Music and seasons of change

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.

You may also wish to see
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Folk with edge: Sarah McQuaid: Walking into White

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Saint Bridgid's day, and music

From Australia to Alaska, through all the counties that make up the island of Ireland, and across the world where Ireland's sons and daughters have made their homes, you will find churches, schools, hospitals, and children named after Saint Bridgid. Though she’s occasionally called Ireland’s second saint -- second to Saint Patrick, that is -- she is as strong is story and legend and as important to the history of Ireland -- and to the women of Ireland -- as Saint Patrick is.

She grew up in Louth, Ireland's smallest county. It is a place filled with mist and mystic landscapes, these days as much as it was in Bridgid’s firth century AD. It is a home of legends from Ireland’s ancient past, a fitting birthplace for a saint whose family included both Christians and followers of the old ways, and whose own legends as the patron of fire and of poetry would borrow from those ancient stories as well.

The first of February is the feast of Saint Bridgid. In Ireland this is marked as the beginning of spring, the turning toward light after winter’s darkness. While the weather in Ireland does not always go along with springtime ideas, there is a change in the light around the beginning of February, a welcome of bright days on the way.

For that reason, Kathleen Conneely’s recording Coming of Spring is a good one to enjoy at this season. The whistle is Conneely’s instrument, and she employs it beautifully through sets of reels and jigs, with a bit of hornpipe and slip jig thrown in, to share of the life and history of Ireland without speaking a word. Growing up in a family who brought their music over to England with them when they came from Ireland, Conneely has tradition in her family and in her heart, and the wisdom of all that comes through in her playing. All of the fourteen sets are well worth your listening -- and Conneely may have you dancing too if that’s your inclination. Standout tracks include the Bonnie Ann set of reels and the Rosemary Lane set of jigs.

There is wisdom in Cathie Ryan’s take on a hymn to Saint Bridgid, as well. On her album The Farthest Wave, she takes the ancient hymn Gabhaim Molta Brighde and has it both reach back across time and be fully present in today’s world by the clarity of her singing and the spare arrangement of the backing on accordion from Scotland’s Phil Cunningham.

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

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Learning about Irish music: a bouquet of albums for spring

With Saint Patrick’s Day and the feast of Saint Bridgid, spring is a time when Irish music is heard all around, in forms from high sweet harmonies to gritty street stories to hearty drinking songs. There's more to Irish music than this, though. Irish music is as varied as its makers and its listeners.

Music, landscape, and history intertwine in in ways direct and subtle, in lives and emotions past and present. In honor of Irish saints and coming spring time here is a look some of the best recordings to take you deeper in to the many ways Irish artists make their music and hand it on.

If you follow the links in this story, you’ll find to longer articles about these recordings and artists, and places where you may hear their music. While you are at it, explore other work by these artists. All of it is well worth your time. Yes, they are all that good.

The title of Mary Black’s album 25 years 25 songs will suggest to you that this singer has been at the making of her music for a while. Thoughtful song selection along with voice and phrasing which illuminate both the narrative and the emotion of the songs she chooses are hallmarks of Black’s work. You’ll also want to take a listen to By the Time It Gets Dark and Stories from the Steeples

Tommy Sands knows quite a bit about narrative too. Almost all the songs on Arising from the Troubles are ones he has written himself, and he’s joined by his son and daughter, both fine musicians in their own rights. The Sands Family is from Rostrevor in Down, not far from the border of the Republic and the North. The songs in this collection raise good questions and put a human perspective into events sometimes made distant by new reports.

Cathie Ryan knows about asking good questions, both in the songs she writes herself, and in the ones she chooses from the tradition and from contemporary writers. Her album The Farthest Wave proves a fine balance of these three aspects of her work, with humour and passion, grief, love, and resilience, myth and present day all given their places through connection of people and land.

Heidi Talbot and John Doyle both have ways of weaving old and new songs and melodies around and through each other with a result that old songs sound fresh and newly composed pieces stand as counterparts to ones burnished by tradition. Take a listen to Heidi work on her album The Last Star and check out John’s collaboration with Karan Casey, Exiles Return.

Niamh Ni Charra speaks of story and legend through her fiddle and her concertina rather, but her stories are as vividly told as those with words, which you may hear on Súgach Sámh / Happy Out The same is true of Donal Clancy, on his reflective guitar focused meditation called Close to Home, while Davy Spillane gets to the heart of Ireland's landscape with the voice of his pipes on A Place Among the Stones.

Matt and Shannon Heaton explore many aspects of connection between Ireland and America, and the season of winter, with their recording Fine Winter's Night. Altan take you straight to the heart of Donegal, and to a few songs which have made their way across the ocean to that far northwestern part of Ireland, on Poison Glen -Gleann Nimhe while Dervish and Grada offer sets of song and tune that invite you in to the feeling of good friends sharing tunes around the kitchen table.

