Irish, Scottish, folk, and country music from many different neighbourhoods, and sometimes, from behind the scenes
Saturday, December 28, 2024
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.
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Third week in Advent: Music, friendship, connection
Winter can be a season for connection of many sorts.
There could be gathering with friends and family we see often, and with those with whom we visit just a few times in a year, or do not see for several years.
It can be a time for thinking of an connecting with freieds at distance, too, those we may not see in person but whose love and connection yet is a vital presence in our lives.
Whatever form connection may take, the winter season is a good time -- a good excuse, if one is needed -- to connect, to reconnect, to reach out to people you’ve not seen in some time, or that you see of and say: I was just thinking of you.
Music to go along with these ideas
Carrie Newcomer’s song Gathering of Spirits is an honoring of friendship, of lasting love and respect.
Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh wrote a song in Irish (she is from Donegal and a native Irish speaker) for her daughter called Mo Nion O. Cathie Ryan, who is also a mother, translated the words into English and uses both languages in her version of the song.
In both languages, it is a blessing for the present and an idea of hope for the future.
In Shannon Heaton’s song Fine Winter’s Night, she contrasts the cold bright of stars and snow with warmth and connection beckoning within. Shannon and her husband Matt, who joins her in the song. chose the song for title of their winter themed album.
On her album Songs of Christmas. Scotland based musician Emily Smith brings in a lively version of a contemporary carol you may or may not know. It is sure to bring a smile though, and perhaps you will join in singing it with thosoe near and far. It is called Little Road to Bethlehem.
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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.
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While you are at Substack, Carrie Newcomer has a newsletter there too. It is called A Gathering of Spiris
Two Roads Home: Music from Tim Grimm and Mary Ann Kennedy
Home: it’s an endless source of inspiration for creative artists of all sorts. For Tim Grimm, this might include writing a song that begins with speaking of a well loved cat sitting on the front porch of a farmhouse in Indiana. For Mary Ann Kennedy, it could include making a song out of a historic report of a sporting event that took place in a park near where she grew up as a Gaelic speaker in Glasgow. There are differences; there are similarities. Both well know how to make personal memories and insights resonate beyond place and moment, and yet how to respect both those things.
Tim Grimm’s recording is called Heart Land Again. It is revisit of sorts to his album Heart Land, which he released twenty years ago. Back then, Grimm and his wife Jan had moved back to central Indiana after a time working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. The sons who were young children then have grown up to become musicians themselves, and now join their parents on this recording, and as regular participants in The Grimm Family
Band.
The songs on that album twenty years ago “were a gift,” Grimm says,”the result of falling in love again with the rural Midwest and its people.” Times change, people pass on, the whole country changes. These songs, ones from the original collection reworked with fresh eyes and ears, and songs newly added for this project, are lasting.
Together, the dozen tracks bring both wide angle and close in views of heartland stories. Better Days, which is sometimes described as Grimm’s anthem, offers a well limned portrait of generations, connection, what changes and what remains on the land. That might seem a lot to find in one song. It is all there, though, told with the voice of a singer who knows how to serve the story. Down the Road considers the accelerating rhythms of change on the countryside. The traditional song Sowin’ on the Mountain, here with bluesy groove filled sound, suggests, perhaps, possible consequences.
Pumpkin the Cat (watch for that cat, who comes and goes quickly in the lyric despite being the song’s namesake and centering visual image) is a meditation on choices both immediate and long term and what’s good and right that comes from them. The whole album is that, really. It is w ell worth repeated listening. Grimm has a natural storyteller’s voice, Jan and sons Connor and Jackson add illuminating harmonies and instrumental backing. Dan Lodge-Rigal, who played piano on the original Heart Land, is back for this project. Ben Lumsdaine adds percussion and Krista Detor, whose music you’ve encountered before here along the Music Road, adds backing vocals too.
Mary Ann Kennedy’s road home is to a different place: the busy, lively, and sometimes gritty city of Glasgow in Scotland. She grew up there in a Gaelic speaking family, and has gone on to a many faceted career as harpist, singer, composer, producer, and broadcaster.
