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 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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Another way to support: you could

Season of grace

Into this climate of fear and apprehension
Peace enters
Christmas
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope high up in the bright air
the world is encouraged to come away from rancor
come the way of friendship
it is the glad season

....

on this platform of peace we can create a language
to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other

....
Peace, my brother
Peace, my sister
Peace, my soul

These lines are from Maya Angelou’s poem Amazing Peace, which she wrote some years ago. I'd recommend looking up the whole poem. Amazing Peace has also been made into a well illustrated book that's good for children and adults.

music to go along with these ideas
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

fourth sunday in advent: community

best music, 2012

update 2016: these stories too may be of interest
Four Songs of Hope
Music for the heart of winter: Cathie Ryan

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Music, trust, and faith: Amy Grant: Mosaic

Mosaic works as a descriptive title for Amy Grant's book: there are essays, reflections, stories, poetry, and song lyrics new and old.

It’s not necessary to know anything about Grant’s music, or to like it if you do, to enjoy her often funny vignettes of things she has learned from bringing up her children, or her poignant reflection on connecting with her stepdaughter, or stories of how she learned a lesson from a deer or met an unexpected source of support at the state fair.

Grant’s faith is front and center, but it’s no stained glass or holier than thou belief: it’s the story of hard won lessons, and recognition that she -- and we-- do not know all the answers, and sometimes the only answer is trust. Grant has a gentle, humorous, reflective style that suits this sort of storytelling well. Some sections work better than others, of course.


It would be easy for someone of Grant’s public life and fame to be self indulgent or just skim the surface: she doesn’t. One gets the impression that Grant has too much of a sense of humor for that to happen, for one thing, and she also has along with that a humility born of her faith. At one point she says

“This is trust: doing what you believe you are called to do and trusting that God will provide. But here’s where it gets personal: God provides through people. Am I willing to be connected to the people in my world, the people at work, the people in my house, the people I encounter in the everyday patterns of living? Am I open to the possibility of my gifts touching another life? My life touching another: the domino effect of God’s goodness rippling through so many lives is a far reaching concept.”

All sorts of stuff like that in the book. Well worth the read.

Music to go along with this:
Legacy: Hymns and Faith
and
Behind the Eyes
are the Grant recordings I like best. In many ways they are very different: Behind the Eyes includes a number of songs she wrote while dealing with her divorce; Legacy: Hymns and Faith comprises songs of faith that will be familiar to anyone who grew up in the American south, along with well chosen originals. They both show a woman who
thinks about her faith, and knows that it encompasses both struggle and celebration.



you may also wish to see
music and trust
music, silence, and spiritual journey

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Lessons from an Old Lament

The story told in Lament Of The Three Marys is of Good Friday from a mother’s point of view: Mary seeks her son, asking her friends, have you seen him? have you seen my bright love? and finally she finds him, carrying his cross on the road to Golgotha. She says, son let me help you, son, I am your mother. Christ answers: we each must carry our own cross, mother.

I’ve always thought that was a more useful, and more Irish, idea than the commonly used statement about there’s always someone who is in a worse situation than you are, and the like. We each must carry our own cross, and we do not know the weight of each other’s burdens. What we may choose to do, though, is to share a word, a smile, a hand of friendship, a cup of water, and a song, along the way,

Hear Cathie Ryan sing Lament of the Three Marys in Irish

It is on her album The Music of What Happens.

you may also wish to see other music to go along with these ideas

Music Road: Songs for an Easter weekend
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
and Cathie's album called Through Wind and Rain

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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.

Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

A song about a woman who steps up with courage and finds that her neighbors join her, one about living through dark and lonely aspects of night and reaching the hope of a new dawn, a many faceted look at how art, life, and faith intersect in not always predictable ways, a tap your foot snap your fingers re imagining of some New Testament stories, and a look at e mail gone astray -- all of these form part of the music on Carrie Newcomer’s latest album, The Geography of Light..

