Carrie Newcomer: A Great Wild Mercy

The intersection of a rainy day, an umbrella, and a prayer, a glimpse of swift passing fox in the autumn woods, what to do with a sleepless night, memory of a mother’s ideas on what would heal a bee sting, walking into the night after gathering for a potluck dinner...

These are several of the ideas Indiana based singer and songwriter Carrie Newcomer drew on for the stories she tells in her songs on her album A Great Wild Mercy.

“There’s news of the world and news of the heart” Carrie Newcomer sings as one of the lines in the title track.

Newcomer has been making music at the intersection of those two ideas for a good while now. A Great Wild Mercy is her twentieth album.

“I think songwriters each have certain ideas, certain themes they return to,” Newcomer says.

One of Newcomer’s themes is seeing the sacred in the everyday, the depths beyond the surface.

That has, among other things, resulted in a body of work which finds big ideas -- community, hope, grief, the lessons and uncertainties of parenthood, of love, of change, what to do with anger, and many other facets of life, grounded in vivid detail and image.

That has been true across the albums of Newcomer’s work. It is a practice and a style in which her work has evolved, too, both musically and lyrically.

In A Great Wild Mercy, for example, in addition to her own voice and guitar and the work of her frequent musical collaborator pianist and arranger Gary Walters, Newcomer is joined by artists on violin, percussion, cello, harmony vocal, bass, and mandolin.

If you are new to Newcomer’s music, you may be drawn first by her voice -- she has one of the best alto voices around in any style of music -- the way she uses her voice in service f music and story, and the thought provoking stories she tells

There’s much more.

A co-write with John McCutcheon offers a lively melody framing images and ideas inviting you to think about what going back to basics and/or starting over means.

Singing in the Dark took a spark from experiences Newcomer had when attending early morning service at the Abbey of Gethsemani where Catholic theologian and writer Thomas Merton spent part of his life.

Newcomer is a Quaker. “My faith is part of my life,” she says, “so it comes through in my music. Though a faith based record label wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole,” she adds, laughing.

At times Newcomer’s music invites you to laugh, or to dance. At other times she invites you to think of hard circumstances, to consider choices, to think about memories. And to take a walk through a woods at evening, seeing what you may find on that quiet path.

Newcomer’s songs are invitations to reflection, to ask questions, to consider connections.

Give them time and thought. You will be well rewarded.

You may also wish to explore
Carrie Newcomer has a Substack called A Gathering of Spirits.
She has also published several books of poetry and essays. We had a conversation about her writing process for that sort of work
Another album by Carrie Newcomer
Carrie was invited to take her music to India...
At the turning of the year: 5 songs including one from Carrie.

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At the year's turning: 5 songs for new year's reflection

At the turning of the year, it is a time of looking forward and looking back. As ever here at Music Road, the stories found in music are company along the way, and guides to help think about the challenges, acceprt the sorrows, and share the celebrations of the turn of seasons.

Carrie Newcomer’s song Singing in the Dark works for this point in the seasons and beyond.

The idea for the song sparked for Newcomer when she spent a bit of time at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. A respected writer, artist, and thinker on matters of the spirit, she’d been invited to experience the place where spiritual teacher and writer Thomas Merton had lived.

While there, she attended several of the services through which the monks keep hours of the day -- matins, lauds, vespers, compline, for example -- some of which occur in the dark of night and the dark of very early hours of the morning.

On new year’s eve and other times, someone is always singing in the dark...

You will find Singing in the Dark on Carrie Newcomer’s album A Great Wild Mercy.

Waitin’ on Mary is a Christmas song, yes. It also works really well with the atmosphere and events going in in the world just now: finding reasons to hope amidst despair, for one thing. Gretchen Peters wrote it. You will find it on her album Northern Lights.

Rani Arbo has set words of Alfred Lord Tennyson to music in Ring Out Wild Bells. Each of the verses she’s chosen speaks to today as much as they did to Tennyson’s time.

You will find it recorded on the Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem album Wintersong.

In Scotland, the celebration of midnight as one year turns to another is marked by and is called the bells. Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem’s song is a nod to that, and so is this...

Auld Lang Syne, as well known as it is, really does belong as a part on one year turning into another. Here’s a fine version of it by Hannah Rarity and Blazin’ Fiddles. You will want to listen, yes, but then perhaps second time round go ahead and sing along.

Bittersweet as the turning of a year may seem at times, it is also a time which invites celebration, connection and hope. Cajun musicians Canray Fontenot and Michael Doucet caught that ideas well in their song Bonne Annee. So did Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem in their performance of it, on their album Wintersong.