With her album Glaschu she’s created what she names as a home town love song. For some time now she’s lived in the Highlands of Scotland, but work often takes her back to her home town. That’s a perspective which gently informs some of the song choices and the arrangements you’ll find here. It’s a perspective which is not nostalgic and certainly not sentimental, but reflective, vivid, and thoughtful. “You can take the girl out of Glasgow, but never Glasgow out of the girl,” she writes in the sleeve notes, “ and in the spirit of the Gaels’ eternal need to sing about home, this is my Gaelic love-song for the city in all its guises -- the voices of arrivals in search of a new life and of those, like me, born and bred there with Gaelic as our first language.”
Song -- mostly in Gaelic -- and music from instruments are woven together with occasional spoken word interludes, at times in Gaelic and at times in English. Kennedy has an expressive soprano. You will have no trouble understanding the emotion of a song even if Scottish Gaelic is not one of your languages. There are English language lyrics and notes on the songs in the sleeve notes, however.
Kennedy takes you on a journey that includes a sports report from a historic shinty match -- did you know that shinty is a Highland game with stick and ball was the inspiration for ice hockey? A lively story of a trip along the River Clyde “which quite possibly hasn’t been sung in a century or more,” Kennedy notes, adds to the fun. When I Came to Glasgow First, a mixed language Gaelic and English song, takes a more serious turn as the subject is vignettes of what it was like for a person from the Highlands to arrive in the big, rambling, and loud city of Glasgow in the middle of the twentieth century.
Orange Parade in Glasgow points up some of the clashes and differences that both immigrants and long time residents found. The lyrics are by poet Derick Thomson, who was from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides but spent much of his life in Glasgow. “His images of Glasgow in the 80s in his Gaelic poetry are absolute reflections of my memories growing up n the city,” Kennedy writes. Orange parades commemorate the victory of William of Orange over James of Scotland more than five hundred years ago. It is often a flashpoint of religious and political division. It was, Kennedy continues, “a sad and fearful thing to watch in my home where I was brought up to celebrate diversity rather than reinforce difference.”
There are more songs, some of laughter and others of conflict or of sorrow, all weaving into the tapestry of Glasgow as seen and heard through the lives of its Gaelic speaking people. All its people, really. A translation of Michael Mara’s song Mother Glasgow into Gaelic seems a particularly appropriate and movingly done choice. There’s also the engagingly titled Statues, a Goose, and the Morning After, in which a man takes enough drink to go dancing with the statues in George Square -- and that’s only part of the story.
Kennedy brings Glaschu to a close with Goodnight & Farewell, which she points out, is not only a song often used to close concerts and gatherings but also “a beautiful parting glass song, making a heart connection with emigrant communities and urging us all to look for the good to keep hold of in ‘strange times.’”
Kennedy is supported by a number of musical friends, among them Findlay Wells, Nick Turner, and Jarlath Henderson. Wilma Kennedy and Bill Paterson do an excellent job of bring the brief spoken word sections to life in good connection with the music, too.
Roads home: whether that be to the countryside in Indiana or the city in Glasgow, or some other place which has its part in your life, this music will resonate. Give Heart Land Again from Tim Grimm and Glaschu from Mary Ann Kennedy a listen. Give them several; each has much to offer.
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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.
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It is the turn of seasons just now, on the Northern hemisphere winter to spring, which might bring clear days and brisk night -- or rain, or blizzards, or snow or scudding clouds, or all of these. A time for contemplating change, for marking Easter, Passover, and other holidays heralding renewal.
Musicians think about these things too.
Speaking of change: Emily Smith, from Scotland, explores that idea with Americana writer Darrell Scott’s song The Open Door. She has recorded it on her album called Echoes.
Further on the contemplative side, the four women of RANT Fiddles offer the tune East Church, which was composed by Lauren MacColl who is a member of the quartet. It is on their album RANT, which was recorded in East Church, Cromarty.
Carrie Newcomer considers change, growth, loss, connection, and faith in the space of a song called The Clean Edge of Change. Change and edges of time, place, learning, time... Newcomer has recorded the song on her album called The Geography of Light.
Music can be the best of companions in times of change. Take a listen, and explore.
Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.
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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.
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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.
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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
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!
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
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Music is an art which creates connections between people, across borders, through time and space. Creating music is at times solitary, at times collaborative; hearing music is at times solitary, at times collaborative. These are all aspects of community.