It’s an album that pushes the boundaries out a bit father, both musically and lyrically, for Newcomer, who has always been known for her thoughtful writing and distinctive alto voice. “I had a very intensive tour to go along with the album release, very demanding, but very exciting, and all over the country. Great folks and I’m really...” Newcomer paused to find the right word, “...grateful. People are singing along with the lyrics -- different parts of different songs, too -- and there’s no better gift you can give a songwriter than to take a song and make it your own like that, to sing along with it. I’m just incredibly grateful when that happens, because it seems like the song is more than me, you know, that it has gone beyond me, which is the whole goal of the songwriter. Different songwriters have different ways they go about that, but the goal is communicate, to connect in a way that’s greater than the person who wrote it.”

Newcomer is based in Indiana, which is where she grew up. “I think there’s something very midwestern about my songs, about the way I approach writing,” she says. “And I have this great job that lets me travel from the deserts of the southwest to the autumn leaves of the Berkshires, and then come back home to my house in the woods, my sweetheart -- and my dogs!” Another thing that grounds Newcomer’s work is her faith. She is a Quaker, a faith she came to as an adult. ” I really do hold to that Quaker idea of let your life speak, of finding what is the truth of your life, what gives you joy, what is really true for you, whether that’s song writing, or being an accountant, or whatever,” she says. “Sometimes it takes time to recognize that, but it’s incredibly powerful when you do.”

This Newcomer’s eleventh album on Rounder Records, more spare in instrumentation and more poetic and probing in lyric than her earlier work, but not so much a departure as a next right step. There’s a lot of spiritual context to the album, “and I’ve been fascinated by the kinds of response I’ve encountered to that,” she says . It’s not a new direction for the artist, but she’s been seeing a change in how her listeners take this aspect of her music. “I think folks are really thinking about authentic living. They are thinking a lot about the good questions. They don’t want anybody to give them really easy answers, but they want to explore the questions,” she says.

One of the songs on The Geography of Light is There is a Tree, a powerful meditation on trust and on what it is like and what it is not like to be called to be an artist, framed in images both everyday and mystical. There a song about coming face to face with repeating old mistakes, called You’d Think by Now, and one in which the singer contemplates the edges of light and dark in life, Map of Shadows. There’s also a song called Geodes. Geodes are those unassuming rocks, dusty brown on the outside, with crystal patterns and hues of all sorts hidden within. They are plentiful where Newcomer lives in southern Indiana.

You can’t always tell one from another

And it’s best not to judge a book by its tattered cover

I have found when I tried or looked deeper inside

What appears unadorned might be wondrously formed

You can’t always tell but sometimes you just know

Newcomer sings in the first verse. “There's a lot going on in this album,” she says, “but if I had to choose just one song, I think Geodes is the most indicative of it. Because that’s Carrie’s statement of faith in a nutshell.”

There’s laughter, grieving, anger, searching, connection, pain, questioning, mistakes , forgiveness, and creation, among the things going on in The Geography of Light. It’s both a welcoming album and one for those who are willing to be challenged by the music they listen to. There’s plenty of space for the listener, because for Newcomer it is about connection and communication, while being true to who she as an artist. “ My faith, my spiritual path, is an important part of who I am, of how I walk in the world, so it has to come out in my music,” she says, “ but a Christian record label wouldn’t touch what I do with a ten foot pole. It’s way outside their parameters.”. She knows, too, that both music and faith are part of the continuing journey. “I can say things now that I could never have said when I was twenty five. I had perfectly valid things to say then, but I’m in a different place now. I really feel as though I’ve found my writer’s voice since I turned forty. And I hope I’m still saying that sort of thing when I’m eighty, you know -- that I was so clueless back when I was fifty eight, or sixty two,” Newcomer said, laughing.

Along the Music Road, our conversation with Carrie Newcomer will continue, with more the workshops Newcomer teaches on arts and activism, writing, and vocation, and on a project she’s been involved in lately that has to do with the history of the Ohio Valley. Her tour schedule and other information may be found at carrienewcomer.com.

you may also wish to see

video of that song about e mail

Music Road: creative practice: laughter

Angels Unaware

a bit about one of Newcomer’s earlier albums, The Age of Possibility in this article

late summer: two for the road

Aquick 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!

