plays flute, and Ariel Friedman plays cello. That is an interesting enough line up in itself -- add to it the fact that each brings a varied range of professional playing and recording experiences, and touring histories that cross the globe. Long Time Courting is a group well worth your listening.

Up until now, though, you had to catch one of their live shows to do that. They have not had funds to make a recording: as professional musicians with other band commitments and working women with other family demands, the money has not been there. However, they’ve decided it’s time to do something about that, and there is opportunity for you to help.

A recording is nearly complete, with the assistance of an engineer who was willing to wait for his pay. Long Time Courting have started a Kickstarter project to gather the funds to pay him, and to the get next steps of mastering, design, and promotion of the CD done to get their music out there.

Small investments go a long way -- and the way Kickstarter works, if they do not raise the full amount of their goal by a certain deadline, no one is charged and no money changes hands. In LTC’s case, the deadline is March 2nd, as and of this writing they’ve raised a bit more than thirty per cent of the three thousand dollars that is their goal amount to get their recording on to its next steps.

Want to invest in this recording, or to learn more about it? There are details at the band’s Kickstarter page.

Here is the band’s website, where you may hear a bit of their music, read their biographies, and find out their touring schedule: Long Time Courting

update: things are moving along for Long Time Courting's project -- they now have less than three hundred dollars to go to reach their goal -- and as of 23 February, nine days in which to do it.
further update: congratulations to Long Time Courting for meeting and exceeding their goal, and thanks to all who contributed to that. looking forward to hearing the recording.



you may also wish to see
Music Road: Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Music Road: early autumn: music and transition

Road Trip Music: northern California

For a bit over a year now, we’ve been on a virtual road trip across the United States, adding music suggestions to the film and book ideas for exploring the varied landscapes of this vast country which you will find over at A Traveler's Library.

This edition of the road trip finds us in northern California: bustling cities, romantic small towns, redwood forests and the Big Sur and across the Golden Gate and down to Berkeley. The soundtrack for this part of the trip comes from Joan Baez, a woman who has called northern California home for much of her more than five decades of making music.


Not long ago, the PBS series American Masters did a program on Baez. That has come out on dvd, with a CD fifteen songs drawn from across the musician’s career to go along. They are both called How Sweet The Sound and are well worth your time. If you do not know or don’t remember the earlier days of Baez’ public career, when she put her life on the line during the civil rights days, for example, you’ll get a good idea of the social justice interests that have always formed a part of her work, and her life. Through interviews with Baez and others you’ll get a candid picture of the private woman behind the music, as well as insights on making a living in the spotlight. The music recording includes several traditional Appalachian and English ballads, a trademark of Baez’ early career during the folk music revival, as well as songs from the civil rights era, and a duet with Bob Dylan. There are also several of her popular radio hits, including The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and Diamonds and Rust, as well as the recent song Jerusalem.



I’d add another album from the Baez catalogue for this road trip, too, one called First Ten Years On it you’ll find the haunting traditional song Geordie, the well known English folk song Mary Hamilton, and Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right. Baez is one of the best song interpreters around, mastering that art of serving the song’s story while putting her own ideas into it as well. The First Ten Years is a really excellent place to hear that gift.

Also to note: you’ve met Irish guitarist John Doyle here along the music road before, in his work with Cathie Ryan, Alison Brown, and others, and in his solo albums. He’s backing up Baez on the road these days, and you’ll see him at work in recent concert footage on the dvd, as well. John Doyle is also an artist of the decade.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: road trip music: American northwest
Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle

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 in northern California.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

from Donegal: T with the Maggies

Donegal is in the far northwest of Ireland, a land of sea and mountain, much of it a place where Irish is spoken as often as English, all of it a place where music is respected and loved. Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, and Moya Brennan all spent time growing up in Donegal, and knew each other in those days. Each has made a top notch career in music, through work with bands, groups, and as solo artists. Over the years they have crossed paths at family gatherings and at festivals, and have thought that they really ought to do something together. Now they have.

From the first notes of the first song at the City Halls Grand Hall in Glasgow, the four women wove a tapestry that included intricate harmonies, soulful lead singing, fine playing, and more than that, connections of deep and long lasting friendship among the artists, and deep and long lasting love for the land, as well. The landscape, the people, and the history of Donegal were all present in the music they shared.

It was a sharing, too, rather like friends telling tales around the fireside. Notwithstanding the slightly formal setting at City Halls, listeners were immediately drawn in to become a part of things as well, enjoying the stories, both serious and funny, that the women told, and enjoying the gentle humor as during the course of the evening they joked with each other, as longtime friends do. Appreciating too not only the connection of voices but also the connection through fine playing. Tríona was on keyboards, Moya on harp and on djembe, Mairéad on fiddles, and in the background, Jim Higgins on percussion and Manus Lunny on guitar.

