Judy Collins

Each year the magazine Irish America names a list of one hundred top Irish Americans. Cathie Ryan and Joanie Madden are among those you’ve met here along the music road who have been honoured in this list. This year, one of those chosen is Judy Collins.

For more than five decades, Collins has been making a life in music, learning classical music and appearing with the Denver Symphony as a young woman, taking up the guitar in her late teens and becoming a leading light in the folk music revival of the 1960s, and by the 1970s forging a musical path which includes folk music of the British Isles and Ireland, music from singers and songwriters such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Ian Tyson, and Joni Mitchell, and adding in popular and classical music as well as eclectic selections from the likes of Jacques Brel and Steven Sondheim, along with her own songs on subjects including love, family, landscape, and politics. Collins has also worked in theater, written several books, and in recent years started her own record company, Wildflower Records.

One thread connecting all her musical work is love for a good song, and an adventurous spirit in seeking out just those songs to which she feels best able to give voice. Her second album, Golden Apples of the Sun, was named from the words of a poem by WB Yeats to which Collins gives a haunting traveler's journey. On Farewell to Tarwathie she pairs a traditional whaling song with actual whale songs from nature. Bob Dylan’s vivd images of love, grief, and longing in Tomorrow Is a Long Time are illuminated with understated grace while his rather different perspective on the same emotions in Daddy You’ve been on My Mind are equally well served in a paring which finds them side by side on Collins’ Fifth Album
Collins has often been early to record the work of little known artists who went on to wider recognition. Cohen, Mitchell, Randy Newman, Eric Andersen, and Billy Edd Wheeler are among these musicians. The breadth and depth of Collins gifts as a singer and as a chooser of song are indicated by the range of three of her best known radio hits: the pop song Send In the Clowns, folk songwriter Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, and the traditional hymn Amazing Grace.

Most of Collins’ early work has been reissued in recent years, and is readily available. Judy Collins 3 & 4
Forever Anthology
and Very Best of Judy Collins
in addition to those albums linked above, are especially worth your attention.

aside: I’ve been fortunate enough to interview Judy Collins and to see her live in concert at several points in her career. If you have the chance to go to a Judy Collins concert, take it.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Joanie Madden: Galway Afternoon
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black

inspiration: looking for the quiet

Finding quiet spaces, places to reflect and let ideas unfold, giving one’s self the gift of that, may at times seem difficult, and at times, it is. It’s necessary though, both to look for that quiet and to accept it when it comes.

Sometimes, you find it by looking up.

This photograph was made just at sunset in the midst of the very busy city center in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland.


photograph is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

this post is part of an occasional series on seeking and finding inspiration for and through music and other creative ways of life.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: words, music, and national poetry month
Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape
Music Road: Scotland's Highlands in music: Duncan Chisholm

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

Nod to Bob, and Carrie, Mary, Rose, Sarah, and Joanie, too

Opening doors, changing the way listeners and fellow creators of song think about music, writing songs that are literal, mystical, poetic, political, and funny, and always leaving room for more than one way to take the words: those are several things Bob Dylan has done in five decades of his work as a musician. He’s marking a birthday this last week in May. All over the word and all through this year there have been and will be tributes to this unlikely musical hero who grew up in the Minnesota Iron Range town of Hibbing, and first built his national fame in the clubs of New York’s Greenwich Village. .

A good song always leaves room for those who listen to take it in, to make it their own, and to carry it on in their own lives. With lyrics both enigmatic and direct, Dylan has been good at that. To celebrate his birthday, Red House Records, which is based in his native Minnesota, invited musicians who work with the label to choose favorite Dylan songs to record. The result is A Nod to Bob 2, a sixteen track collection that could be a study in songwriting, in singing, in song interpretation -- a study that’s best carried out by playing the disc many times and letting the songs unfold.