Wishing you all the best at the turning of this year, and as the new year unfolds.

You may also wish to see
Three more songs for the new year, from Kris Drever, Fara, and Olivia Newton-John
Ireland, Scotland, and story
December: music for a time of hope and reflection at Wandering Educators
Music for peace, understanding, and connection at Wandering Educators

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or you could

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First Week in Advent: Music and Reflection

Advent.

It is a season of preparation and celebration, of quiet reflection and gathering.

Gathering presents and decorations, gathering together with friends and family, gathering of experiences.

It is a time of change of season, too, autumn to winter up here in the northern hemisphere.

The quality of light changes especially across thos time of seasonal change.

All those things are -- or can be-- catalyst for reflection on community, or change, on connection.

Many faith based holidays this time of year include stories of and invitation to thinking about these things.

One good way in to, and companion for such reflection, is music.

As Advent begins, have a listen to these pieces of music. Allow the creativity fo these artists to inspire your reflections in this season.

The Point of Arrival, which you will find recorded on Carrie Newcomer’s album of that same name. Newcomer is based in the US state of Indiana.

The set called The Old Collection, a set of tunes members of the Scotland based band Breabach found in 18th century collections along with an original peice by band member Calum macCrimmon. You will find it recorded on Breabach’s album Fas.

Singing in the Land, from the recording Wintersong by Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem-- an album which remains one of my favourite evocations of winter. Members of the band are based in New England in the US

You may also wish to see
First week in Advent: music and quiet a reflection from a few years back with more music to explore
Have a read about Northern Lights, a fien seasonal album from top songwriter Gretchen Peters. with some fine piano work from Barry Walsh also
Music if Harvest and Home, from the ongoing Music for Shifting Times series at Wandering Educators
Season of Giving: How to Help ideas at Perceptive Travel

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Music in times of change: The Point of Arrival from Carrie Newcomer

Endings and beginnings, change, balance -- or not --- of faith with uncertainty, ways all these things connect and intertwine: those are some of the threads which run through the songs Carrie Newcomer offers on her album The Point of Arrival.

Newcomer always looks for the story behind the story Through the music on each of her more than a dozen albums she has traced varying ways and times and places of finding the deeper tale, as she often names it, the sacred in the ordinary.

She does this with poetry and melody, with music that crosses between and braids folk and Americana told in a lovely alto voice with storyteller’s phrasing.

Newcomer’s considerations, both lyrically and in arrangement, are as likely to include dark as light. They are also more likely to ask and invite questions than to offer answers.

Dashes of humour and language which illuminates ideas in unexpected ways thread through the lyrics and music, too.

Learning to Sit With Not Knowing brings in the challenging aspects of doing just that, sitting with the uncertainty, the questioning, the waiting, which may make way for and blend into possibilities of hope and healing..

It is a constant in Newcomer’s writing that she says a lot by saying little. Often, she begins by working on ideas through writing a story, a poem, an essay, sometimes more than one, to have, as she describes it, a lot of language in hand. Language and idea meet as Newcomer distills them together into song..

Though her songs vary in subject and in sound, she’s been working on that aspect of her art across her career. At present that spans seventeen albums, as well as a respected presence as a spiritual thinker, and a collaboration with writer and teacher Parker J. Palmer on live presentations, a newsletter, and a podcast.

What sets her off exploring idea and language varies. Nature and landscape in their many aspects are constants. Newcomer is a native of Indiana. She continues to be based there, and draws directly and indirectly on ideas she comes in walks in Indiana woods near her home.

Snippets of conversation, or bits of things she’s read also spark ideas for her writing. Newcomer is a visual thinker, as well -- she has a degree in art -- so it’s natural that how things look and ideas from things she’s seen inspire her words and music as well.

Her choices of melody and arrangement evolve and change, too. She’s as adept lyrically and melodically at a lively song such as Impossible Until It’s Not as she is at reflective pieces with a touch of classical influence such as The Plumb Line or The Brink of Everything.

of these aspects find place through the songs on The Point of Arrival, and naturally enough, several aspects often come together within one song.

You will discover your own favourites in the eleven songs Newcomer offers on The Point of Arrival. Within them and through the course of how they are sequenced, you will find stories of endings and beginnings, of grieving, loss, hope, and resilience.

In addition to the song named above, listen out for Writing a Better Story. The title alone suggests all sorts of stories to find within the song. The Shelter of the Sky brings in nature to frame thoughtful ideas, as does the title song, The Point of Arrival. It’s Always Love and The Plumb Line find poetic and quite different ways to tell of what lasts and what may change.