If you have walked the music road here for a while, you’ve met Indiana based songwriter Carrie Newcomer. Perhaps you remember her unexpected trip to India and the album which came out of that, a collaboration with The Khan Family, masters of the traditional Indian instrument the sarod. Could be you recall reading about her retrospective collection Kindred Spirits or her series of songs seeing the world through the comings and goings of folks at a roadside diner, or her album called Before & After looking and many aspects of change. Whatever she writes and sings, you will hear Newcomer looking for the sacred in the everyday, the many dimensions which go beyond what a thing may seem at first glance -- whether those things are the dusty rocks known as geodes, a flight of geese overhead, a sunset on the Arabian Sea, a ghost train in the night, or a person in muddy boots.
This time out, Newcomer has been back in her Indiana heartland, writing songs for her next album. This time out, too, she’s decided to seek community funding. The changes in the music industry being what they are, this is a path many artists are following. Newcomer, as ever with her music, has decided to see it as a way of involving and extending connections in the community her music creates.
Here is a video of Newcomer speaking about the project and why she is doing it
You can find out more about her plans and learn about rewards Newcomer has on offer for participation by going to her web site CarrieNewcomer.com.
Perhaps it’s the right time for you to contribute financially to Newcomer’s project. Perhaps it’s not for you. Two things you could do, though, that’ll cost you but a few seconds of time: you could invite people to learn more about the project (sharing a link to this story is one way to do that), and you could stop by and offer Newcomer a word or two of encouragement as she’s doing this -- you may find her on Facebook and Twitter as well as at her own site.
Here is one of the songs that at this writing she plans to include on the forthcoming album
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The unexpected beauty at the heart of the dusty rocks known as geodes. The persistence of friendship and connection across time and place. Lessons learned from holding burning anger. Frying eggs that sound like psalms. The person next to you in the diner, who might be angel. A mystical midnight encounter. A God who celebrates the juice of summer peaches eaten by the road side. Finding the time to notice and enjoy and be present to all these things, with all these people, in each of these circumstances are just a few of the things that Carrie Newcomer is thinking about in the songs in her album Kindred Spirits. Thinking about and exploring with an artist’s eye, a poet’s heart, the perspective of a writer born and raised in the American heartland, and the wisdom of a musician.
Newcomer opens the collection with a song called The Speed of Soul. “I was reading an essay by Philip Gulley,” she says, “and in it he talks about a Native American saying that we should not travel farther in one day than our souls can keep up. That phrase, that adage, really, really caught my imagination -- really haunted me.” The song which came of this proves a mosaic of ideas, interlocking thoughts about, among other things, an encounter with a stranger at a truck stop, a thought or two about war and violence and how they interest with our daily actions, and consideration of a morning spent sweeping floors. An intersection of poetically rendered questions within questions about time’s passing and how we live in it, really. “We lead such busy lives,” Newcomer says. “Just because we can juggle twelve balls in the air, is it good that we do?” At the speed of day to day life now, time to reflect, to take things in, to integrate and consider and see what is to be learned beyond immediate practicalities is often pushed aside. “Because we don’t have time to reflect, sometimes questions like is it good to juggle so may things -- even when you’re busy doing good things -- is it good to be so busy? Those questions go unasked -- questions of just because we can, should we?”
The Speed of Soul and the questions Newcomer raises through it make a thoughtful frame for the music she has chosen for Kindred Spirits. The album is a retrospective of sorts, with two new songs -- Speed of Soul is one of those -- and several live cuts which are new to record, along with selections from her twelve albums with Rounder Records and two songs from a benefit album for the Interfaith Hunger Project featuring the work of Indian classical sarod masters Ayaan Ali Khan and Amjad Ali Khan.
In choosing songs for the album, Newcomer chose to look at her work through a spiritual lens. Newcomer is known for seeing the sacred in the everyday. It’s not an uncommon perspective for her, but this is the first time she’s gathered songs for an album with that idea as the focus. “It was interesting to look back over my work with the idea of spiritual lens,” she says, “and to talk with other musicians and people who know my work about what makes sense with that idea in mind -- spiritual focus, not necessarily religious.”