There are well known songs , ones that might start to jog your memory with their first notes, and ones that perhaps you’ll be hearing for the first time. Interestingly chosen and thoughtfully sequenced, this album works as few collections do, as a thoughtful narrative of the songwriter’s ideas as well as a group of songs and interpretations that play into and bounce off of each other in ways both familiar and surprising.

Each listener will come by his or her own favourite cuts, of course. Eliza Gilkyson, a master herself of the indirect lyric, offers Jokerman, in a track which was recorded live. Peter Ostroushko takes on Dylan's sense of humour with Mozambique. Pieta Brown goes to the blues side of things with Dirt Road Blues, while Texas troubadour Jimmy LaFave gives Not Dark Yet plenty of space and plenty of room for thought. So do Robin and Linda Williams, whose high spirited take on Walkin’ Down the Line is the closer to the disc. Meg Hutchinson, John Gorka, and Lucy Kaplansky are among others who contribute songs

You might also care to see the first Red House Collection honoring Bob Dylan, A Nod to Bob

This time in late May seems to be a place in the calendar when musicians celebrate birthdays. Several you’ve met along the music road are celebrating around this time of year: Irish singer Mary Black, rising bluegrass star Sarah Jarosz, songwriter Rosanne Cash, Cherish the Ladies founder Joanie Madden, songwriter Carrie Newcomer -- and me. Sign of Gemini in the zodiac, sign of hawthorn in Irish mythology, both said to hold gifts in the arts of communication.

So, good wishes to all who celebrate. Do you have a favourite song by Bob Dylan, or by one of the other artists mentioned here? Let us know in the comments.

Irish landscape: Davy Spillane's A Place Among the Stones

Darklight, Western Whisper, Always Travellin, Near the Horizon - titles on Davy Spillane’s album A Place Among The Stones hint at the landscapes of an older Ireland that lie within the tunes. Tunes, though, that are contemporary compositions, and though Spillane himself plays pipes and low whistles, sometimes include electric guitar, flugelhorn, cymbals, and other perhaps not so ancient and not so irish instruments.

Spillane has a varied background in music. He was, for one thing, one of the founding members of the adventurous Irish group Moving Hearts, and he’s worked in many genres. Whether it was his intention or not, A Place Among The Stones comes across as a meditation on the quiet places and older times of Eire. Standout tracks include the instrumental Darklight, the song Starry Night, with Sean Tyrell sitting in on voice, and the title track, a co write with Moya Brennan, on which she sings and plays the harp.

a side note: This is an older recording of Davy Spillane’s, and well worth your attention, as is the work he has done before and since. It had gotten to the back of a shelf at my house and I came across it recently, still with the sticker on the front from the shop in Letterkenny, Donegal, where I bought it all those years ago. Still just as good as it was then, too, maybe even better with passage of years. Have some gems lurking in the back of your music shelves? take a look....

you may also wish to see
Music Road: from Donegal: T with the Maggies
Moya Brennan’s current group

Music Road: Galway Afternoon
Music Road: Scotland's Highlands in music: Duncan Chisholm

The Dreaming Fields: Matraca Berg

In her song The Dreaming Fields, Matraca Berg walks through her grandfather’s farm, finding memory of brighter days and childhood love, strength and courage and hard work, and loss and grief . The farm will no longer be a farm; it’s being sold off for building lots.

Berg handles all those facts and the emotions that come with them with the heart and hand of a songwriter who knows that songs have their own lives, and that in the joining of ideas, music, and voice there is need for space. Space for the listener, and room for ideas and questions which rarely have neat and tidy and once and for all answers.

Questions and change are themes which run through the album of which The Dreaming Fields is the title track. That will not surprise anyone who has followed the Nashville based writer’s work. Those who have include Patty Loveless, Marina McBride, Kenny Chesney, Trisha Yearwood, and the Dixie Chicks, who have all recorded Berg’s work. Fellow award winning writers and singers Gretchen Peters and Suzy Bogguss, who join up with Berg for concerts they call Wine Woman and Song are two more.

