Creative practice: the music of what happens

There is an old folk tale from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology, in which the Fianna-Finn are talking of music. "What is the finest music in the world?" asked Fionn of his son, Oisin. "The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," he answered. They went around the room, and each told what music they believed to be finest. One said the belling of a stag across the water, another the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, and others believed the finest music to be the sound of a lark, the laughter of a girl, and the whisper of a loved one. "They are good sounds all," said Fionn. "Tell us," one of them asked him, "what do you think?" "The music of what happens," said Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."
-Cathie Ryan


The Music of What Happens



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Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

Music Road: Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter's Night concert

Music Road: late summer: two for the road

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now playing: Albert & Gage: One More Christmas

The first song on this recording, the title cut, came about when Christine Albert learned that her parents were planning to sell their home in New York State and move somewhere to the south. That’s a not so uncommon situation, but the emotions of it are not often spoken of in song. Here, Albert and Chris Gage have made a graceful original Christmas tale out of reflecting on that transition. These two, who are married, each had a thriving independent career before they got together a bit over a decade ago. Together, they make one of the most interesting musical collaborations to come out Texas -- or anywhere, for that matter. The dozen tracks on One more Christmas find them reverent with Must Be Tonight and Un Flambeau Jeanette Isabella, playing with the kids on Little Toy Trains, swingin’ with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, thoughtful with River, and sharing a joyous celebration on Go Tell It on the Mountain. Together they make One More Christmas an evergreen presentation of familiar and less well known holiday music. It’s on the couple’s Moonhouse Records label.

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Looking toward Christmas: Kidstuff

Is there a young child, or the parent of one, on your gift list? Here's music to consider for them.

Both parent an child will likely enjoy Down at the Sea Hotel. By turns as whimsical as the title cut, by Iowa singer songwriter Greg Brown, and as thoughtful as Steve Earle’s Nothing but a Child, which is sung together by many of the artists who contribute to this album, it’s a varied collection with top singers and songwriters offering familiar and less familiar songs by other top contemporary writers. Guy Davis singss a bluesy Midnight Lullaby, while Eliza Gilkyson delivers two of the really standout cuts on the disc, Midnight in Missoula and the Carole King classic Child of Mine. Other singers include Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, and Lynn Miles, on songs written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom Waits, and others.

Do kids themselves create songs that will hold up to repeated listening? Well, at the very least you know you’ll get a few topics adult writers might not at first choose. The Football Toad and Papaya People are two of those Rory Block helped the kids in her sons’ school classes bring to life on the album Color Me Wild. Block is known as an intense and powerful blues singer and guitarist, but she says “I also have a really off the wall sense of humor.” That probably came in really helpful when her children were small, which is when she put together this project.

A whole list of well known (and Grammy winning) musicians from Darrell Scott to Amy Grant joined up with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and Paul Reisler’s Kid Pan Alley project to let kids see and experience what it’s like to create a song. The result: some lovely lullabyes, some funny stuff, and, well, a song about socks...

Tish Hinojosa offers a batch of songs both parents and children will enjoy on Cada Nino. Hinojosa is first generation Mexican American, and she draws on this background to remember in song trips to visit her grandmother back in Mexico and talk about some women of border history. Soon you and your kids will liklely be singing along with Hinojosa in both English and Spanish, especially on her hilarious imagining of what the vegetables get up to when we’re not looking, El Baile Vegetal/Vegetable Dance.

Jane Siberry offers a recording that’ll likely have you singing along too, although in a quieter way, as you might suspect from its title, Hush. This is Siberry in a relaxed folk mode, offering familiar songs including We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, All Through the Night, and The Water Is Wide. If you are in a lullaby frame of mind, you might want to look up Padraigin ni Uallachain's music, especially her recording Irish Lullaby. If you're looking more for humor, laughter, and challenge, then check out Celebrate the Difference, from Terri Hendrix.

Music on the album Mother is traditional, from Ireland, and original, out of the lives of the three artists who created this record, Susan McKeown, Robin Spielberg, and Cathie Ryan. It is music you probably have not heard before. Though it was intended for mothers, it works for mother, grandmothesr, and their children: It’s a powerful and loving celebration of the connections and disconnections and understandings that motherhood and making all life’s transitions invites. It’s also music that allows much as much space for the listener as it does for the artists who created it.