Third sunday in advent

Sometimes, it’s harder for us to forgive ourselves than to forgive another. At times, it’s a challenge to see that is what’s needed. Thinking over misunderstandings with a friend, I realized that we have forgiven each other, and I was still going over the old situations in my mind. What did I need to learn from these that I’d not already figured out? Nothing, I quickly realized. Why not, I asked myself, think over the good things in this friendship and reinforce those in my mind and heart? That is what I did and what I taught when I managed teams in broadcasting -- build on the good stuff. Takes discipline, personally and professionally. But, for me, anyway, it’s become part of the preparation that’s included in the idea of advent


music to go along with this idea

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Kathy Mattea: Joy for Christmas Day

Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night

Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light

cathie ryan: the farthest wave

also, an note of congratulations to Duncan Chisholm, and Emily Smith who were honored at the Scots Trad Awards last week, he for best album, she for best Scots singer, Good wishes to the two of them, whose albums have been reviewed here, and to all the winners.

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Another way to support Music Road

You can

Second sunday in advent, 2008

The gift of giving and receiving welcome, and the gift of reflecting on what may be learned from tradition are two things the second Sunday in Advent calls us to think about. Most of the artists you meet here along the music road draw from heritage in one way or another. There’s as much wisdom to be gained from the stories they tell and create as there is from study of religious texts, It’s all about how we connect and how we learn from each other, how we learn to love, and to welcome each other.



music to go along with these ideas

cathie ryan: the farthest wave

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

first sunday in advent, 2008

sean nos, days of awe, and tradition

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First sunday in Advent, 2008

Though it’s often thought of as a busy, bustling time of holiday celebration, for me the season of Advent also includes preparation for the work of winter. There’s a quiet center here, part repentance, part sorrow, part searching, part love.. Part hope, part joy..


music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: ten songs
Music Road: listening to Christmas
Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
Music Road: now playing: Best of Celtic Christmas

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creative practice: thanksgiving

At times, it’s challenging to get to the focused place of creative practice when the world, both in large scale and in day to day life, seems to be calling for attention in so many ways,p ositive hopeful things, and difficult, hard ones both. Give the gift that only you can give. That idea makes a good center point. Though I’ve often had -- am having -- challenging times in making that work to make living, still it is what being an artist is about, and it is what other sorts of vocations are about too.

In the United States this week we celebrate Thanksgiving, a remembrance, among other things, of a time when communities and individuals cared for each other, and when, remembering that, a broken nation took a stand for hope.

Music is and has been and will be a way to connect, to create and to think about all these things. Especially at this Thanksgiving, I offer thanks to all the musicians you've met here, and those who help them out at home and along the road. I look forward to many more shared journeys.

for more on vocation, you may want to see Parker Palmer’s book
A Hidden Wholeness




and for music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: now playing: cathie ryan: the farthest wave

Music Road: now playing: Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light

Music Road: Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Thinking about music: Blog Action Day 2008

There are times for each of us and all of us when we have enough to be going on with, and times when we do not. This could be with money, with a place to live, with food, with health, with direction, with community, with family, with friends, with faith, with a kind word, with love. It’s good to remember that there are times -- sometimes at the same time -- when we all need to receive, and when we all need to give. That gift could be money; that could be an encouraging word; that could be a meal; that could be a smile; that could be a song.

Music, especially the sort of music we consider here along the Music Road, is a real connector, a place for giving and receiving and encouraging, regardless of circumstance. Through the words and music, there are also often ways to reflect on how, what, when and where to give, and to receive. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was a stranger, and you invited me in -- words from the New Testament which find resonances in many faiths, and through many understandings of music and how it connects us.

Today is Blog Action Day, when hundreds of thousands of bloggers over all the world, reaching millions of readers, writing on all sorts of areas, are asking their readers to think about a single topic. This year, that subject is poverty.