In the fourteen years since her last album, Berg has chosen to stay behind the scenes, writing the songs that have earned Grammy nominations, Country Music Association Awards, and induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has mostly played her songs at the Bluebird and other listening rooms, and with her friends Bogguss and Peters. “I did a tour of the UK with Gretchen Peters and Suzy Bogguss, which I did for the fun of it mostly,” Berg says. “I’d not had a record out in forever, but it seemed like I could go see some cool places with friends, and I was stunned to see lines of people everywhere we went who were wanting to buy my record.” So she decided it was time, and she also decided to make the recording on her own terms, producing the project herself.


The listeners waiting in those lines, and the artists who have recorded Berg’s music over the years, have heard the voices of people who you know have lives beyond the moments of the song, from the bleak reality of the woman in If I Had Wings to the simmering desire of the one in You and Tequila to the wry and telling humor of the conversation in Your Husband’s Cheating on Us. They have heard the deep and vividly rendered honesty of grieving in Racing the Angels and South of Heaven, of holding on to place and home in O Cumberland, and of finding your way through love in A Cold Rainy Morning in London in June. .



Berg is a master lyricist, that’s true, and she’s also a master musician, pairing her words with melody and arrangement that serve the words and enhance them without ever getting in the way. She’s unafraid to be spare about that, too: the title track, for example, is just Berg on piano and John Catchings on cello, to back up Berg’s voice -- and that’s just exactly enough, as she evokes her grandmother’s kitchen, her grandfather working the fields, and rain on the rusted plow.


“Making an album was important,” she says. “ ... not a checklist of singles and themes, but something that was a piece of work where you’re going through a part of people’s lives. I wanted the listeners to pass through those lives, those moments, and understand what was going on, because, like lot of people, I’m in a place in my life where life is a big deal -- a lot of grief, aging people, trying to keep a marriage together, all kinds of family things going on, things you can’t escape because that is life. That’s what life is really made of, and hopefully, this album too.”

The Dreaming Fields is a master class in songwriting -- any sort of writing, really. It’s also just plain good listening. filled with songs that will have you thinking about their stories long after the music is done

follow this link to see Matraca Berg singing South of Heaven from that UK tour with Gretchen Peters and Suzy Bogguss

you may also wish to see


Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
Music Road: lead and harmony
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

Celtic Kenya musical connection

Kenya, Boston, Ireland, Scotland -- there’s connection there, and a connection shown through music in the album Lullabies for Love. Many of the musicians you’ve met here along the music road, along with a few who may be new to you, have joined together to offer you a fine range of Celtic tinged lullabies, to benefit One Home Many Hopes in Kenya.

One Home Many Hopes is an orphanage, but not just another orphanage. It finds, rescues, houses, loves and educates orphaned and abandoned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya and goes beyond that. By the education and love shown them, and the challenges offered, it equips these young women to be agents of change in their community and build for the future, and the present.

The work of One Home Many Hopes and the spirit oof the young women who live there caught the imagination of Lindsay O’Donovan, who wrote the song Lullabye for Love, and the recording project evolved from there.
Heidi Talbot and Cherish the Ladies contribute the gentle song Castle of Dromore, the Donegal based band Altan offer Dún do Shuil, a lullabye in Irish with a chorus and title whose words mean close your eyes, and award winning fiddle player and composer Liz Carroll offers A Day and an Age. Aoife Clancy adds The Gartan Mother’s Lullabye, while Hanneke Cassel, Ariel Friedman, and Shannon Heaton join O’ Donovan for the title song. Karan Casey, Keith Murphy, Dougie MacLean, Aoife O' Donovan, and Alasdair Fraser are just a few of the other artists who add their music. It’s a project that will bring hours of good listening to your life, and help the lives and hopes of others at the same time.

