bluegrass: Claire Lynch

Love songs, songs of the road, vivid tales from history, stories of family, of change, of choice: you’ll find all of those things in the music of Claire Lynch. Lynch bases her work in bluegrass, and does that so well that she’s received a number of awards in the genre. In that high lonesome sound Lynch finds inspiration rather than limitation, though, branching out from that base to explore aspects of country, Celtic, swing and folk ideas in the songs she chooses and the songs she writes -- and she does that so well that she’s recent been honored with a prestigious United States Artist Fellowship . Before all that recognition, though, her peers knew Lynch was worth paying attention to. Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and The Seldom Scene are among those who have been drawn to record Lynch’s songs. Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Jesse Winchester are among those who’ve asked her to add her voice to their projects.

Take a listen for a moment to the song Kennesaw Line and you’ll readily hear why this is so

Co writer Louisa Branscomb’s three times great aunt saved letters her brothers had written to her during the Civil War, letters which provided the spark for the title track of Lynch’s most recent recording, Dear Sister.. There’s a country blues tinge to the story of loves ups and downs in How Many Moons, and full on bluegrass rules Buttermilk Road/The Arbours. Lynch’s cover of That Kind of Love, written by Pierce Pettis, adds new dimension to an already reflective song. Through the album, Lynch’s clear soprano and thoughtful phrasing are well supported by her regular band mates Mark Schatz on bass, Matt Wingate on guitar and mandolin, and Bryan McDowell on fiddle. Musical guests include Tim O'Brien vocals nd bouzouki and Alison Brown on banjo. It is Claire Lynch’s voice which defines the music on Dear Sister, though.

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Celtic Connections 2013: Images

Celtic Connections, which takes place each January in Glasgow, in Scotland, is an experience like no other. In the snow and sleet and wind of Scottish winter, musicians and listeners gather in venues ranging from a hotel conference room to a historic church to a lively pub to a grand concert hall to, at times, stairwells and concert hall steps to share the bonds of music which connect across time and space and place. The Celtic and the Connection are equally strong elements of the festival, which this past January marked twenty years.

Artists and listeners came from across the word, from Mali and Senegal, from Mongolia and Portugal, from all across the United States, from Canada, from Ireland, and from every part of Scotland as well, rising artists and established stars, sharing their songs and stories in one of the world’s most vibrant music cities.

I’ve been fortunate to attend Celtic Connections through many of the years of its two decade history. The Ireland and Scotland strands of music are those I most often follow. What’s above is a bit of what that looked like this year. If I’ve done my job well, you will hear a bit of the music through the silence of these images.

These photographs were made with permission of the the festival, the artists, and the venues involved. They are copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting that. The artists shown here include Mick McAuley, Cara Dillon, Zoe Conway. Mike McGoldrick, Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill, Karen Matheson, Tim Edey, and Cyril MacPhee..

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Road trip music

Music for a Cinco de Mayo road trip to the southwest: while there is a great deal of fine Mexican and Mexican American music to be heard. my one choice for you is Tish Hinojosa. Take a listen:

The border lands between the southwestern United States and northern Mexico are places where cultures of several sorts intersect, and where’s there long history of political, social, and cultural change on both side of the border. Those things find their expression in music as well.

History and culture play into the celebration of Cinco de Mayo. This day in early May is not Mexican independence day -- that is Diez y Seis, the sixteenth of September. Cinco de Mayo the anniversary of the battle of Puebla, in which Mexican forces, though outnumbered, defeated the French. Mexicans living across the border heard of this and celebrated, and so, Cinco de Mayo celebrations were born in the 1860s. It has become, across the years, a day to celebrate Mexican and Latin identity and community, especially in the United States and Canada.

Culture Swing is perhaps Hinojosa’s most well known album, but there are more than a dozen more to enjoy, music which illuminates her experiences as is as a first generation Mexican American in the southwest.

Aquella Noche, which is an all Spanish album, is a fine choice, as Homeland, with songs which speak of cowboys, border crossings, and growing up on the west side of town in San Antonio.Dreaming From The Labyrinth offers a mystical take on the voyages of explorers, on thoughts during a rainstorm, and on journey on God’s own open road. Our Little Planet, at this writing her most recent recording, finds her continuing to draw these threads of life and culture together with an artist's gift for idea, word, and melody.

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Scotland's music: Karine Polwart

Scotland: it is a country whose people hold both poetic voice and pragmatism, straightforward speaking and lyricism. Karine Polwart is an artist who embodies each of those qualities in the words and melodies she creates, and in the way she draws on folk song tradition while often speaking to contemporary issues such as AIDS, social justice, and ecology.

Her album Traces, at this writing up for several awards in Scotland and the UK holds each of these elements. Polwart is a firm believer in the idea that a song should stand on its own as it is heard, making its own impact regardless of back story. Her songs on Traces and across her career, live up to that standard.

That said, you may like to known that the song Cover Your Eyes was inspired by her thinking about the changes, both in nature and in community, resulting from the Trump International Golf Links in northeastern Scotland. Neither polemic nor protest song, it offers images from memory and nature in a way that might almost suggest the calling forth an ancient spell. KIng of Birds brings in the architecture of Saint Paul’s in London, the flow of history, and the idea of change.