There are lively tunes and gracious ones, simple ones and complex, ones presented with sparse accompaniment and those with intricate acoustic support. Spielberg’s piano exploration without words of a walk with her mother, McKeown’s evocation of older times in Ancient Mother, the lively dance of joy of both child and grandparent in Ryan Grandma’s Song, each offer gifts of understanding and connection, as do the other songs on this collection.

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now playing: Peter Mulvey

Notes from Elsewhere



Take the heartland poetry and energy of Bruce Springsteen, the guitar skills and slightly zen outlook of Chris Smither, and the unexpected turns of Chuck Prophet’s work, mix all these together and you’ll have sort of an idea of what Peter Mulvey’s music is like. But not really. Mulvey is his own man, and his own artist, of course, and for a decade and half he’s been doing just fine as that, thanks, crossing the country and the world with his guitar and his songs. In that time, he’s figured out how to get from the beginning to the end of a song -- and not always the same way -- and he’s figured out how to support his words with his guitar, and let the guitar stand alone when that’s called for. For this recording he pulls favorites from songs he’s written over the time from 1991 through 2007, and records them afresh, just the man and his guitar. The songs are fan favorites, and favorites of Mulvey’s fellow musical road warriors as well. Looks like more people are meeting the Wisconsin song poet’s work too, as at the moment Notes from Elsewhere is rising up the Americana airplay charts. Standout cuts include Grace, Black Rabbit, and Every Word Except Goodbye.

Voices: Vince Gill

Vince Gill is a dedicated musician, a down to earth guy, and a man of open spirit who is easily moved to tears. Stars of the music business including his former boss, Emmylou Harris, co-writer Bill Anderson, and wife Amy Grant gathered to celebrate with Gill on October 28th when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, at ceremonies held at the Hall in Nashville. Just in his fiftieth year, Gill was recognized with this honor for both his music and his far reaching goodwill and generosity. Here, he talks about his most recent recording project.

"When you make a record, you try to load it up with the ten best sides you can find, every song that could be a hit," Vince Gill said. "With this it was the same thing, but not every song had to be a hit song." At least one of them, so far, has been. Gill won a Grammy for country male vocal performance for the song The Reason Why, taken from his latest release, the box set These Days.

The set comprises forty three songs, divided into four CDs, one focusing on groove, one on rockabilly sound, one on country, and another on the acoustic sounds of folk and bluegrass. Gill wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, and sings and plays on all, as well. It was a project that evolved, rather than one started with a commercial plan.

"I had this idea," Gill said, "that I wanted to record a song a day, and finish it as much as we could, just spend the whole day on one song. When we got to the end of the week, I thought gee, I have so many songs that I just wonder what they could be, what they could sound like. The band was available, in various configurations, and so we just kept going. By the time we were done, we had thirty one songs and I said, oh boy, I've done it now," Gill recalled, laughing.

"As I started going through the songs,"he continued,"I realized I had material for three different records, and I thought that might be a a way to go outside the box of how things are done in country music, to release three different records close together, and it would also be a thank you for the fans who have stuck with me over the years."After his garage band days growing up on Oklahoma, Gill played in bluegrass bands in Kentucky and in California, until a recording contract brought him to Nashville in 1982. It would be seven sometimes frustrating years until he hit major mainstream country success with when I Call Your Name in 1989, years in which he played on sessions and cemented musical friendships that come into play on These Days, as a range of guests from Guy Clark to Rodney Crowell, to Patty Loveless, Emmylou Harris, and Bekka Bramlett appear, as do not so country artists Diana Krall and Bonnie Raitt, nwere faces such as Gretchen Wilson, and Gill's daughter Jenny. All the guests have meaning and presence to Gill, but his daughter's work stands out. "I think I've been waiting all my life to hear that blood harmony," he said.

So he took the idea of a three album release to his record company -- and they came back with the idea of making it four. "We were still in there finishing things up, and Luke Lewis said, why don't you go in and record enough to make a bluegrass record too? and we'll put them all out together, a four record set of all original songs. That was like throwing gasoline on a fire!" Gill said. The fourth record includes as much folk material as it does bluegrass, and it is a side of his music that Gill has not often put on record, so he especially welcomed the chance to add that aspect to the project.