To hear a bit of the music from the recording, and to see how to purchase your own copy, follow this link Lullabies for Love


There’s a benefit concert celebrating the CD release on 15 May at Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The concert is sold out, but wherever you are in the world, you will be able to join in the fun and the music by watching on line through Concert Window. It's set for 4.30 to 7.30 US Eastern Daylight time.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen
Music Road: Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress
Music Road: Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon

new song from Mary Black

Mary Black is not a traditional Irish singer. ”People often think I come from a traditional music background, but, really, I don’t, “ she says.

What the Dublin born Black has is an ear for the poetry of a song and a fine way of putting her own interpretation on a song while remaining true to its heart and spirit. She’s done that with songs from the tradition -- Anachie Gordon, Suil Aroon, Rose of Allendale, Bruach Na Carraige Báine all come to mind. She also has a fine ear for choosing newer songs that have depth and substance, among them Song for Ireland, No Frontiers, Summer Sent You, Columbus, and Just a Journey.

Black has been working on a new album, her first in a good while. She’s released a song from that, called Marguerite and the Gambler. She makes the point that this song tells essentially the same story as does the song Anachie Gordon. A guest spot on a television show at the invitation of Christy Moore saw Black singing Anachie Gordon, and it was that appearance in the 1980s that helped her road to national and international fame. follow this link to see a video of Marguerite and the Gambler. and this one to find the song at Amazon Marguerite And The Gambler


while we’re at it take a look at Mary singing one of my favorite songs, By the Time It Gets Dark. Emmylou Harris joins in, and they are accompanied by Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, Jerry Douglas, among others.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Music Road: Mary Black: 25 years 25 songs
Music Road: Mary Black: By the Time It Gets Dark

Highlander's Farewell: Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas

Time was, several centuries ago when musical conversation between fiddle and cello defined the beat of popular dance music in Scotland. In recent years, Alasdair Fraser and natalie Haas have picked up that conversation. Keeping tradition in mind, they have taken it in new directions, too based in their own creativity and willingness to trust their ability to do that.

On their album Highlander's Farewell, they offer a musical journey which moves from the Highlands of Scotland to the lowlands, to Ireland, to Appalachia in the southern United States, to California, to Cape Breton, Spain, and back again. The title track is a strathspey which opens a four tune set, a set which finds the tune itself taking a trip from the Scottish Highland to Ireland and over to the Appalachian mountains. You can almost see the smokey mist which often pervades the air in the Highlands through the opening notes of the strathspey. Picking up its steps a bit as a reel and then a jig in Ireland, in the hands of Fraser and Haas it finds its way to the southern mountain of the United States as a lively breakdown. The Jig Runrig set brings things back with fast paced dance to Scotland. Two tunes by Scottish composer Nathaniel Gow take things on a quieter turn, as they are laments. A pipe hornpipe from the Uists in the Hebrides is paired with a contemporary tune from the work of the ever inventive piper Gordon Duncan. There are three original tunes by Fraser on the disc, among them McLaughlin’s Strathspey, which he wrote as a wedding gift for two friends. There is a set of Galician tunes, a classical sounding touch with La Sansonette, and Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa, a tune in which you may hear the echoes of the melody of several familiar songs.

There are thirteen sets in all, each flowing naturally from the other and with the brighter notes from Fraser’s fiddle being framed by and then framing the darker sound of the cello. Haas and Fraser trade back and forth with rhythm and melody, creating an always engaging and fascinating journey. They are supported by fine musical friends, as well, including Hanneke Cassel in piano and fiddle, Dennis Cahill on guitar, Brittany Haas, Martin Hayes, and Bruce Molsky on fiddle, and others. It is, however, the connection between fiddle and cello which centers the music, inviting listeners along on a journey well worth the taking, and well worth the taking more than once.

aside: I had the chance to see Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas -- and a few special guests-- play this music at a concert during Celtic Connections a few months back. more on that evening to come.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas: In the Moment
Music Road: Scottish music a different way: The Unusual Suspects
Music Road: Celtic Connections 2011:first look