While you are reflecting on this, you may want to see these articles:

creative practice: generosity

Potato Music

late summer: two for the road

now playing: Amy Grant: Mosaic

an essay from singer and songwriter Carrie Newcomer about the politics of love and fear, and the politics of being an artist


now playing: The Environment, on Blog Action Day 2007

Listening through the changes

The other night, I decided to listen to music rather than watch the US presidential debates, or the news. I know the importance of politics, and of being aware and connected. When the challenges and changes posed by current economic conditions are as difficult as they have been this last while, both for me and for many I care about, I find the wisdom and compassion in music helpful to me in getting centered and sorting things out. With all respect to Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden, that’s where I need to be looking during this time of crisis and change. There’s more space to reflect, and to get clear on what to do, than in any newscast, debate, or focus group.

The songs below have in varied ways to do with understanding and living through change. They are good ones to know, just now. I’d also recommend other music by these artists, and by the other people we speak about here along the music road. It’s a bit of a rough road just now, but it is my conviction that we’re all walking this road together, and that music helps us to connect, to understand, and to live through the changes.


Carrie Newcomer: Throw Me a Line

Cathie Ryan:Be Like the Sea

Cathie Ryan: What's Closest to the Heart

Jeff Talmadge: Wrong Train

Carrie Newcomer: Leaves Don't Drop (They Just Let Go)

you may also want to see

autumn music, continued

ten songs

now playing: Terri Allard

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now playing: Carrie Newcomer: The Geography of Light

Carrie Newcomer
The Geography of Light


Light is both constant and change, morning light to evening light, warning light to light of love, always changing always present, seen and felt differently by where each person stands, and seen and felt by all. You could make an analogy with faith, and the search for it, which is what Carrie Newcomer does in The Geography of Light. She's indirect about that, usually -- Newcomer has the gift of being straight forward and complex at the same time, both musically and lyrically. Those are things she’s always been good at, and things she’s always been growing into, in her work. The Geography of Light is a bold, and right, next step.

“I think there are a couple of themes running through the songs on this album,” she says. “Change, and the response to change, is one, that and asking the good questions. And that the good questions come back, you know. You tend to think you ask the questions once, and you’re done. But they come back.”

In one of the songs here, Newcomer looks at things from the perspective of Lazarus, he who was raised from the dead. What was it like for him? Speaking of living through and with change... Lazarus has unresolved questions about his purpose in life, what to do with all he’s learned, abandonment, changes in friends, understanding love-- as who does not? The main character in The Clean Edge of Change finds herself at another point on the journey of changes, wrapped up in trying to make things happen by her own direction, at her own timing, and then -- something else happens.

Something else happens to the person in There is a Tree, too, who is also living and loving her way through the changes of figuring out what it is like to be called to create, and to connect. One Woman and a Shovel is drawn from the history of Newcomer’s home ground in southern Indiana, inspired by a story by Scott Russell Sanders set in a time when Indiana was frontier country. As Martha takes up her shovel to tear down a dam, and as her neighbors begin to join her, it becomes a tale that goes beyond history to thoughts on dealing with mistakes, the power of ideas, and creating community. “Never underestimate the power of love, or one woman with a shovel,” Newcomer sings.

Light and dark, laughter and love, sorrow and grace are all present in Newcomer’s songs, whether she’s considering what some familiar stories of faith and meeting with God might look like if played out today in Where You Been, framed in a snap your fingers and sing along melody, or looking at lessons of anger learned and not learned in You’d Think By Now, or thinking about the physical and spiritual dimensions of the edges of light into dark and dark into light, in Map of Shadows. She concludes the disc with a lighthearted comment on unintended consequences and yes, change, mistakes, and all that, resulting from e mail wrong headedness, with Don’t Push Send.

As ever, Newcomer’s music offers plenty of space for the listener, room to contemplate those questions, and room just to listen to the music. Do both; you’ll be well rewarded.


