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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Celtic Connections: Seeing Music, continued

In January every year, Glasgow light up with performances and other events from Celtic Connections. Celtic Connections is one of winter’s largest -- and most interesting -- festivals. It is held across nearly three weeks beginning in mid January every year in Glasgow, with most venues near the city center. The heart of it is music -- there are more than three hundred official concerts during the festival -- and there are talks, workshops, walks, and other events.

Continuing to share what a bit of what Celtic Connections looked like this winter past

Breabach shared music from their recent album Frenzy of the Meeting, as well as a few favourites form their back catalogue A lively night at the Old Fruitmarket, with standing ovations callng the musicians back to the stage.

American singer songwriter Gretchen Peters had a solo gig at King's Theatre, and a few days later took part in Transatlantic Sessiosn, an always highly anticipated evening where musicians from both sides of the Atlantic share the stage. Among the songs Peters offered was her classic hit, Bus to Saint Cloud ,p.

Award winning bluegrass guitarist and singer Molly Tuttle also took in the Transatlan tic Sessions concert. As of this writing, she is just about to release her first album

Phil Cunningham is a mainstay of the house band at Transatlantic Sessiosn -- and you will oftne find him performing in other part s of the fetival, too.

Composer

Eli West and Olav Mjelva offered a lively and interesting conert at the new Auditorium of the Royal Concert Hall, in support of Siobhan Miller

You may also wish to see
Scotland’s music: More from Celtic Connections
Ireland's music: Cara Dillon : A Thousand hearts
Molly Tuttle: When You're Ready
Another view of the American West:Gretchen Peters

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Songs of Hope 3

As we make our way through public and private conversation about immigration, environmental stewardship, and political change, there’s is music. Music to help with mulling these things over, to hearing these concerns as other generations have wrestled with them, to hear them as poets and musicians work with them. Continuing the series I’ve begun of songs of hope, here is a song that speaks to the troubles of race, one that considers, albeit a bit obliquely, environmental change, another that reframes the idea of refugees, and one that offers connection and friendship over the long haul struggle.

Give a listen to these; take your time with them. Go look up the albums on which they are recorded, too, and other work by these thoughtful artists, each of whom I’ve written about here at Music Road and elsewhere in my work. To borrow a line from one of Carrie Newcomer’s lyrics -- she is another artist whose work you should know -- “Light every candle that you can, we need some light to see...”

In her song Detroit Was Burning, Cathie Ryan moves from a child’s eye view to an adult’s reflection and remembrance of the riots in that Michigan city after mart Luther KIng was shot. She has recorded it on her album called Cathie Ryan.

Eddi Reader took a fragment of a Robert Burns song and made it into a story that is both a love song and a lament. Listen to that line about “they’re turning out all of the stars...” and others... This performance of the song Leezie Lindsay was recorded at the Celtic Connections Festival several years ago, and Emily Smith joins in on harmonies. The song is most readily available on the recent retrospective album Best of Eddi Reader.

Though you could call it a Christmas song -- Gretchen Peters has recorded on her Christmas album Northern Lights, after all -- the song Waitin’ on Mary has thought provoking words and images to offer about refugees. These resonate across seasons.

In this time of almost unending news that is awful, or at least difficult and challenging, it is wise to remember that it is a long road and many of us are walking it together. Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offer a bit of hope and connection and wise words for the road with their song Shine On. It is recorded on their album Big Old Life.

You may also wish to see
Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Some Bright Morning from Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Songs of Hope continued
Winter meditation

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Second week in Advent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see

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

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music of love

Love is the substance of all music, when you stop to think about it. Songs of love gone wrong and gone right in all sorts of ways, love for land, home, country, family, children, friends, love of tradition and family that keeps the music going on, and music that may not speak directly of these things but is brought into being by them. As I write this it is a time of year when love is celebrated especially. Here’s music to go along with celebrating all these sorts of love.

Romantic love is the substance of Someone Like You, sung by award winning country, folk, and Americana artist Emmylou Harris. A few of my favorite lines are
I never wasted a minute of my time
Every road I ever took led me to your side

Robert Burns, Scotland’s bard, wrote of aspects of love from romantic to bawdy to friendship. John Anderson My Jo finds the poet considering love that lasts across the years. Fellow Scot Eddi Reader does a fine and thoughtful job with it

Love between parents and children is the subject of December Child from Gretchen Peters and Mo Níon Ó from Cathie Ryan

Celebration of the many gifts of friendship is what Carrie Newcomer considers in The Gathering of Spirits
there’s a gathering of spirits
there’s a festival of friends
and we’ll take up where we left off
when we all meet again

Sharing love for land and home place is well told in At the Heart of It All from Capercaillie.
At the heart of it all
Is a calling to this land...