Newcomer’s is a strong faith, one that in her writing is lived out as much along the highways and in countryside, in the late night diner, the talks across the kitchen table, the walking through hard realities of loss and grief and change, the celebration of good friendship and good conversation, as it it is in religious gatherings.
I believe
there is healing on the sound of your voice
and that summer tomatoes are a cause to rejoice
following the song was never really a choice
never really
Newcomer sings in I Believe, a song which came out of time spent sharing her work in India. It features the playing of Indian classical sarod master Ayaad Ali Khan. Another song from that project, Breathe In Breathe Out, considers, among other things, what to do with anger, with a percussive back beat of sound drawn from India and Indiana to frame the ideas.
Indiana is very present in Geodes, too. Those dusty rocks with crystals in their hearts are ways to think about the people we meet day to day in the song, and in Newcomer’s world, the day to day of Betty’s Diner finds a collection of travelers on life’s highway stopping at Betty’s for conversation, reflection, and “eggs and toast like bread and wine.” You’ll never quite think about that stranger the next table over in the diner in the same way after you hear what Newcomer has to say in Angels Unaware, either, and she could just change your mind -- and give you a bit of a laugh -- about doing laundry, too, in Holy As a Day is Spent. Encounters between God and daily life come in for consideration in the very different songs Where You Been and There is a Tree, the first a rock jazz blues journey to the rough hewn sides of life and the latter a mystical midnight dance with spirit. There are love songs, songs of faith, grief, hope, and friendship. all told through a perspective of what connects, what surprises, and where the holy and the day to day intersect. All sung too in Newcomer’s rich alto, with a storyteller’s voice and phrasing which invites you in and makes room for your stories and reflections along the way.
As she was planning the album “It was an initial theme, along with the spiritual idea, to go back through and see what’s always been there, and how it has changed and grown and how it has expanded and how it has circled back through. It was interesting to do that,” Newcomer reflects. She made a conscious decision not to sequence the songs chronologically. “The sequencing had more to do with how one song moved into another -- almost like a set list, what leads into one song and out of another in terms of subject matter, in terms of melody lines, the range of the songs -- a lot of the sequencing of the songs had to do with how the songs would relate to one another and create an arc.” she says.
Newcomer’s musical journey has taken her from her home base in Indiana many times across the United States. She’s toured Europe with Alison Krauss (who appears as a guest on Kindred Spirits , adding backing vocals to the song The Gathering of Spirits) and in recent years, she has also shared her music across India at the invitation of the US Department of State and in Africa with the work of the Interfaith Hunger Project. She has also had opportunities to teach workshops on songwriting, creative writing, and vocation, and to speak on these subjects at colleges, retreat centers, and arts programs. Through all these experiences “what keeps coming back to me is the idea of the common thread.” Carrie Newcomer says. “Cultures are so rich and different, and I love that -- but at the same time, as much s we are different, I have come to be so moved and touched by the thread that pulls between us. You know, when you sing a song about love or struggle or grief or family or hope -- the song If Not Now, which is on this album, I’ve sung it in India, I sang it it Kenya, I’ve sung it here in the States -- in all these places, the spiritual current reaches across. It becomes part of the thread that pulls between us.”
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Music is one of the strongest ways to connect: to connect across time, across space, with friends, and with strangers. At its best, music is conversation with listening, speaking, and silence all part of the mix. It holds the immediacy of the moment and the wisdom of memory as well as the possibilities of what is yet to be. At a time of year and in a world which now and again may seem rushed, music also holds a place of peace and silence, thought and reflection.
That is what each of these albums offers. You’ll find music with intricately created poetic words and music with no words at all, songs and tunes arising from heartfelt and soul felt connect to land and place, family and history, faith and hope.
In some cases, the links will take you to place where you may hear snippets of the music, and in others links will take you to an article about the album, with links within it which will let you hear the music. I would encourage you to explore these. The albums are not ranked in any order, each of them well worth you attention. Take a listen.
The spirit of the mountains fills Kathy Mattea’s recording Calling Me Home. It is a spirit which encompasses beauty of the natural world, hard life of making a home and a living in the mountains, faith, resilience, history, and unanswered questions. Country Grammy winner Mattea has in recent years been drawn to the songs of her native West Virginia and the surrounding coal country, and to finding her way in to helping these songs speak to a winder audience. She does that here, with notable tracks including Gone, Gonna Rise Again, Black Waters, and Now is the Cool of the Day.