Intersection of music and spirit is something that comes up often here along the Music Road. You might want to see these posts:

Music Road: now playing: Angels Unaware

Music Road: creative practice: laughter

Music Road: late summer: two for the road

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

If you're a bale to chip in, a quick 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!

Patrick season: thinking about Celtic spirituality

Irishman John O’Donoghue was a thinker, philosopher, poet, and spiritual teacher who died in January while still in his early fifties. On of the last recorded interviews he did was with Krista Tippett. host of the American Public Radio program Speaking of Faith. It’s a wide ranging conversation, as Tippett’s interviews always are, covering topics such as the nature of God, the nature of beauty, what life is all about, what’s unique about Celtic spirituality, and also what it means to be in service to a calling. One of the examples they get into with the latter is music. You may hear the hour long radio program here.

One of O’Donoghue’s best known books is Anam Cara, which is Irish for soul friend. Life, death, and love through the places where Celtic mysticism and Christian understanding meet are the topics.

Music to go along with this:
Caroline Herring: Twilight Her music is of the American folk tradition rather than immediately Celtic, but she definitely knows how to write about spiritual questions, framed in the life of the American South

Cathie Ryan: The Music of What Happens If you’ve traveled along the Music Road before, you've likely met Ryan’s work. Here she offers songs about motherhood, faith, leaving, returning, and change, among other things.

The Music of What Happens

If you’re up for a up for a bit more contemplation and a few more music ideas. you may want to see this post.

creative practice: clear

Creative practice requires loads of decisions, many of them taken alone. There's a process in the Quaker practice called the clearness committee, for seeking just that, clearness, hrough community. Here's a comment for reflection from the Penn Valley Society of Friends:


>>Clearness committees remind us that we are a community which ministers to each other. Dealing with weighty matters or coming to a decision in a difficult time can be lonely experiences. Asking the Ministry and Oversight Committee for the aid of a clearness committee is not a guarantee of an immediate and perfect answer. It does however begin a process of sharing a burden, reflecting on options, and listening together for a leading of Spirit. The purpose of the committee is not to give answers but to ask clarifying questions, to be fellow seekers, and to reflect the Light within the one who is struggling to find his or her way.
by Donnie Morehouse<<


The lyrics and the message that of Christmas hymn we've just finshed singing, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, would be a bit of music to go along.

now playing: The Best of Friends

The Best of Friends

A book, this time, rather than a recording, though we’ll get to the music in minute. Ginger Mauney is a film maker who lives in Africa; Sara James is a news correspondent who lives in New York. They met when they were twelve, in Virginia, but their paths diverged, time and time again over the more than thirty years they’ve known it each other. This book is a shared chronicle -- they alternate writing chapters of their lives and bits and pieces of how having that friendship has been vital to them both. It’s more narrative than philosophy, a story of the individual circumstances of two friends who trusted and accepted their friendship even when they couldn’t or didn’t see each other for long stretches of time. It’s a story of the grace of friendship, really.

What does this have to to with music? All of us who make, follow, and trust music end up on the road a lot, with best friends in far flung places, friends who, like James and Mauney, may not be there always for the big or small events that people generally think of as building and maintaining friendship, but who continue as friends in practical ways as well as friends of soul and spirit. This book is a fine reminder to be thankful for that grace, and to nurture it.

music for these ideas:

Carrie Newcomer has a good song with a vivid image of friends called Three Women, which was first released on her recording called Angel on My Shoulder and is also on Betty's Diner.

Tommy Sands’ song There Were Roses, recorded by both Sean Keane and Cara Dillon, sets the troubles in Ireland in the context of friendship.

Cathie Ryan’s Coaineadh na d’Tri Muire. Lament of the Three Marys, on her The Music of What Happens CD, is about mother and son -- Christ and his mother Mary, actually -- but holds good insights on connection.

Follow On, written by Paul Brady and recorded by Danu on When All Is Said and Done, is another good look at the lasting power of friendship even when faith is all that’s there to keep it going.

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