At times, love is shown with no words at at all. Molly Mason’s composition The Snowstorm is music of that sort I especially commend to you.

Blessing is a deep form of love, and so I will draw this to a close by suggesting that you take a listen to Cathie Ryan’s choice of a song of blessing, May the Road Rise to Meet You

Each of these artists well knows how to write and to interpret all sorts of love songs, so I commend to you the albums on which this music appears, and their other works, as well. At this season of love, also, I wish you love, joy, and peace -- and great music..

Did you notice the heart in the photograph? I saw it in the reflection whilst at a gig at the Piping Centre in Glasgow, Scotland. This photograph is copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see
music and mystery
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Winter meditation

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

Music to go along with these ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Americana: gift ideas and seasonal music

Melting pot, salad bowl, tapestry: the many and varied cultures and landscapes of the United States find voice in the music that has come to be known as Americana. At the holidays as well at other times of year, it holds many things to explore.

Ideas for gifts, and for Americana music for the winter season, as well:


Kyle Carey draws in her interests in the music of Scotland and Cape Breton with her knowledge a love for the music and landscapes of Appalachia on her debut album Monongah.

Suzy Bogguss is a gifted songwriter and interpreter of contemporary song. She started out singing American folk music and often includes that in her concerts, too -- and she became concerned when she noted that many members of her audience didn’t know the words to songs such as Red River Valley, Banks of the Ohio, and Wayfaring Stranger. Whether it proves a refresher course or an introduction, her album American Folk Songbook is a fine choice for gift giving and for adding to your own collection.

Matraca Berg writes songs that a long list of Nashville superstars record. Her album The Dreaming Fields is a collection of stories by turns funny, reflective, and thought provoking, tales of people of the American south which resonate with people across the globe.

Carrie Newcomer knows a bit about those across the globe connections. She had an unexpected chance to spend time giving concerts and workshops in India. She’s connected that experience with her midwestern Americana ideas in her album Everything Is Everywhere.

seasonal music
Kathy Mattea has two holiday albums well worth your attention, the southern gospel tinged Good News and Joy for Christmas Day, which holds both traditional and contemporary songs of Christmas. The title song of the latter speaks of the place of Christmas amidst the hard knocks of life.

Matt and Shannon Heaton make their music where Irish tradition meets Americana. To experience what that means, take a listen to their seasonal album Fine Winter's Night, which includes traditional Irish and Shetland tunes, an original song for which Matt got the idea from looking a Victorian house down the street, and a piece which is an African American song turned Celtic lullabye.

Gretchen Peters knows that the holiday season goes beyond jingle bells and festive Santas, too. On her album Northern Lights she includes traditional, original, and contemporary songs which look at the many sides of sides of the holiday season with a compassionate and thoughtful gaze. It’s all good stuff, but especially take note of her original song Waitin’ on Mary and her cover of Kim Richey’s Careful How You Go.


you may also wish to see
for more Americana holiday music suggestions
Music Road: listening to Christmas

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Road trip music: American west

The Great American Road trip winds its way from the southwestern desert of Arizona, up through the Front Range and the Wasatch, through Colorado. Utah, and Wyoming, from the turn of autumn into the depth of winter. For listening, folk, country rock, songs of the west, and a cowboy Christmas.


Linda Ronstadt is an icon of pop music, whose work as spanned rock, country, Spanish, and big band music, just to mention a few of the musical avenues she’s explored. She is an Arizona native. To begin our western soundtrack, there’s Hand Sown Home Grown / Silk Purse, a CD reissue of two of her early albums. Check out He Dark the Sun and Life Is Like a Mountain Railway to hear how singing should be done. That's something Ronstadt was still a master at decades later when she returned to her hometown to record an album with long time friend Emmylou Harris. It is called Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions.

R. Carlos Nakai has collaborated with classical musicians, artists from Japan, and created all manner of other works. He too is from Arizona, and is a master of the Native American flute. A good place to hear his work is on the album In Beauty, We Return.

Gretchen Peters and Judy Collins both spent years that were important to their music in Colorado. Collins wrote a song called Mountain Girl that really gets that transition between mountain and city. A gifted songwriter in her own right, Peters recently looked at her western connections through the work of other writers on the album One to the Heart, One to the Head.

It is turning toward winter. In the coming weeks the focus here along the music road is on seasonal reflections and connections. Connecting the road trip with that, and with songs of the western states, take a listen to Michael Martin Murphey’s Cowboy Christmas, which comprises songs lively and reflective, in a thoroughly western take on the season.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: holiday gift list: American harvest
Music Road: music for Thanksgiving
Music Road: Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
more music from the road trip

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop by and see what the Library has in mind to inspire travels through the west.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins


do you work in the arts or education and need to present your ideas professionally? I can help.