Newcomer begins her music on The Point of Arrival with a piece called Learning to Sit with Not Knowing and draws things to a close with a song called The Brink of Everything. Those two song titles, suggest a journey, as do the stories, music, and language they contain.

Thoughtful questions, creative language, ideas that may seem at once familiar and new: all of these are present in Newcomer’s music. All are well worth your discovering, and repeated listening.

You may also wish to see
Carrie Newcomer’s website
Music & Mystery: conversation with Carrie Newcomer continues.
Signposts:Music of Hope, at Wandering Educators, which includes video of The Plumb Line
Laws of Motion, from Karine Polwart

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Another way to support: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it and the places which inspire it.

While you are at Substack, Carrie Newcomer has a newsletter there too. It is called A Gathering of Spiris

Songs of Hope: Let the Light In

As the lines of history unfold, there are days when it seems -- and is-- very dark. Music however can be a way to uplift, to connect, to let the light in, to help each other along the way. Two such songs are

Love Is on Our Side, seen here in a vintage clip from the television show Texas Connection. Tish Hinojosa continues to write and sing eloquently of many things. This song, which you may find on her album Homeland, speaks to timeless ideas of connection, hope, and struggle.

https://youtu.be/15cfLzYo4LM

Carrie Newcomer is always looking, she says, “to find the sacred in the ordinary, the everyday.” That comes through in this song, which is is called A Shovel Is A Prayer. In it she uses familiar images and ideas to speak of reflection, gratitude, and hope. It is recorded on her album The Beautiful Not Yet.

In both of these songs, there’s full recognition that following the ways of hope, trust, and connection is often neither easy nor obvious. It takes courage; it requires reflection. Music such as Tish Hinojosa and Carrie Newcomer have created here, and continue to create, makes a thoughful companion for the journey.

You may also wish to see
Songs of Hope, Gracias a la Vida part of a series here at Music Road
Music of Resilience, part of series I am writing at Wandering Educators
Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer continues

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Music in times of change

In the midst of change and uncertainty, it’s often a good idea to take time for contemplation and reflection, time to find interior silence -- even when there may not be much in exterior circumstances to encourage that.

Music is a good gateway to silence. That can seem a paradox, but recall that creating music is as much about the notes as the space between them. It has been said that a painter paints on canvas, and a musician paints on silence.

With those ideas in mind, take a listen to these four pieces of music.

At times music without words -- tunes, in the Celtic music world -- invite this sort of reflection. Fiddle player and composer Hanneke Cassel draws on the traditions of Scotland and Cape Breton with hints of bluegrass, Americana, and occasional inflections to other places her travels have taken her. Take a listen to the Gretl in the Garden set, which you may find recorded on her album Trip to Walden Pond.

Songwriter Carrie Newcomer often looks to intersections of faith and the everyday to frame her stories. Hers is a clear eyed faith and a clear hearted look at living both in the moment and seeing threads of connection, grace, and spirit that pull through, now and then laced with humor too. In this song, Newcomer reminds that in times of uncertainty it is often wise to, as she says in the title of her song, Lean In Toward the Light. The song is recorded on her album The Beautiful Not Yet.

Music can be a gift of hope, whatever the circumstance. Cara Dillon knows this. Dillon comes from Northern Ireland and loves to perform and record music from the folk traditions of Ireland and Scotland. She recognizes ideas that connect across time and oceans, too. This song, Bright Morning Stars Arising, has engaged Dillon’s audiences from Ireland to Scotland to China. You may find it on her album A Thousand Hearts.

The members of the band Capercaillie have taken their music to Africa, the middle east, North America, and other points across the globe. Their base, and the heart of their music, is in their home in Scotland, however. You will hear references to Scotland in this song -- the poetry of Sorely Maclean, for instance. It is a piece that invites more than one listen for both melody and words, though, and connects with ideas of contemplation, reflection, and trust whatever place you may call home. Karen Matheson sings lead. The song and the album where you will find it are both called At the Heart of It All.

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Songs of Hope 4

Friendship. In these times when the political and social world seems to be tilting in ways unexpected, keeping the light of friendship and encouragement burning with people you know and trust is a subject upon which to reflect, and reflect again.

Kathy Mattea has said that she likes to find songs which keep teaching her lessons, and that she has found that this one does. Not the most cheerful way to suggest that you think about friendship, perhaps, but it is a place to begin. Mattea has recorded the song on her album Lonesome Standard Time. Bill Cooley, who plays with Mattea in this video, has a n excellent album of guitar music out called In Search of Home.