The forty three songs range from a jazz duet with Krall called Faint of Heart to a stone country rock anthem with John Anderson, Take this Country Back, from a haunting on the road ballad with Lee Ann Womack called if I Can Make Mississippi to full tilt high speed bluegrass gospel on a song called All Prayed Up.Some are newly written and some have been on the back burner for a while. Its a set worth hearing both for the individual songs which may appeal, and for the breadth of the project. Whichever genre of his focus, Gill is able to inhabit it as an authentic part of his musical personality. He's clearly having fun with the rockabilly guitar playing, the many moods of stone country are like second nature to his high tenor voice, the groove based songs extend that country to a varied range of pop influences, and the bluegrass and folk are where his roots are and a place he can still be at at home.

"With this much material, there's always the fear that people will say, oh, ten songs would have been enough," Gill said, laughing. It's certainly true that some songs work better than others, and some work better for different listeners than others. Gill is prepared for that. "I really love seeing people's different reactions to the different songs,"he said."And I just wanted to be creative at every turn."

The Reason Why was co written by Gill and Gary Nicholson, with backing vocals from Alison Krauss. The box set These Days will be eligible for the Grammy Awards in 2008.

creative practice:change

change.
creative practice is all change, people and situations change -- and then they don’t.

living through the changes is sometimes easier to say than to do. change involves waiting, and patience, as well as action, and acceptance.

watching a fire is a good way to think about -- or let go of -- all the aspects of change.


Terri Hendrix has a funny song on her new album, The Spiritual Kind, about how people change and forget to tell you about it. Also, on Hands Across the Water tthere are many songs which help with thinking about change. Two other good songs for this are Carrie Newcomer’s Hold On and Cathie Ryan’s Be Like the Sea, and if you want a bit of history woven in with all these ideas, Caroline Herring’s Trace.

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now playing: Athena Tergis

A Letter Home

Fiddler Athena Tergis has lived in San Francisco, New York, and points between, in Belfast, Galway, London, and points between, and she’s now based in the Tuscan region of northwest Italy. When she decided to call her first solo recording A Letter Home, she was considering all that. Her background also includes playing in Riverdance on Broadway, touring with Sharon Shannon, and backing up many world renown musicians while at TG4, the national Irish language television channel in Ireland. A Letter Home is a collection of Celtic based tunes which are true to the traditions from which they arise but which also allow the listener to hear Tergis’ own instrumental flair and line of thought quite clearly. The music includes a lively set of barn dances and a Scottish tinged strathspey, after opening at a fiery pace with a set of Irish reels. In all there are fourteen tracks : jigs, reels, highlands, set dance tunes, flings, and slow airs, tunes with origins in Galway, Cork, Antrim, and Donegal as well as in the Scottish Highlands, the Irish community of Chicago, and the heart of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.


John Doyle, whose music you’ve encountered before on this site, produced the collection, and there’s really collaborative ensemble work from Sharon Shannon and Billy McComiskey on accordions, cellist Natalie Haas, Ben Wittman on percussion, and fiddler Liz Carroll.

reflections with Adrienne Young

“I’m going to have to put in some beans. We might get a beanstalk and climb up to Nirvana!” Adrienne Young says with laughter. Though it’s not the easiest thing for a touring musician to do, Young, who is committed to sustainable agriculture, keeps a substantial garden at her Nashville home. She also pays close attention to folk history (that beanstalk) and to right livelihood informed by thoughtful philosophical practice (the climb up to Nirvana).

All of that leads to an interesting musical practice, too. The strong lyrical and melodic side of contemporary Americana is where Young’s work fits, that territory often walked by Darrell Scott, Kate Campbell, Dale Ann Bradley, and Jon Vezner. Like each of those very different artists she has her own point of view and well of experience to offer, a range pointed clearly in the first three tracks on her latest album, Room to Grow. All for Good finds the singer looking over a day just past, wondering about the successes and failures, the need to hold and the need to let go, and how to come to terms with that. The second cut is a medley of two traditional tunes, Sgt. Early’s Dream and Maids of Castlebar, a lively conversation between Young’s banjo and Eric Merrill’s fiddle. The third cut, the title track, is maybe a story, maybe an allegory, a tale which sounds as though it could be a story from long ago, looking at the possibilities and the risks of change, framed in one woman’s story and vivid images from nature.