Calling themselves T with the Maggies, Mairéad, Tríona, Maighread, and Moya have made an album, also called T With the Maggies. Music they recorded for that, much of it music from the tradition sung in Irish, formed most of the program for the Glasgow evening. Ceol an Phíobaire, A Stór A Stór A Ghrá, and in English the lively song Wedding Dress were among the songs they offered.

Especially engaging were two songs the women wrote. Mother Song, inspired by the present situation which sees young people emigrating from Ireland again as they have in past days, showed passion in restraint in taking a mother’s view of those things. Domhnach na Fola, the most haunting song of the evening, is a response to the recent release of the findings of the Bloody Sunday enquiry in Derry.

Audience members were on their feet at the end of the concert, calling the artists back for three songs in encore. It was a lovely and lively evening, honoring tradition and carrying it forward, honoring friendship and carrying that forward as well. Chances are, once you’ve heard the album, you’ll want to be putting it on for encore spins, too.



This concert was part of Celtic Connections 2011. Photographs were made with permission of the artists, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: music and hope: Derry
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: Scott-Land at Celtic Connections
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

three songs for Valentine's Day

Loving hearts, seeking hearts, hurting hearts, hearts wide open, hearts reconciled, hearts and flowers: it’s Valentine season. Three songs to listen to as you prepare and enjoy your celebrations:

Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, wrote dozens and dozens of songs about love, funny, bawdy, serious, heartfelt. Eddi Reader has recorded many of them including Ae Fond Kiss. My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, and John Anderson My Jo. Good ones all. On her album Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns she also chose to record a contemporary song, Wild Mountainside, by John Douglas. It’s a fine look at longing, change, trust, and homecoming. all framed it touches of the Scottish landscape. It will work to illuminate love whatever landscape happens to be your place at the moment.


Cathie Ryan draws in images of nature and weather in her song What’s Closest to the Heart, as well, framing a journey of trust, questions, and acceptance in swirling melody driven by John Doyle’s guitar and laced by John McCusker’s fiddle. It is a song that may have you tapping your feet even as you consider the images and questions in English and Irish that Ryan offers. A fine and perhaps a bit unexpected companion to the season of hearts and flowers, you’ll find the song on Ryan's album The Farthest Wave.


Indiana based songwriter Carrie Newcomer looks at love, trust, connection, and staying true in her song Hush. It’s a reflective piece which takes a quiet look at the strength of love beyond the first days of romance - as indeed do Ryan’s and Reader’s songs as well. You will find Hush on Newcomer’s album
Before & After.





you may also wish to see
eddi reader, willie stewart, and the search for haggis
Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton



over at the excellent family friendly entertainment blog Reel Life with Jane, Jane Boursaw has made her picks for voting in the 2011 Weblog Awards, also known as the Bloggies. Music Road is one of her choices (thanks Jane!). Follow the link and you can read Jane’s choices and vote for your own if you'd like, through 20th February.

Road Trip Music: Nevada

Nevada: though you might perhaps first think of resorts or casinos, the very name of the state comes from the Spanish name for part of its wilderness, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the snowy range. As the Great American Road Trip winds through Nevada, our soundtrack will come from from a man who knows and lives with that wilderness.

As half of the duo Ian and Sylvia,
Ian Tyson had been at the top of the folk music revival scene in the 1960s and 1970s, writing and singing songs including the enduring classics Four Strong Winds and Someday Soon.

As that time waned and after he and Sylvia came to a parting of the ways, he returned to the plains of western Canada to work at ranching. “ I always kept my hand in music, gigging with a little band around Alberta on the weekends," he says. He was invited to perform at one of the first Cowboy Poetry Gatherings, a project of the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada which celebrates poetry, music, crafts and life ways of the mountain west. It opened up a whole new world for Tyson. “These people didn’t know anything about Ian and Sylvia, but they liked our band,” he says. “and I saw, in that way of life, what I could write about. Leaving the whole movie cowboys image behind, write about the real life of the west. I could reinvent the cowboy song.” He did, and now in his eighth decade of life, continues to do so. As the road trip travels through Nevada take a listen to songs inspired by life in the rocky mountain west on Eighteen Inches of Rain.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
Ian Tyson: songs of the Rocky Mountain West
Music Road: Best Music, 2010
patrick season: music and mist
Music Road: looking forward, looking back