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Lead and harmony

A year ago on 29 May, Suzy Bogguss, Gretchen Peters, and Matraca Berg were on tour in England, and they recorded this song on that day. Just listen.



you may also wish to see
Music Road: Road Trip Music in Tennessee

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: One to the Heart, One to the Head

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trust and music

There’s a lot of trust involved in making music. Musicians launching their ideas out into the deep, as it were, and listeners following on to see and hear what happens next, what they take in and make own. Each side of the equation learning what may be learned.

Trust goes into creating music, as well. Songwriter Gretchen Peters commented on one aspect of that. “I’m a big believer that there’s an internal mechanism, a gut, a truth bone -- call it what you want -- and your job as a writer is listening to it when it tells you this song or this line or this melody needs to be this way, this is the way this goes. If it needs to be changed, you know what needs to be changed. That comes from within.”

Cathie Ryan has a vivid analogy on the idea of trust in one of her songs, which she talks about here.

Emotion, logic, or something else altogether, trust is perhaps a good aspect of creative work to consider this Good Friday and Easter Eve.

Music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: easter eve: rani arbo & daisy mayhem: house be blessed
Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
The comment above is from a story I did on Peters’ work for 2010 Songwriter's Market
Music Road: Songs for an Easter weekend

Best Music, 2009

Haunting music of the American and Canadian West; the infinitely flexible music of Ireland paired with music from Thailand, Norway, and India; polka played on trumpet, violin , and digeridoo; Scottish traditional fiddle tunes next to a tune from China; Robert Burns songs and a song that references Pablo Neruda and Wendell Berry; tunes and songs from the highlands of Scotland, the American south, and all across Ireland from Donegal to Down and Belfast to Clare, and from the plains of South Dakota to Music Row in Nashville are all here. along with some of the best voices and best playing around. What these albums have in common is grace, creativity, vision, and heart, along with knowledge of and respect for tradition and heritage. Take a listen.



Matt and Shannon Heaton Lovers’ Well
songs and tunes from the Irish tradition reflecting on love’s many facets
Gretchen Peters: One to the Heart, One to the Head a trip through the American west in legend and reality
Hanneke Cassel For Reasons Unseen
Scottish style fiddle with fire and grace

Dakota Lullabyy: Albert & Gage
a treasure trove of Americana songs
Claire Lynch Whatcha Gonna Do faith. love. heartbreak, bluegrass, and trains, from one of the best singers around
Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide Danny Boy traced back to its ancient roots and the future of Ireland imagined, among other things
various artists Darwin Song Project the scientist in context of his family and his world, as seen by eight top songwriters from England, Scotland, and the US

Emily Smith and Jamie McClennan Adoon Winding Nith a lively take on lesser known songs from Robert Burns
Lauren MacColl Strewn with Ribbons fiddle that evokes the highlands of Scotland
Bill Cooley The Return Journey a guitar journey of insight and courage
String Sisters: Live a fiery combination of Nordic, Irish, Scottish, and American fiddle
Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play
two of the best, Carroll on fiddle and Doyle on guitar, with songs and tunes from Ireland and Carroll’s fine originals. it’s nominated for a Grammy
Jerry Christmas: Jerry Douglas
master Dobro player’s soulful take on holiday standards
Jim Malcolm First Cold Day
original and traditional songs from highland Perthshire Malcolm’s a great singer too
Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East
sparkling view of the winter holidays with Irish American flair
Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone
the real west in the weathered voice of a music legend
Alison Brown: The Company You Keep
banjo at its most creative

honorable mention
three very different and very refreshing aspects of Americana music, and polka as you’ve never heard it before
Caroline Herring: Golden Apples of the Sun

Sara Milonovich Daisycutter

Johnsmith gravity of grace

Polkastra: Apolkalypse Now

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holiday gift list: American harvest

From the California coastline to the Arizona deserts to the Rockies in Montana, from the Kansas plains to the Texas hill country to the lakes of Minnesota, from the apple orchards of Michigan to the peach trees of South Carolina, from the Gulf Coast to the Maine Coast. the United States is a beautiful and varied country, with people, landscapes, and music to match. Here are several suggestions about music which reveals parts of that, for your holiday gift list, and for gifts to yourself as well.


Albert & Gage Dakota Lullaby

Christine Albert and Chris Gage call Austin, Texas, home these days, and they are fine singers and songwriters, together and separately, so they know a good song when the find one. Recently the pair came across an an old tape made by Tom Peterson, a writer Gage used to know in his native South Dakota, and decided to do a whole album of his work “As we listened to the tape in the truck one night, I felt like we had just struck gold in the Black Hills,” Albert says. Find out what she’s talking about in the haunting past and present of the west in the title track, the funny dash of Louisiana spice If I Die Tomorrow, the affirmation of hope after loss In Tender Loving Care, and the happy swing of Does She Have a Future with Me?