Change, wanted and unwanted, is a theme that runs through the songs on the project. Young wrote most of them on her own or with frequent collaborator Will Kimbrough. In both her vocal style and her writing, she goes deeper and takes more chances than in her two earlier records, which very fairly adventuorus ideas already though with greater historical and less introspective focus than Room to Grow.. “Instead of making something that’s just entertaining, and musical -- though we did that-- I decided the goal was to weave a bit more into it, spiritually,” Young says. As is typical of her music, Young celebrates and investigates rather than preaches, while asking harder questions of life and death than she has before in her work. “There is a season for everything -- I just try to acknowledge what the moment is bringing, and instead of making it into something else, appreciate it for the bounty it holds,” Young reflects, while at the same time acknowledging that it’s a demanding practice.

Growing up in Florida in a family which had farmed for generations but turned to other work by the time Young came along, she felt both connection to the land and distance from it. “I grew up in a house my grandfather built, on land that had been a farm two generations ago but is now a four lane highway,” she says. As her path wound through acting, creating a jazz cabaret show, working in a folk rock group, and studying for a degree in the music business program at Belmont University, Young’s connection to her musical roots and her back to the land agricultural ones became stronger, but for a time she wasn’t able to find the right place for the music that was evolving from that.

“After graduating from Belmont, I worked temp jobs on Music Row for two years, worked for every company, and nobody would give me a break, and I could not save up the money to make a record. I was finally ready to leave Nashville,” she recalls. She e-mailed to a friend telling of this idea. “I was ready to throw in the towel,” Young said, “and he e-mailed back ‘You’ve got to plow to the end of the row, girl.’” That bit of down home advice gave Young a second wind toward her dreams. Though it wasn’t an always an easy path, she soon released her first record, with the title track, called Plow to the End of the Row, a celebration of that encouragement and of that constant renewal of faith needed in music, and in farming.

With that first recording, Young included a packet of seeds, and with her second, The Art Of Virtue, she focused on the theme of evaluation and personal responsibility, paying particular tribute to Revolutionary War era statesman Ben Franklin, and including copy of his rules of guidance for those things. With Room to Grow, she's in the planning stages for group of concerts that will also include an educational component, in co operation with the American Community Gardening Association and Food Routes, a group supporting family farms and the use of locally grown foodstuffs, for which Young is spokesperson. A portion of the proceeds of each CD also goes to the American Community Garden Foundation.

Young is as passionate about personal growth and reflection as she is about the world of farming. Struggles in her own life, and learning to view those and frame them new ways, is part of what shaped the music on Room to Grow. “We really do create our own reality,” she says, “and when we meet challenges head on, and place our full attention on them, we really open the doors for personal growth.”

Musicians from Duke Ellington to Barbra Streisand to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson, as well as writers from Emerson to Norman Vincent Peale to Wendell Berry have left their mark on the course of her work, she says, but it is Young’s care and courage in evaluating change, and leaving space for her listener to do the same, which mark this project. “I thought, maybe what I am going through is maybe what everybody goes through,” Adrienne Young says. “ With this record I was trying to offer my personal experience as something I hope people could relate to, and find comfort for their struggles in the struggles that I try to articulate.”

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John Doyle: Wayward Son

Wayward Son


John Doyle is a man of many talents: gifted producer, very fine guitarist, good singer, and above all that, or maybe bringing it all together, a man of vision whose vision is framed and formed in Irish tradition. Framed so well, in fact, that he’s makes songs from the seventeenth or eighteenth century sound as real as though they were written today. The emotions are as real, and as true always, certainly, but such songs are sometimes performed with a bit of distance or looking over one’s shoulder on the part of the artist -- no worries on that here. Whether he’s singing Jack Dolan’s tale, sharing a lament for lost love in a duet with Kate Rusby on Bitter the Parting, or playing the reels Old Bush and Expect The Unexpected, he’s a man who knows and loves and feels his music, and is well able to share that. If you've ever thought songs of the Irish tradition were getting a bit too well worn, then this is a disc for you.

and if you're looking at the photo above and wondering, yes, he really does play the guitar left handed.