As they have taken their music across the globe through three decades now, Altan have collaborated with artists ranging from Nashville’s country stars to Dublin’s classically trained musicians. For The Poison Glen/Gleann Nimhe though, they decided to bring the focus back home to Donegal, their home country in Ireland's far northwest. Led by fiery fiddling and graceful singing from Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, the members of Altan offer ensemble works by turns lively and thoughtful on music from the tradition, original compositions, and songs that have crossed the waters and back again from Ireland to North America. Look out especially for the New Rigged Ship set, Seolta Gala, and The Lily of the West.
For her album Through Wind and Rain Cathie Ryan brings music that both crosses bridges and creates them, bridges between Ireland and America, between past and present, through loss to resilience and hope. The daughter of parents who emigrated from Ireland to Michigan, Ryan has spent time as an adult living in both countries, and thinking about how their traditions connect and intertwine. For Through Wind and Rain she has chosen and written songs that contain touchstones from her own life, from finding the courage and a spark of humor to cary on after change and loss to encouraging a child to the lasting value of friendship. You will hear a thoughtful storyteller’s heart in Ryan's voice and in the music and arraignments she’s chosen. Look out especially for Mo Nion O, In the Wishing Well, and Fare Thee Well.
Carrie Newcomer is a storyteller with a gorgeous voice and and ear for a fine melody, as well. Her album Kindred Spirits is part retrospective and part new material. To choose the songs, Newcomer looked back over her work with a spiritual focus -- and as ever with Newcomer, spiritual means a broad idea of matters of faith. Even if you are well familiar with her songs, you will find her choices here and the way she has set them in context with each other illuminating. There are several new songs in the mix as well, including the opening track The Speed of Soul, in which Newcomer offers a mosaic of images forming a mediation on time and the spirit.
Rani Arbo and the men of daisy mayhem take matters of spirit into consideration for their recording Some Bright Morning too. “The wind in the trees is a mighty good teacher/ old mother earth she’s a mighty good teacher,” the four sing in Joe Craven’s updated take on the spiritual Hear Jerusalem Moan with which they open the album. Fiddle, percussion mostly on a collection of items including cookie tins and old suitcases known as Drumship Enterprise, guitars, bass, banjo, and ukulele are the instruments they bring along with their trading of well honed harmony and lead parts on songs including East Virginia, Bridges, and Will Your House Be Blessed?
Cape Breton, a land of mountain, forest, water, and music, is the source from which singer Mary Jane Lamond and fiddle player Wendy MacIsaac draw their musical ideas. On their recording Seinn they offer music which comes from the deep Scottish Gaelic tradition of the island and newly composed material which honors this as well. From lively dance sets to soulful ballads to quiet reflection in song and tune, you’ll hear the heart of Cape Breton in the work of these women, and hear why it reaches across boundaries of language and place as well. Look out especially for The Blue Mountain’s Lullaby and Keeping Up with Calum.
The geography of Scotland itself is shaped by its islands, and it is to them that Fiona J MacKenzie turned to draw inspiration for her album Archipelago. Through gathering contemporary and traditional material and writing songs and melodies herself, MacKenzie visits Scottish islands from Shetland to to St. Kilda to Ailsa Craig in songs that evoke the relationship of land and sea known by island people.
Caroline Herring well knows how to evoke landscape and history with her songs, as well. In her album Camiila it is the American south which is her focus, from stories of the civil rights days in the title track to a visit to Washington DC in Maiden Voyage to the land as frame and companion for hard times in Summer Song.
Alistair Ogilvy tells the stories of his people and his home place with his music, too. He is a native speaker of Scots (think Robert Burns poems if you are wondering what that is) and like Herring -- indeed like all the musicians you see here -- he brings a storyteller’s gift to his work on his debut album, Leaves Sae Green.Irish musician Caitlin Nic Gabhann tells her stories through the steps of her feet in the dance and through her concertina. On her album Caitlin she offers sets from the tradition as well as tunes she has made herself. A touch both clear and melodic leads the way through reels including the Flying Column set and the Leeside Sessions set, the waltz Sunday’s Well and the air Cill Dheaglain.