Carrie Newcomer says that she was thinking about all the times someone has encouraged her when she was in a hard place when she wrote the song You Can Do This Hard Thing. As she often does when writing songs, poems, or essays, Newcomer draws on her personal experiences to make her points. From them she creates ideas and images that become universal. Newcomer has recorded the song on her album The Beautiful Not Yet.

As she makes her life as a professional musician, Cathie Ryan well knows about leave taking, and about trusting that you will see friends again and you will keep in touch with each other though time and distance may separate you. She often chooses this song, So Here’s to You, to bring her live performances to a close -- well, almost.

As she does in this clip from a show at the Great Lakes Folk Festival, she often pairs it with the witty song Johnny Be Fair and a set of reels and jigs to send her listeners home in a light hearted manner. That’s also an act of friendship shared from performer to audience. Ryan has recorded So Here’s to You on her album Somewhere Along the Road. You’ll find Johnny Be Fair and the tune set on her recording Through Wind and Rain.

You’ll enjoy other music from these artists as well. Here are stories I’ve written about some of that
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home
Music & Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer Continues
This story is part of a series on music for these times. Here's another in the series Songs of Hope 3

Fire photograph by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

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Late Winter, Christmas, and Music

Late winter, leading up to Christmas, is a time that calls to flurries of activity and travel, preparation and celebration, even as it calls equally to reflection and quiet. Music, specifically of the season and otherwise, is always a good companion and a fine gateway to all these things. For a moment in the midst of hurry or for a longer time in the silence of night and morning, let the work of these musicians be you companion and guide.

Allow this music to renew your hope and peace and joy...

Wintersong, from New England based quartet Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offers joy, sadness, reflection, exuberance, and good questions. All of this is framed in great harmony, fine lead singing, and top class playing on fiddle, bass, guitar, and percussion. There’s a lively treatment of Jesse Winchester’s Let’s Make a Baby King, a gospel infused spiritual from the African American tradition with Children Go Where I Send Thee. Christmas Bells finds guitarist Anand Nayak setting Longfellow’s words to a new, reflective melody. The four (Arbo on fiddle, Scott Kessel on percussion, Andrew Kinsey on bass, and Nayak on guitar; they all sing) interweave voices on a song Kinsey grew up with called Julian of Norwich. Arbo’s haunting lead well suits her original music framing words by Alfred Lord Tennyson in Ring Out Wild Bells. There’s a lifting of hope in the closing song, Singing in the Land. That’s just a hint of the music, which will make a fine companion for winter’s celebrations and questions.

The title of Heidi Talbot’s newest recording, Here We Go 1,2,3 suggests change. That is an idea that pulls through the songs, the ones she writes, and the ones she chooses from contemporary writers and from traditional sources. Talbot is Irish, living now in Scotland and married to fiddle player and composer John McCusker, who worked with her to produce this project. They’ve created a musical journey that references tradition and yet is contemporary. A clear eyed facing of shifting ground and a thread of resilience to learn from whatever comes are threads that pull through as well. These are stories, too, that leave any certain conclusion open to the hearer’s reflections. Talbot’s fine soprano and thoughtful phrasing illuminate these ideas in songs including the title track, Chelsea Piers, Song for Rose (will you remember me), and The Year That I Was Born.

...and if you happen to be looking for Christmas music, Talbot worked for some years with the band Cherish the Ladies. She is the voice on their fine seasonal album called On Christmas Night on songs including Silent NIght, The Holly and the Berry (all the women trade verses on this one), and The Castle of Dromore.

For her album Songs for Christmas, Emily Smith has chosen traditional and contemporary songs along with carols that have become favorites over the years as she done festive season concerts in her home region of Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland. This year she’s expanded her holiday tour across Scotland, sharing such favorite carols as God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Silent Night along with the gentle contemporary piece Santa Will Find You, the American spiritual Heard from Heaven Today and the Scots song Christ Has My Hairt Aye. Her clear voice and thoughtful phrasing imbue the songs with holiday grace and make the collection work well together. Smith’s own songwriting shines too on Find Hope and on Winter Song.

This is Cara Dillon’s first year to offer a Christmas album. Her choices for the album, which is called Upon a Winter’s Night, are in keeping with the path she’s been following in her non seasonal work, With husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman, Dillon has created a seasonal outing that shares several original songs from the couple, a piece in Irish, a reach back in time to the twelfth century for the Wexford Carol and even further back for the Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Dillon, who grew up in Northern Ireland, infuses the songs with a haunting grace and touches of Celtic connection along the way.