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now playing: Tim O'Brien: The Crossing

Tim O’Brien is a fine singer, songwriter, and player of all sorts of stringed instruments in the country and bluegrass style. He’s from West Virginia, based now in Nashville, after some years some years in Colorado. His family came to America from Cavan and from Donegal, in Ireland, The Crossing is the first of several albums in which O’Brien considers that ancestral experience in real time, as events which happened to real people and stories of their lives, the risks they took and joys they celebrated. It’s a very fine album on its own and a real necessity for anyone interested in Irish and Irish American history to explore.
The Crossing

late summer: two for the road

At the end of summer, these two recordings keep claiming my attention. I find the songs good traveling companions at varied points along the journey, and I always learn something when I listen. That's as true when I hear each of these women in concert, as well, which I recommend to you.

Cathie Ryan The Farthest Wave Hope, healing, and change framed in a deep connection to the music and the landscapes of Ireland and America. The title track travels the path between grief and hope with grace and dignity, and the opening track, What's Closest to the Heart, is several sorts of invitation, in two languages, to risk it all. The rest of the album is as good. Ryan's other albums are equally fine and stay close to the playlist too.

Carrie Newcomer A Gathering of Spirits
Newcomer has been called a poet of the sacred ordinary. That works for the songs here, both serious and funny. Thanksgiving for hymns of geese and a smile in the checkout lane along with thoughts on vocation, the persistence of love, and overcoming hate. And daily walking the walk of love, taking the next step without necessarily knowing anything but trusting all. Newcomer's other recordings are well worth seeking out too.

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Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

Music Road: Songs of the Immigrants

now playing:Gretchen Peters

Burnt Toast & Offerings


The unraveling of of a deeply felt relationship -- and many not so deeply felt ones -- is common territory for songwriters. The downs and ups and the just thinking about it all, and the just surviving it all, are the through line of what Gretchen Peters wrtites about on this album. That she comes at such an often treated subject with freshness and grace will be no surprise to those who know her work, and to those who don’t it’s reason to get to know her.


You may actually know her songs better than you know her name, at least if you live in the United States. Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Ryan Adams, Shania Twain, Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, and Longview are some of those who have found her ideas and her way with words and melody compelling. Though she is based in Nashville, it is in the UK that she’s as well known as a performer as she is as a writer.

Either way you come at this disc, it’s a fine one. Peters has an expressive, conversational soprano with which she illuminates the searching Ghost and the not so complete resignation of To Say Goodbye, and rocks out on the to hell with it story of England Blues. The Way You Move Me is a gorgeous love song, and Jezebel a somewhat enigmatic look at the other side of that, while Breakfast at Our House is a three minute novel so vividly imagined you can smell the burnt toast. The other tracks are equally strong, both on their own and as part of the unfolding story.

now playing: Mary Black

Best of Mary Black vol 2

Mary Black is Irish, no doubt about that, and she brings both her mother's Dublin heritage and her dad's background on Rathlin Island off the coast of County Antrim to all that she does. What she does, though, is entirely her own, songs from the best of contemporary songwriters, well known and unknown.

This is a two disc set, the first a best of selection ranaging across several albums, inlcuidng songs such as Bless the Road, Still Believing, The Dimming of the Day, and Song for Ireland. The second disc is called Hidden Harvest and comprises fourteen tracks (there are sixteen on the first one) of outakes, one offs, and collaborations, among them Ring Them Bells with Joan Baez, Across the Universe with Noel Bridgeman, and Bruach na Carriage Baine with Seamus Begley, and Black on her own with Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Good Morning Heartache, and others. Compiled during a time when Black was deciding if it was time "hang up her boots" as a singer, this is an excellent retrospective, and one that will make listeners glad that the Irish musician decided to continue exploring where her musical path will lead.

I had the chance to speak with Mary Black recently, and an article from that conversation appears in the February 2007 issue of the folk and world music magazine Dirty Linen.

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Music, Time, Memory: Mary Black
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remembering Mrs. Johnson

Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson died yesterday, at the age of 94. A woman who listened and observed with attention and grace, and who loved wildflowers.

Cathie Ryan has a fine version of John Spillane's song Wildflowers on her album The Farthest Wave. Tish Hinojosa has written a very different but equally fine song also called Wildflowers, which she has recorded on her album called Sign of Truth.