Sarah McQuaid draws on her time spent growing up in the United States, living in Ireland, and her current home base in England to find sources for her songs on The Plum Tree and the Rose. It’s a varied collection, ranging from songs of love and change to a tale inspired by a moment of reflection in Derby Cathedral to another sparked by a visit to Hardwick Hall to a round on gratitude arising from recalling the American holiday of Thanksgiving while living elsewhere.
Nuala Kennedy brings a varied geography to her music as well. The flute player and singer is native to Louth, that land of legend in the east of Ireland. She’s lived long in Edinburgh and recently spent time in New York and in the north of Spain. All of these come into play in the songs as tunes and arrangements she creates on Noble Stranger. She offers intriguing takes on traditional songs as well. Look out for her versions of My Bonnie Labouring Boy and The Banks of the Roses.
Every year in October, the people of Cape Breton Island invite the world home to share their music and to explore the ties that twine that music with the traditions which it neighbors and those from across the oceans from which it springs. The brothers and sisters who make up The Barra MacNeils created ten days of musical collaboration that resulted in ten tracks on The Celtic Colours Sessions.This finds the Barras in their first French language song as they join up with Acadian singer Ron Bourgeois, celebrating the origins of Cape Breton and their family name as they partner with traditional singer Cathy-Ann MacPhee who grew up on the isle of Barra in Scotland’s Western Isles, tracing an Americana and banjo based connections with fellow Nova Scotian Old Man Luedecke, and making fine harmonies with members of another well known family band as they sing with Shay, Michael, Mary, and Frances Black from Ireland.
Take your time to explore this music, let the words and the melodies move you as they will, and listen from the resonances and connections and stories which run through the work of these diverse artists.. Explore other work of these musicians, as well, perhaps here along the Music Road for starters. There’s more to be learned and enjoyed from each of those whose names you see here.
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September: northern or southern hemisphere, it is a time of transition, from late in one season to the start of another. Here in the northern part of the globe, there’s a hint of autumn's crispness in the air now and then, but summer’s heat is still around now and again too. Light still lingers long most evenings and late summer rains splash the afternoons. The angle of light is changing, , though and its color is tending toward autumn’s clarity, tracing outlines on the leaves of trees and bushes as children make their way home from school in the late afternoon.
It is a time for looking forward, looking back, gathering strands of thought together, planning -- and letting go. Music, as ever, is a good companion for such things.
Coty Hogue was born in Montana, earned a master’s degree in Appalachian studies in North Carolina, and calls the Pacific northwest home. All these things come through in her albumWhen We Get to Shore, which was recorded live at Empty Sea Studios in Seattle. Hogue offers a well thought out set with songs from Sarah Fulford (the opening tack, Jonah) and music from Hogue’s own pen (Fire and Ashes) as well as songs from Bruce Springsteen, Hazel Dickens, and Bill Monroe. There are songs from the American folk tradition in the mix as well. Hogue has a clear voice and a respect for the story and character of each song which well serves the musical tales she tells. On the other side of the Atlantic, Sarah- Jane Summers draws inspiration for her tunes -- she’s a fiddle player -- from generations of her family background in the Highlands of Scotland, and from Scotland’s connections with Nordic music across other seas as well. There are tunes from tradition as well as music from contemporary composers including Charlie McKerron and Jenna Reid. There are fine tunes from Summers herself as well on the album Nesta.
Change is very present in Carrie Newcomer’s album Everything Is Everywhere. Newcomer is from Indiana and often draws on her native midwest for musical inspiration. That is true on Everything Is Everywhere as well, and in this case it is mixed with ideas and impressions Newcomer gained while doing a musical residency in India.
As the season changes, each of these three quite different albums will make good companions for your thoughts.
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This is a time of year for gift lists, shopping lists, and best of lists.
All the music you meet here along the music road is music of substance, created by artists who care about the musical conversation with listeners, each other, music, and time. It is, as Emmylou Harris once said, music, not a horse race. Still, it’s good to look back across what been said musically in the last year, and to consider what you might enjoy exploring at this time for giving and receiving. India to Indiana, Donegal to Tennessee, Dumfriesshire to Boston,all these places are on the journey through these best recordings of 2011.