Carrie Newcomer’s recording The Beautiful Not Yet is not filled with carols -- it is not a seasonal album -- but the ideas of connection, of questions, of thoughtful reflection, and of staying in touch across time and miles work well with the holiday season. New comer has a gorgeous alto voice on which to tell the stories in this collection of original songs, too. It is an album that works well across the seasons -- as indeed all the recordings here do. During the winter holidays you might find Lean in Toward the Light, The Season Of Mercy, Sanctuary, and The Slender Thread especially worth hearing.

Bringing us back to Advent and Christmas, Matt and Shannon Heaton offer Fine Winter’s Night, which moves from contemplating how the cold dark skies of winter connect to warmth inside our homes and lives, to lively jigs and reels, both original and from Irish tradition. There’s a vignette of a Christmas love story set in Victorian era winter, and a story about a cat and Christmas, too, along with thoughtful presentations of carols including O Little Own of Bethlehem and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. Shannon plays the flute, Matt plays the guitar, and they both sing, trading leads, joining in duets, and adding graceful harmonies as festive songs mix in with seasonal tunes.

Photograph at top by Jude Beck, other photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Music for a Winter’s Day at Wandering Educators
Scotland, Christmas, and Music at Journey to Scotland
Music for the Heart of Winter: Cathie Ryan here at Music Road
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in song: Christmas here at Music Road

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Songs of Hope

Musicians and poets and others who create with ideas and music at times have the best and the deepest things to say about what happens in the world. There is such deep and lasting music from the tradition -- the traditions -- of many countries, handed down the generations, changed and adapted and yet holding truth that resonates.

There's music newly written too, pieces that speak to immediacy of event and feeling and yet hold ideas and connections and ways of thinking that last beyond a specific moment.

These two songs, written in very different times and places each from the other and from what is happening in the world as I write this, yet resonate with each other, and offer hope in times of sorrow and anger as well as in times of peace. Take a listen -- take several.

Carrie Newcomer wrote I Heard an Owl as part of her response to the events of September 11. You may find it on her album The Gathering of Spirits.

Amazing Grace was written in English originally, as a reflection on conversion to faith. Karen Matheson sings it here in Scottish Gaelic. You may find it recorded on Celtic Women of Scotland: Songs of Love & Reflection.

"The only word is courage and the only answer love..."

Music has its place in healing, in connection, in understanding, in crossing borders -- and in hope.

Photograph by Kerry Dexter

You may also wish to see
Carrie Newcomer: Kindred Spirits
Scotland's Music: Karen Matheson, Gaelic, and story
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

A way to support Music Road: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've recently begun publishing an occasional newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit and check it out

Love Songs, Love Stories

Love: it is a source of endless reflection, conversation, story, at all times of the year. In the depths of winter love stories are often spun in form of song, shared and told and sung around and passed along again, as the lives and loves of those who handed them on to us join in from the shadows and as we add our own new love songs to the mix. Romantic love (it is near Valentine’s Day as I write) is an endless subject for musicians. They turn their thoughts to other aspects of love as well.

Mairead Ni Mhaoniagh grew up in Donegal, in the far northwest of the island of Ireland. One of her earliest music teachers there was her father Francie Mooney, himself an accomplished fiddler as well as a playwright and man who loved the sea. When her father died, two of Mairead’s friends wrote a song they hoped would help her. Named for a place on the far western edge of Donegal’s coast, it is called Far Beyond Carrickfinn. Mairead recorded it with Altan on their album called The Widening Gyre.

Eddi Reader is a native Scot. For many years though she lived and followed her career in music south of Hadrian’s Wall down in England. Her friend John Douglas -- now her husband -- thought she really belonged back in Scotland. One of the things he did to help her see this idea was write a song called Wild Mountainside. A love song to country and to woman both, you could say. Reader put the song on her album Songs of Robert Burns to show, she says, that great poetry and song are still flourishing in Scotland. It stands just fine in the company.

One snowy winter night, Carrie Newcomer was driving back to her home in Indiana after being away on tour. As she traveled she was taken by seeing lights in the windows of homes set back from the road, lights sent out by people she would never know and yet which lighted her path in more ways than one. She wrote a song drawing on where those thoughts led her called, unsurprisingly, A Light in the Window. Newcomer has recorded the song on her album called A Permeable Life.

Cathie Ryan gives a graceful and understated yet warm and welcoming voice to Rick Kemp's song of connection Somewhere Along the Road. She has recorded it on her album Somewhere Along the Road. A recognition of change and the continuing strength of connection.

Love songs for many situations and seasons....

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Cara Dillon: A Thousand Hearts
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer

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Another way to support: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

Music, friendship, and the turning of the year

At the turning of the year, it is often a time for reflection, for thinking back and thinking forward. Though times may change and at times friends may come and go, still the value of friendship and the memories of times shared with good friends are keeping things.

Music to go along with thoughts on the subject of friendship:

As Eddi Reader points out in her introduction to this song, Robert Burns may be best known for his love songs. Burns wrote about quite a few subjects in his life though, and friendship is one. Take a listen to Eddi Reader with the lively song Willie Stewart, which she has recorded on her album Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns,

Whether for a short time or a long one, one thing that comes along with good friendship is parting and spending time apart. At times the mingled joy of realizing how much you love someone and sorrow at parting make that moment of leave taking the hardest part. That is captured in the song The Parting Glass. Cara Dillon songs it here. She has recorded it on her album Hill of Thieves and it also appears on the collection Celtic Cafe from Putumayo Music.

Carrie Newcomer explores another of the many aspects that friendship may take in her song The Gathering of Spirits recognizing that there is mystery in it as well as, perhaps as part of, love and lasting connection. One of my favorite lines is “... and we’ll take up where we left off when we all meet again.” Newcomer chose The Gathering of Spirits as the title of one of her albums, and the song also appears on Betty's Diner: The Best of Carrie Newcomer

To close this meditation on music and friendship I’ll send you back again to Eddi Reader and back again to Robert Burns, with a song that, among other things, connects people the world around at New Year’s time. Take a listen to Reader’s reflective take on the song, which she has recorded on Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns.

Photograph by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Emily Smith, Jamie McClennan, and Robert Burns
Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Celtic Cafe at Wandering Educators

If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Second week in Advent

Advent: it is a season which holds both preparation and celebration, both reflection and creation. In the prayers said at mass when I was growing up, it was a time when we were advised read and reflect on the wisdom to be learned from the scriptures. I thought then and still do that there is much wisdom of the season to be gained in song and story, in poem and painting and looking up at the night and morning star, as well. Ideas which may illuminate scriptural aspects, and which may be illuminated by them.

Music to go along with these ideas, seasonal and otherwise --

Anticipation is one of the features of Advent. That’s an aspect Gretchen Peters expresses in two very different ways on her album Northern Lights in her songs Waitin’ on Mary and December Child. With people across the world thinking about or being refugees so much at this time, it’s a good time to take a listen to them both.

Carrie Newcomer’s music is always both reflective and thought provoking, and quite beautiful as well. On her album A Permeable Life the songs Light in the Window and Writing You a Letter speak to the aspects of travel and connection across distance that come with winter holidays. So, too, does the tile track of her European release The Slender Thread.

There’s joy in the anticipation and preparation as well as tenderness and reflection. Cherish the Ladies are great at expressing all these through their music. They have a new seasonal album out this year which they went to County Clare to record and have called Christmas in Ireland. Song, tune, and spoken word comprise the lively collection. If you might have a taste for seasonal music mostly in Irish, then check out the just released collection Amhráin Na Nollag: Favourite Christmas Songs in Irish from Róisín Elsafty and Ronan Browne with Tony Maher. In addition to spiritual classics including Don Oíche Úd I Mbeithil/ One Night on Bethlehem there are also seasonal favorites, among them that song about the reindeer, Rudolph Na Sróine Deirge.

Shannon Heaton recognized that she wasn’t a big fan of winter weather, but, having chosen to make her home in Boston, she decided to write a song that would help her remember the good things about deep winter. The result is Fine Winter's Night, in which she contrasts the beauty of cold night with its sparkling stars with warmth beckoning to fellowship and community within. It became the title track fro the seasonal album Shannon and her husband Matt made, which includes several fine originals in both song and tune, the Wexford Carol, which reaches back to twelfth century Ireland, and other fine songs new and old.

Take a listen to these musicians this Advent, and see how their perspectives might inform your celebrations and anticipations this season.

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see

First Week in Advent: music and quiet
Advent reflections and music
Music for Winter Travels and Celebrations at Wandering Educators
Wreaths, Music, Legend at Perceptive Travel

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Music & Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer Continues

Songs come to musicians in all sorts of ways, and they make notes and shape ideas and work out words and melody in all sorts of ways. “If you line up eleven songwriters and ask them their process, they’ll give you eleven different ways,” says Carrie Newcomer. “For me there’s a kind of literary bent to it, I guess, where I do a lot of poetry writing, and short stories, and essays. From those pieces, songs emerge.”

She isn’t thinking about the songs while she is immersed in other sorts of writing, though, not directly. It is, rather, the ideas and characters and flow of things she is working on -- or working out.