Tish Hinojosa: Best of the Sandia

Best of the Sandia: the Watermelon Years

Tish Hinojosa is a major talent, an artist of real substance, a first generation Mexican American who makes that experience the substance of her musical ideas on love, loss, change, connection, and trust. These tracks are taken from projects recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and include a heretofore unreleased duet with Kris Kristofferson. She’s still a major talent a decade an half on from these songs, and these are still worth repeated listening. Taos to Tennessee, Eres Tu, and Prairie Moon are three of my favorites.



read about Hinojosa's latest project Our Little Planet

photograph of Tish Hinojosa and Marvin Dykhuis at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in Austin, Texas

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now playing: Cherish the Ladies

The Back Door


The Back Door is the first recording by the top notch Irish music ensemble Cherish the Ladies. At the time, each of the women in the band was the daughter of immigrants, a fact pointed up in the title track, which was written by singer Cathie Ryan. It is also one of the very first songs Ryan ever wrote. She’s ten years and more into a solo career now, and has grown as a writer. Still this stands well. It is a unique look at immigration through the eyes of an undocumented Irish woman, who could really be of any era. Her concerns, too, are shared with those who come from other lands.

Irish music played and sung in top form by women doesn’t seem such an unusual concept now, but when Cherish first formed, and still by the time of this first recording, it was. Joanie Madden is still leading the group, though the lineup has changed over the years. More to be said on that later, but meanwhile,The Back Door, fifteen years on, would easily best the work of any dozen other groups were it recorded today.

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Voices: Cherish the Ladies

now playing: Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin

Songs of the Carter Family

Songs of Maybelle, AP, and Sarah Carter are known all over the world in many variations. California based folk singers Stecher and Brislin respect the mystery and the musicality behind the straightforward on the surface songs. In some ways, it’s like touching a well worn stair rail, the lines and melodies are so familiar, but the fresh wood roughness of new construction is there too. Tracks include Away Out on the Old Saint Sabbath, Dark and Stormy Weather, and River of Jordan.

now playing: will taylor & strings attached

Will Taylor and Strings Attached

Collaborations

Take a handful of songs from a singer songwriter known for a distinctive style, strip that music down to its essence, write arrangements for the songs that support a jazz/world music flavored backing ensemble, and what do you get? Several years ago, composer and violinist Will Taylor ran with this idea came up with the Strings Attached concert series, held each month at Saint David’s Episcopal Church in downtown Austin, Texas. The dozen collaborations (and two bonus video tracks) gathered on this disc represent s slice of the best shows of this inventive series. Musicians love doing the series because it allows them to see their creations through the eyes of other players, in ways they may not have imagined, and to share them with their audiences in new ways. The audiences love that energy of creation and discovery as well, and a bit of that has been translated to this recorded collection, which was put together to benefit CASA, a Texas organization which focuses on the rights of abused and neglected children. Each of the tracks is worth listening to more than once, and especially outstanding tracks include Eliza Gilkyson's with Easy Rider, Jimmy LaFave’s Never is a Moment, Shawn Colvin’s Set the Prairie on Fire, and Ruthie Foster with Ocean of Tears. Guy Forsyth, Patrice Pike, Ian Moore, Libby Kirkpatrick, Barbara K, Slaid Cleaves, and Sara Hickman are the other artists represented, and there is an original instrumental from Taylor as well. It’s a well presented introduction to an original way of musical collaboration.

now playing: oisin mcauley

Far From the Hills of Donegal

Quebec Reels might indeed seem to have their origin far from the hills of Donegal. The set makes a fine opening track for Oisin McAuley’s first solo album. Best known for his inventive fiddle work with the top Irish band Danu, McAuley was raised in Donegal, took a degree in classical music in Belfast, and lived for a time in Brittany. Now he is based in New England and travels the world playing music with Danu. It’s good to see how he gets these experiences going in a set of tunes which is based in the west of Ireland ideas and adds these perspectives to that style. There's traditional music, including a medley John Doherty’s Highland, Nell Gow’s Wife, and Frank Cassidy’s. Doherty is a particular influence on McAuley, for, the fiddler says. “the way he mixed things up. I thought if he did it could do the same.” Reels, swing, hornpipes and great stash of original tunes play out that idea here. Other notable cuts include Tune for Gillian and Lover’s Ghost.

by Kerry Dexter