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 Nevada.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Celtic Connections 2011: images

Stories with words will come from
Celtic Connections this year...
here are stories told through images.
There will be more of these as well.



please note that these photographs were taken with the kind permission of the artists, and are copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: harps and Celtic Connections
Music Road: Best Music, 2010
a bodhran story

and

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

Scott-Land at Celtic Connections

Ivanhoe, Lady of the Lake, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor -- even if you’ve never read any of these, they have very likely influenced your view of Scotland and its history. Sir Walter Scott wrote all of them. His cinematic descriptions of Scottish landscapes have caused him to be called Scotland’s first travel writer. His novels, poems and plays were wildly popular when they were written in the early nineteenth century -- at one point during that time his novels were said to be the most read books in the United States. They are still read today.

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park is the landscape Scott drew on for Lady of the Lake. As part of the park’s celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the poem, composer Phil Cunningham wrote a new instrumental work, The Trossachs Suite.

It’s always a challenge to write instrumental music about something, to create music that is neither too literal nor too abstract. Cunningham did this very well, drawing on his deep connection with traditional music as well as touches of classical influence. As the program had its first performance at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall during Celtic Connections, the six sections of music were interspersed with readings form Scott’s work by actor Bill Paterson. Cunningham, on accordion, was well assisted by band members including Michael McGoldrick on flutes and whistles, Kathleen Boyle on piano and keyboards, Ian Carr and John Doyle on guitar, Martin O’Neill on bodhran, and Fiona Johnson and John McCusker on fiddle.

The Trossachs Suite was the first half of the evening in Glasgow. For the second half, singers Karen Matheson and Eddi Reader joined in to offer songs written by Scott, and ones, as Cunningham said, “we think he would have liked, and ones that we like!”

It proved a stellar selection and a varied one as well, with Reader starting things off with with Jock O’ Hazeldean, and Matheson continuing with McGregor’s Gathering. The two then joined together for what at first might seem an unexpected choice, Schubert’s setting for the hymn Ave Maria. It was, in fact, Schubert’s reading about the song in Lady of the Lake which inspired the composition, and two of the best voices in Scotland had the audience in cheers and in tears as they ended the piece. Wild Mountainsde, a contemporary piece on homecoming and choices and a Reader favourite, was also on the program, and Matheson brought her Gaelic background with Ailein Duinn. The two singers joined forces for a lively set of Puirt a Buel to conclude the music -- almost.. Things finished off with an encore of all on stage and in the audience joining in singing Loch Lomond.


You have to think that Walter Scott would’ve enjoyed the evening.



photographs are copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.


you may also wish to see

If you like the idea of books which inspire travel, check out what’s happening over at A Traveler’s Library. We’ve been suggesting music ideas to go along with the Library’s choices for book and film on The Great American Road Trip -- there are still a few states to go -- and you will find books and film ideas for places from Iraq to South Dakota to Normandy, and thought provoking conversations about them, at A Traveler’s Library as well.


Music Road: Music for St Andrew's Day: music of Scotland
Music Road: Eddi Reader, Emily Smith, Robert Burns

Road Trip Music : Oregon

Oregon has a varied landscape -- high desert, mountain and forest, windswept coast, rugged redwoods. As the Great American Road Trip travels through this part of the Pacific northwest, for a soundtrack we will have the work of two contemporary composers from Oregon, artists whose work is just as distinctive as the changing landscape. One writes cowboy songs, and the other composes fiddle tunes grounded in her love of and work in the music of Scotland.

Joni Harms is a rancher and farmer, living on land her great grandfather worked. Her crops include cattle and Christmas trees, and they also include songs, ones that are filled with stories of the people and land of the contemporary west. Harms has won many awards for her music, and part of her philosophy about it may be hinted at in the tile of her album Let's Put the Western Back in the Country,
which is a good choice for listening on this Oregon trip. If that mention of Christmas trees has got you thinking of the winter holidays, Harms also has a very nice album of western Christmas songs out, as well.

Hanneke Cassel grew up in Port Orford, on the Oregon coast, where at first she took up western swing style fiddling. Taking up her teacher’s challenge to try Scottish style music, Cassel won several national championships in it, and with them came the chance to study in Scotland. “I was hooked,” Cassel says. Now a respected player, composer, and teacher, Cassel’s own work is rooted in Scotland and brings in her own touches of American background as well. On this road trip through her native state, take a listen to For Reasons Unseen.

you may also wish to see

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea
Music Road: road trip music: American west

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 across Oregon.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins