Ireland's Music: Aoife Scott: Carry the Day

“It’s my love letter to the West,” says Aoife Scott of her song All Along with Wild Atlantic Way. That it is, with visits to places from Croagh Patrick to Dingle, framed in the happy memories of a woman long gone from the area. There’s a bit more to that imaginative story -- it’s a love story between husband and wife across time and place really -- but the lively melody and Scott’s fine voice will draw you in however much of the story you catch on to or not.

It makes an excellent choice with which to open Scott’s debut album Carry the Day, showcasing her songwriting ability along with the colors of her voice -- and the fact that she knows well how to use her gorgeous voice in service of a song and its story.

That’s equally true when she moves to the rather more serious tone of We Know Where We Stand, as with All along the Wild Atlantic Way a song she wrote with musical collaborator Enda Reilly. It’s a song appropriate for and as Scott writes in the liner notes, somewhat inspired by the marking of the the centenary of the Easter Rising. In just a shade more than three minutes Scott and Reilly call forth many aspects of that hundred years and beyond, with images both familiar and new. “We stand on the hill of Tara with our hurleys in our hands” -- there’s resonance in that image for anyone with a connection to Ireland.

Down by the Shelleybanks is a quiet gem, a reflective piece in celebration of an area near Dublin which Scott knows and loves well. It’s framed in specifics, yes, but will reach all who have found a place to go for quiet reflection and the healing aspects of the natural world.

These are the first three tracks of a dozen Scott offers on the recording. About half the songs are originals. One takes a song her brother Eoghan wrote as a rock song into a folk/country direction. There’s Slan Leat, an original in Irish which is sort of a goodbye but our paths will cross again idea, and a bit of Irish too in Fásaim, a song inspired by her brother’s wedding. Songs by Si Kahn, Adrian Lawlor, and Sharyn Dimmick continue Scott’s interest in story told through character. A standout among these is Briege Murphy’s The Hills of South Armagh with its thoughtful take on the emigrant experience.

Aoife Scott has a fine voice and a clear understanding of ways to use it to tell stories she creates and admires. Though this is her first recording as a solo artist, she is not new to the music business. She has toured with the band The Outside Track and has appeared with Cherish the Ladies, Altan, and the RTE Concert Orchestra among others.

Though Scott originally thought she’d have a career behind the scenes -- and did, working successfully in television production for several years -- eventually music won out.

One reason for that might be family background. Aoife is the daughter of renown singer Frances Black. Her aunt is international star Mary Black, and her uncles Shay, Michael, and Martin have all worked professionally in music. Her brother Eoghan is a guitarist and producer. Her cousins Danny O’Reilly of The Coronas and singer songwriter Roisin O are making own marks in the music business as well.

With Carry the Day Aoife Scott continues to stake out her own place as a creative singer and songwriter in the next generation of ever evolving Irish tradition, and in the next generation of her family legacy as well.

Photo of tree in Dingle by Trevor Rickard
Photo near Poolbeg Lighthouse, Dublin, by Doug Lee

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Aoife Scott's website
Ireland's music: two voices: Mary Dillon and Frances Black
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Michael Black: music, family, friends
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Ireland's music: two voices

Frances Black and Mary Dillon are both from Ireland. Black grew up in Dublin, while Dillon is from Dungiven in Northern Ireland. Each is a gifted singer, and each has taken a bit of time between albums. As much as the new music each has chosen differs one from the other. each recording offers music which Illuminates aspects of the spirit of Ireland, and reaches beyond the island as well.

Mary Dillon’s album is called North, appropriate enough as the music is in the main sourced from the North of Ireland and the recording was created there as well. Dillon has a gentle and natural phrasing, a voice and style well suited to the songs she has chosen and the stories she tells with her own songwriting.

Most of the songs she’s chosen for North comes from the tradition and tell of love gone wrong -- but have no worries there are cheerful ones as well, and reflective pieces too. A particular standout is The Boatman, filled with vivid and compelling imagery which frames ideas of love, loss, hope and history. It stands well in company with songs from the tradition and from other writers. Among these are the lost lover returns in disguise tale told in The Banks of the Claudy, the anti war meditation in John Condon, and the woman missing her man tale in Bleacher Boy, a song with lines which may sound familiar, even if the song itself does not, as they are turns of phrase which have traveled into the songs in Scotland, Canada, and the American west. Another standout is Ard Ti Chuain, a song of love of a place, which Dillon sings in Irish.

Mary Dillon comes from a musical family -- her sister is the singer and songwriter Cara Dillon. Frances Black is from a family in which music, both traditional and popular, was part of her everyday life growing up too. For her album Stronger Black has chosen ten songs by contemporary writers, thoughtful and poetic in their lyrics and lasting in their melodies, songs which, you could say, are parts of the next steps in storytelling tradition.

These include songs which allow the singer to muse on the many facets of love and resilience, which Black does in a distinctive voice and style that well invite the listener in to consider the stories she tells and the ideas she suggests. Anna McGarrigle, James Taylor, Carole King, Gary Burr, and Paul Brady are several of the writers she’s favored. Rise invites thoughts of that resilience, while I Would Be Stronger Than That asks questions about the not always straightforward paths of love. Long Ago and Far Away, Black notes, was the first song she ever sang in public, when she was around fourteen years of age and was asked to sing at a friend's birthday party, while Heart Like a Wheel was a song she first heard her sister sing when they were kids, and later learned to sing it when a friend asked her to do so. You’ve no need to know a thing about the connections that weave in and out of these songs, or Black's family connections (her sister Mary is one of Ireland’s best loved singers, her brothers Martin, Michael, and Shay have all worked as professional musicians, and all five have at times worked together, as well) to appreciate the beauty of what she offers here. Whehter you know any of thsoe things or not, though, you may hear a bit of resonance with tradition and family, a resonance which only adds to the grace of the music, and to Frances Black’s standing as a gifted interpreter of song.

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from Northern Ireland: Cara Dillon: After the Morning
Reflections with Mary Black
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Song for an Easter Monday

The power of music to bring people together is so often drawn out most strongly when they oppose each other in bloodshed and oppression. This song cocnerning the 1916 rising in Ireland is sung here by Frances Black during the centennial year of that defining moment in the history of Ireland

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frances black: the foggy dew

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now playing:frances black: the foggy dew

The Foggy Dew is a classic sing around the campfire folk song, variously seen as lover’s lament or the tale of a rake, traveling from England and Ireland to America as that story. Tim O’Brien has even made it into a bit of a swing tune when he performs it.

There’s another side to the story though. There’s some argument as to who exactly wrote the words, but a song about the Easter Rising in 1916 in Ireland was set to the familiar folk tune. That’s the one Frances Black has included on her latest release. This Love Will Carry. Black says, by the way, that this is one of her husband's very favorite songs that she does, and when they travel on long car trips together it's always one he asks her to sing. It is one of three new songs on This Love Will Carry, which is a two disc retrospective collection.

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Music Road: words and music, continued

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