“I might have to write the whole essay to get to the one line that starts a song,” she says. “Also, a lot of it is how I process -- people say I’m pretty prolific, as a songwriter, but I think it’s just how I process my world, and my life. So I’m always writing, and I do a lot of poetry.

“Once I have the poem or the essay or maybe even a series of poems,” she continues,”I have all this language, and all these ideas I’ve been musing with -- it’s like I have this whole palette of stuff to work with, and I’ve thinking about it, mulling the idea over. Then when I go to write the song I might have some language I’ve been thinking through, but the words and the music happen together.”

What has also happened recently is the publication of Newcomer’s first book, called A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays. It is a companion piece to her album A Permeable Life. Newcomer turned to community funding for this recording, and at first was going to put together a small collection of poems to thank those who had helped make the album possible. “I had started a blog and begun posting some of my poems, so there was some interest in seeing a collection, so I thought I was going to put together a few poems that people might see as having a connection to songs,” she says. “But as I was doing that and we started sending them out, the response I was getting was really wonderful, really heartwarming, and we decided -- actually, my husband really encouraged me, he said you know, let’s just release this as a companion piece to the new album. So I said, yeah, sure, let’s do that!” Newcomer says, laughing.

”I’m used to putting out albums, and there’s a certain kind of thing that happens whenever you put out an album, or a song.You’re taking a certain kind of risk -- whenever you put yourself out there artistically, there’s certain kind of vulnerability to it. I’ve done enough albums now that I’m expecting it -- that doesn’t mean it gets any easier, it’s just that you’re familiar with it,” she says. “ But I had never put out that kind of art work before.”

There are thirteen essays and twenty six poems in the book. It is not necessary to know Newcomer’s work as a musician, or to have heard the songs on the album A Permeable Life, to appreciate what she’s doing as a poet and essayist, though the ways she tells stories and the ideas she choose to emphasize, and the language she chooses, do cross points and paths across the two projects. There are some pieces which relate directly to songs, and some which do not, or for which the connection is less clear. What is clear, however, is that Newcomer’s gift for observation, for including details of the natural world, and now and then bringing in her wry sense of humor come through whichever art she is practicing. So, too, does her gift for making the personal universal, and the thread of finding the sacred in the ordinary. In the essay called In the Sitka Pines, for example, an experience of the wilderness of Alaska and learning about Alaskan salmon forms the gateway into thoughts on transformation, in a piece that’s slightly longer than a page and all the more powerful -- and all the more leaving room to draw the reader in -- for its brevity.

Transformation, the idea of thresholds, and the practice of being present are threads which run through the songs on the album A Permeable Life and in differing ways through the material in the book A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays as well. The poem To a Titmouse finds transformation anchored in connection to an encounter on a snowy walk; Dharamsala, a poem begun after an experience while visiting India, suggests presence, connection, thresholds, and the possibility of transformation as well -- all done through an account of a procession and those watching it.

As a songwriter and singer, Newcomer has command of her tools and uses them to invite community, reflection, and the asking of good questions about life, faith, and change. These too are present in what she creates with her essays and poetry.

Countless prayer flags lifted in the mist
It was like music,
Light and fleeting,
LIngering in the quiet,
Filling the world with longing
And our own good intentions.
~excerpt from Dharamsala copyright Carrie Newcomer

Update: Newcomer has published other books of poetry -- and released several more albums -- since this article was first published. One of those books is

You may also wish to see
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer
India to Indiana in song and image
Ireland's Music: The Small Hours: Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Ireland's Music: Cara Dillon: A Thousand Hearts

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Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer

“Writers have themes they return to -- I mean we write about all kinds of stuff, but there are things we return to, because they continue to fascinate.” Singer and songwriter Carrie Newcomer is talking about her recording A Permeable Life. “There are a couple of threads running through this album. The idea of finding something extraordinary in the ordinary, finding something sacred in the everyday and quotidian -- that’s a theme that has continued to call my attention personally and artistically, and that’s definitely present on this album.

“There’s the idea of presence, that we’re not encouraged in our culture to be present in our own lives, that we have to think about that and it’s a decision we have to make -- it’s very easy to be caught up in the current of our busy culture. We don’t want to get to the end of our day and say dang, I missed it. Those two threads will be familiar to those who know my work,” Newcomer says. “I think I have new ponderings on them and ways of looking at them, but those themes do continue to fascinate me.”