Gretchen Peters One To The Heart, One To The Head

Another take on the American west comes from Gretchen Peters, also a top notch songwriter who decided to lend her gifts to others’songs . Notable tracks include Ian Tyson’s Blue Mountains of Mexico and Stephanie Davis’s Wolves, and an original instrumental by Barry Walsh, North Platte. Tom Russell sits in too.


Tim Grimm, Michael White, Krista Detor, Tom Roznowski, Carrie Newcomer
Wilderness Plots
These five artists look at a different sort of frontier, building their songs around a time where the Ohio Valley, where they all live, was just beyond the edge of civilization. There are songs of hardships, imagination, joy, sorrow, distances, and choices, all framed in the stories that time and place, set in time yet timeless. .

Claire Lynch Whatcha Gonna Do

Claire Lynch’s music is rooted in bluegrass, a bluegrass that lends itself to crossing borders into swing, country, and folk without ever losing its bedrock authenticity. Lynch, who has won a number of awards and been nominated for a Grammy, has a warm, engaging soprano, and she chooses songs of substance that often include a dash of humor, and are just as likely to include a dash of faith. A train song, a song about false lovers, a meditation on love’s hardships and the strength it takes to learn from them, and really fine road song are just a few of the gems she shares here,. accompanied most of the time by her road band, and with a guest shot from Jesse Winchester.

Steve Wariner c.g.p. My Tribute to Chet Atkins

If you’re looking for excellent guitar work on tunes you may know and others you won’t have heard before, then this is the recording for you. You get some history along the way, too: Atkins was a legendary Nashville guitarist and producer who worked with artists ranging from The Carter Family to Mark O’Connor, to a young guy from Indian, Steve Wariner, who became a close friend ( and certified guitar player -- thats’ what the c.g.p stands for). Wariner decide to frame this tribute to his friend, who died several years ago, as a sort of chronology of Atkins’s life, with some original pieces to mark certain times and places mixed in with music Atkins played, composed, and produced. The result is a flowing set of music that’ll keep you engaged and interested through many listenings, . If you’ve a guitar player on you holiday list, be sure to consider this one..



you may also want to see

Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada

Music Road: holiday gift list: Irish music

Music Road: Robin & Linda Williams: The First Christmas Gift

if you are looking for non musical gifts
here's a roundup with ideas for pet lovers, readers, travelers. lovers of Hawaii. Martha Stewart fans...and the list goes on

Gretchen Peters: One to the Heart, One to the Head

One To The Heart, One To The Head


The west is a landscape of transformation and mystery, a place where, if you’re there, your background is transformed, and if you return to the home place, you arrive changed. This is as true, I’ve found, whether the west in question turns out to be the highlands of Scotland, the western counties of Ireland, the Rockies and the Sangre de Cristos and the Llano Estacado of the United States, or the high plains and the northern Rockies of Alberta.

Mystery and transformation are stock in trade in the work of songwriters Gretchen Peters and Tom Russell, so it’s all the more interesting that when they got together for an album of songs about the west, only one -- Russell’s song Guadalupe-- is an original by either of them. Barry Walsh, whose keyboard work illuminates many of the tracks, contributes a fine original track too, and all the rest are covers.

Covers of songs by writers who really know their west it turns out, and know it from differing yet intersecting perspectives. The story opens with Walsh’s reflective instrumental, North Platte. It moves forward with the intriguing triad of Mary McCaslin’s Prairie in the Sky, Bob Dylan’s Billy 4, and Ian Tyson’s Blue Mountains of Mexico. Stephanie Davis’ contemplative song Wolves, about the loneliness and resignation that living in the west sometimes requires, is another outstanding cut. Actually they all are, from Russell's mystic and shadowed tale of pain and longing in Guadalupe, the tinge of bar room wisdom in Sweet and Shiny Eyes, to Rosalie Sorrels My Last Go Round, which could be said to look at the same story as Guadalupe from another place along the journey.

Peters lived in Colorado for some time, and Russell has lived in far west Texas. They each hold the perspective of an artist grounded in American west, along with the perspective of artists who have traveled the world. It’s a project filled with imagination and integrity, which comes through clearly in the song choice, in Peters’ lead singing, and in the collaboration with the musicians who work with her. It’s a collection of songs which will linger with you well after the playing is done, and one to which you’ll want to return.





you may also want to see

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Dakota Lullaby: Albert & Gage

Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s recording of Gerry O Beirne’s song Western Highway is one view of the idea of the west from an Irish perspective that’s worth checking out.

2010 Songwriter's Market: Where & How to Market Your Songs for an interview with Peters.

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.