Follow the links in the titles of these recordings for longer reviews and links to places where you will be able to hear bits of the music, as well.
Carrie Newcomer had an unexpected chance to do a musical residency in India. A meeting of her Americana and Indiana background with the life of India forms the substance of her album Everything Is Everywhere.
Matraca Berg often writes the songs which country stars make into chart topping hits. It’s been quite some time -- fourteen years -- since she recorded a solo album of her own. The true to life stories told with poetic vision and sung with grace make The Dreaming Fields more than worth the wait.
John Doyle is one who often works behind the scenes, too, playing guitar with artists including Alison Brown, Cathie Ryan, LIz Carroll and Joan Baez. His deep focus on Irish tradition comes out in his album Shadow and Light through songs he has written himself, and it’s fine to hear this aspect of tradition well carried forward. He is also a master guitar player.
Jennifer Cutting draws on Celtic tradition too, for Song of Solstice. With the the songs she composes and arranges for her Ocean Orchestra, she brings in ideas from Shetland, France, and Ireland as well as Americana and folk rock elements. Exploration and celebration of what is to be learned from the winter season is a focus of this fine gathering of music.
Liz Simmons, Sarah Blair, Ariel Friedman, and Shannon Heaton, the four musicians of the band Long Time Courting, each have strong careers with other musical endeavors. Still, they knew that the music they made together called to them in its own right, too. The result is their debut recording Alternate Routes, a collection of songs and tunes in the Celtic tradition well worth repeated listening.
That’s true of all the recordings in this list, in fact.
It is no mean feat to make a live album which carries the essence of connection with the audience in the moment and reaches listeners to the recording clearly enough to invite repeated listenings. That is what Julie Fowlis has done with Live at Perthsire Amber though. Her songs are in Scottish Gaelic, but if that’s not a language you know, listen anyway: you’ll get the emotions of the songs clearly, and there are notes on the stories of the song in English included.
The lively and engaging song The Wedding Dress, in English, opens T with the Maggies. Many of the songs are in Irish, though. If that’s not your language, do not let that deter you; you’ll understand the stories and the fine harmonies and great playing the four women have to offer. After becoming childhood friends through sharing music in Donegal in Ireland's far northwest, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, and Moya Brennan each went separate ways into solo careers and work with groups including Altan and Clannad. T With the Maggies is the first time all four have recorded together, and it includes both music from the tradition and songs the women have written.
When she’d include American folk song favorites such as Red River Valley and Shenandoah at her concerts along with her country and Americana hits, Suzy Bogguss saw that everybody loved to sing along -- except the children and young people who didn’t know the words. She decided to make an album to share pieces of this handmade Americana music. Whether you are learning them for the first time or reconnecting with well loved memories. you will likely find yourself joining in with her warm, engaging take on seventeen American classics on American Folk Songbook. These include Froggy Went a-Courting, Banks of the Ohio, and Wayfaring Stranger.
The Unusual Suspects have traditional music on their album Big Like This, too. In their case it comes from the music of Scotland. Under the musical direction of Corrina Hewat and David Milligan, this folk big band, which comprises fiddlers, pipers, accordionists, horn player, drummers, percussionists, harp players and others from across Scotland, turns tradition on its ear while completely respecting too. There’s very fine original music from members of the band along with the traditional music, also. If there’s a person on your list who thinks folk music is stuffy or outdated, any of the recordings here should change his or her ideas on that, but especially this one. It will make a great choice for those who enjoy jazz, as well.
The bright sound of the little fiddle and the dark tones of the big fiddle -- the cello -- are in lively conversation in the hands of Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, respectively, as they travel across the landscapes of Celtic music in Highlander's Farewell. The title track, for example, follows a tune which begins in Scotland and moves across Ireland and over to America, telling its engaging tale all the while.
Emily Smith knows a good bit about travel, as do most professional musicians. Though she often sources material for both songs she writes and songs she seeks out from near her home in the southwest of Scotland, for Traiveller's Joy Smith has taken the traveling aspect of a musician’s life into account as well. There are songs she’s learned on the road as well as ones inspired by her travels.
As you make your own travels this winter season, be they to around the corner or across the world, these recordings will make excellent companions along the road.
These include Froggy Went a-Courting, Banks of the Ohio, and Wayfaring Stranger.