On A Permeable Life, you will meet a man who collects statues and a woman haunted by day to day aftermath tragedy, you’ll encounter the idea of loss as a threshold of change framed in a story hung on poetic images from the history of Newcomer’s native Indiana, you’ll consider the losses and gains of traveling and the ways we mark spiritual revelations and events, you’ll share share in an invitation to be very present in time and likely get singing along to an invitation to include people you hadn’t thought of in that circle of presence, you enter a kitchen where the work of putting up beans is going on, and you’ll join Newcomer as she takes a quiet drive along a snowy winter road with a revelation along the way.

Those are just hints of what happens as Newcomer, a storyteller and musician with a poet’s gift of insight and a gorgeous alto voice, invites you on the journey through these stories. Old friends and new musical collaborators join her voice and guitar with their contributions on keyboards, percussion, cello, and other acoustic sounds.

Working together, they all make space for the ideas, and for the listener. “There is less production on this album than on some of my others,” she says. “I wanted it to feel as though we were sitting across the kitchen table from each other, rather than me being up on a stage.”

That sort of across the kitchen table intimacy makes space for another idea that Newcomer sees running through the songs she’s written for A Permeable Life. “There’s the thread -- it may be a little more particular to this album -- of the idea of going through thresholds, that through out our lives we’re going to encounter thresholds where what is old is passed away, not that it was bad, it’s just done -- and that what’s new has not come into focus yet, so we stand at the threshold. It’s scary and it exciting but it’s pretty human.” It follows on with another idea that has run through many of Newcomer’s earlier songs, that of life not being so much about finding answers as it is about asking good questions.

The song Ten O’Clock Line is based on a bit of Indiana and Native American history, a treaty where territory was marked by a shadow which fell at ten o’clock on a certain day in September. From that idea Newcomer spins out poetic images of love and loss and of making space and of loss perhaps being meant to be something else

There’s a hole in the world
Maybe it’s only a space
For something that’s been waiting
Until I turned my face

she sings as part of the chorus of Ten O’Clock Line.

“The way I look at it, “ Newcomer says, “there’s always something mystical happening, even in the most practical situations. Ah, here’s a hole in my life-- or maybe it’s a space. What has been waiting to get my attention, to step into that space with me? Maybe there’s something that has been longing for my attention, tapping me on the shoulder -- at these thresholds, there is that question. There’s a lot of image to the song, shadow and light -- because at those moments there is goodness and light, there’s fear -- you’re dealing with a shift, sometimes a seismic shift -- and what do you do with it and how do you frame it?”

A journey of asking good questions indeed. Here at Music Road, there will be more of this conversation with Carrie Newcomer about the songs and stories and ideas of A Permeable Life.

In the meanwhile, you may wish to think about that idea of presence and you may also wish to see

Newcomer has published a book A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays More on that to come here in future as well.
Carrie Newcomer: Kindred Spirits
Carrie Newcomer: India to Indiana in song and image
At the turning of the year: music and change

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Winter meditation

Winter is a time when dark comes early. We light the lamps and fires to bring light inside, and go outside to reflect on the stars in the night sky, and perhaps, the fall of snowflakes. It is a time for remembering and sharing well loved stories, and singing songs handed down across time. A time for gathering, and a time for solitude, winter is also a time for appreciating and reflecting on the roads traveled the changes made, the friendships which last, the lessons learned, the winter season is as much a time for mediation and planning and dreaming of what’s to come as well as recalling what’s past and enjoying what’s present. Whether you make resolutions at the turning of the year ot at some other time, or not at all, music is a fine companion for the reflective aspects of winter.

Music to go along with these ideas

note: clicking on text links and album cover images will take you to places where you may read more about the music and/or hear bits of it. photographs above are by Kerry Dexter and are copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

Matt and Shannon Heaton offer Shannon’s song Fine Winter's Night which evokes the clear winter skies, cold nights, and the warmth of connection and music which also mark the season, as the tile track for their seasonal album Fine Winter's Night

It might seem touch unusual to suggest an album called Summer's End for winter meditation, but I think you’ll find Therese Honey recording of original and traditional Celtic music on the harp a good choice, as well.

Al Petteway and Amy White employ guitar dulcimer, keyboard and other instruments as they explore the Appalachian side of winter in Winter Tidings.

Gretchen Peters does a fine job of working with a song of Appalachia too, I Wonder As I Wander. It is on her album Northern Lights. which contains fine traditional and original music of the lights and shadows of winter.

Hanneke Cassel is a fiddle player and composer who has a number of albums that go well with winter reflection. The music of Scotland is her inspiration but in both interpretation and composition, her music is all her own. At this season, I’d suggest Some Melodious Sonnet

and from Carrie Newcomer, a musician whose work you’ve met before here along the music road -- a song inspired by a drive home on a winter's night

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