That is a characteristic Irish music holds, whatever season you listen or play it , that of sharing good friendship through music.

you may also like to see
Concerts, Conversations, and Travel: Ireland

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holy week

A time of contemplation, of consideration, of looking at new understandings of old stories, this season of Holy Week, Passover, and turn of season. three albums which make good companions along such journeys:


On The Blue Dress, Shannon Heaton creates a thoughtful and engaging tapestry of original and traditional tunes grounded in the music of Ireland

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis take a fresh look at hymns from several traditions on Calm the Raging Sea

Follow Duncan Chisholm to the Highlands of Scotland, always a place which invites contemplation, on Canaich

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Music for a spring road trip: six albums

One from Scotland, three from Texas, a duo from Massachusetts, and a vintage collection from top Irish American musicians. Love songs, songs about children, travels, journeys, questions, mountains, rivers, markets, birds, trains, fish, grits and fancy pears, and many other things....all fine companions for where your late spring roads are taking you now.

Tish Hinojosa’s own roads have taken her from the west side of San Antonio to the mountains of northern New Mexico, to Nashville’s Music Row, through a time in Austin’s lively music scene, and a current base in Germany. All these experiences play into the music she’s made for Our Little Planet. Sparked in part by her rediscovery of some old work tapes from her time in Nashville, it is in many ways a more country sort of record than Hinojosa has made in a long time. It’s not mainstream country, but it is country of the country, and of Texas and the southwest. There’s a knockout duet with Carrie Rodriguez called Mi Pueblo, and Mountain Lullabye, a song which sounds like a western sunset, and ten more.

Jeff Talmadge comes from Texas too, though he’s been living in Georgia for a while. One of the ways he looks back on At Least That Much Was True is through the evocative Austin When it Rains. Talmadge does not shy from life’s harder questions, as with the songs White Cross and Let Her Go. There’s always a perspective, though, however indirect, of hope and change for the better. The anthem for that, on this record, might be the understated, quietly sung story in Wrong Train.


Jim Malcolm does a good bit of quiet reflection on his album The First Cold Day,
including a tribute to Robert Burns and the gentle pleasures of fishing, in a song called An Hour in the Gloaming. There’s a taste of highland legend in Schiehallion, and a hilarious road trip of his own through the American south in Down in Alabama. That's where the grits and fancy pears come in.

If Hinojosa didn’t get you dancing with her title track for Our Little Planet, then her fellow Texan Terri Hendrix will with Posey Road Stomp, or Wallet, or Bottom of the Hill, or one of the ten other songs on Left Over Alls. One of the great things about Hendrix is that she knows how to be serious through being funny, and also when it’s the right moment o focus on one or the other side of that equation.

Massachusetts based husband and wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton know how to look at a subject from many aspects, too. They base their work in Irish tradition, and for Lovers' Well they’ve sought out your not so usual love songs. A chance encounter is the hinge for the story in Where Moorcocks Crow, waiting and wondering about a lover for Bay of Biscay, love turned to jealousy tells the tale in Lily of the West, love found in taking chances begins the story of Golden Glove. These they interweave gracefully and naturally with traditional and newly composed tunes meant for dancing together, Shannon playing flute and Matt guitar and bouzouki.

Cherish the Ladies is now a a well known Irish American band, but they started before Riverdance, before Celtic Women, and before the work of women in Irish music had received much recognition or respect. They'd been at constant touring for several years before they made their first record as a group, and through changing line ups, they’ve made many since. That first one, The Back Door, catches the group of seventeen years ago in fine form, tunes and songs alike reflecting Irish and American style and connections. It’s worth a look and a listen, once again.

If you’d like to dance -- alone or together -- to sing along, to laugh, to reflect, or just to listen, all of these will serve you well on your late spring travels. What would you add?


you may also want to see

Terri Allard: Live from Charlottesville

season of change: music for autumn 2008

hanneke cassel

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Songs for an Easter weekend

A season of change, this time of year, no matter in what part of the world you find yourself. Also a season on holy days marking this, and calling for contemplation. Here's a song from Kathleen MacInnes, who sings in Scottish Gaelic. Along with it are photographs of South Uist in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. MacInnes' song is called Oran Dhomnaill Phadraig and is a tribute to her father. Take a look at the music in the other links, below, too -- good companions all for a reflective weekend.











You may also want to see

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

and you may also want to check out an episode of Speaking of Faith, called Life, Gardening, and an Orthodox Easter. Gardening and your garden as theology, cosmology, mysticism, and all sorts of other thoughts as host Krista Tippett converses with Armenian Orthodox theologian Vigen Guorian.

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

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If you enjoy what you are reading here, come visit -- and perhaps, subscribe -- to my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

Winter turning to spring

Winter into spring.
Karine Polwart has written a song about this called Follow the Heron, which has become a major favorite in Scotland. Thanks to Cathie Ryan's recording and concerts, it's getting well known in America too.
Carrie Newcomer has written an essay
about looking for signs of spring
Shannon Heaton has been sharing thoughts about winter and spring at her blog, Leap Little Frog

Eddi Reader brings images of spring into thoughtful poetry on her new album

Love Is the Way
with songs such as Dandelions, and Dragonfiles, and Roses. Alison Brown has written a fine instrumental piece called Promise of Spring, which you may find on her album Replay.

and of course, there's always
Vivaldi

Spring does not always come gently -- tornados and floods are but two examples of that -- but it comes. I’m more of a fall and winter person myself, a bit reluctant to let winter go. But every season has its grace, and its music.



you may also want to see
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Blue Skies Above
cathie ryan: the farthest wave
creative practice: winter into spring

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.