You may also like to know that Polwart has academic background in the study and teaching of philosophy, and as a social worker. She’s been interested in music since she was growing up Stirlingshire, and when she decide to return to that calling, she was a member of Malinky and the Battlefield Band before setting out on her solo career. She releases her albums on her own Hegri label (hegri is the word in Gaelic for heron, Polwart’s favorite bird and one about which she’s written an inspiring song weaving images of nature with ideas of resilence and change) and now her work will be available in North America through W2. She’s the first artist on that label, a project of Canada’s well respected Borealis Records. You’ve met the work of many Borealis artists here along the music road before, among them Stan Rogers and The Once.

In honor of this partnership, in addition to Traces Borealis has released Threshold, an album containing eleven tracks from across Polwart’s recordings, a gathering which includes her own writings and covers of traditional songs. Follow the Heron is there, along with the Dowie Dens of Yarrow, Rivers Run, Medusa, and a live performance of Terminal Star.

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Ireland's music: Heidi Talbot

In Kildare, in Ireland, not so far outside Dublin, Heidi Talbot grew up in a family of nine kids. From her brothers and sisters she heard top chart hits of the day as much as she heard Mary Black and Maura O’Connell. That was a beginning of a love for songs of substance, songs of meaning, and songs which draw on tradition while speaking to present day which lasted from a start out singing in pubs through a number of years as lead singer with the top Irish American band Cherish the Ladies, and which Talbot carried over into her solo career as well. Her recording Angels Without Wings finds her exploring realms of her own songwriting as well as giving distinctive and well thought out interpretations of songs by musical friends.

With her voice and with her words, Talbot is a natural storyteller. On Angels Without Wings she offers stories of love gone right, and not so right, reflections, questions, a dash of humor and a lyrical look at life’s unfolding. The title track, which which written by Talbot’s frequent musical collaborator Boo Hewerdine and her husband John McCusker, is a a story of connection and hope told with both the lyrics and the singing leaving plenty of room for listeners’ own thoughts on hope and encounter. Will I Ever Get to Sleep? is a song anyone who has been around small children will get a laugh out of, as did Talbot, since she was writing the words while she and McCusker were driving back from a gig and Talbot was trying to feed their small daughter her lunch and keep her happy as things rolled along. My Sister the Moon is a lyrical, reflective poetic journey that is at once reassuring and questioning, while Dearest Johnny finds Talbot and McCusker reworking a traditional song to good effect.

It is Talbot's voice which centers the music here (if you do not know her sound, think Alison Krauss and Mary Black), but it’s delightful that she invited a number of musical friends along to the recording sessions in Glasgow. Several of them are folk you’ll have met here along the music road before. In addition to McCusker and Hewerdine, they include Tim O’Brien, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, and King Creosote on backing vocals, James Mackintosh on percussion, Donald Shaw on accordion and piano, and Michael McGoldrick on whistles, flutes and pipes.

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Ireland's music: Dervish

Sligo, in the west of Ireland, is a place of poets, artists, musicians, a land poet William Butler Yeats, fiddle player and composer Michael Coleman, and painter Jack Yeats turned to for inspiration, a place of history and lively twenty first century Ireland as well. Sligo is also home base for the band Dervish.

From the first notes of The Man in the Bog, a jig which opens The Green Gowned lass set, the tunes and songs on The Thrush in the Storm invite listeners to the misty glens, windswept mountains, and wild Atlantic shore of Sligo, and to the lives and stories of its people. There’s as much of story in the music of the tunes as there is in the words of the songs. The choices of music and structure of the album seems much like a fine session shared at the fireside or in the kitchen of an irish evening.

Cathy Jordan is the lead singer of the group, with her main instruments otherwise being bodhran and bones. Brian McDonagh plays mandolin, mandola, and guitar and adds in backing vocals. Michael Holmes is on bouzouki and guitar, Shane Mitchell adds accordion, Liam Kelly brings his flutes and whistles and sings backup as well, and Tom Morrow plays fiddle and viola. The six well know how to work together in service of the stories told in their music. Within the frame of Irish tradition they have created a distinct presence and sound, one that is well loved in Ireland and also in places as distant as Israel and Japan, both places where Dervish cover bands may be found.

Through the twelve tracks on The Thrush in the Storm there are songs for dance, songs of sorrow, songs of love and tales of history, and quiet songs of reflection. Every track is well worth your attention. It is an album which will well repay you to listen to in sequence as the artists have structured it, as the songs and tunes resonate with each other.

In Shanagolden, Jordan paints a haunting story of love and loss framed in melody which has traveled across many years and many waters -- you may hear echoes of Appalachian folk melody along with a hint of a more recent pop song as you listen, though the song and its story stand all on their own. There’s the familiar lost lover’s return in The Lover’s Token, and with words in irish the sad tale of Baba Chonraoi plays out. The Rolling Wave set gracefully pairs two tunes having to do with travels on the waters. All the tracks and just as interesting and inviting, filled with playing and singing at once thoughtful lively, and inviting.

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Robert Burns, Altan, and Mary Black

Words and music have their own unique connection. There is plenty of music of all sorts with no words attached, of course, as there is poetry which may hold its own rhythms but does little to evoke melody. Then there are lyrics which stand on their without music, and those that don’t, as well as poems which have been set, successfully and less to, to music. Not to mention the melodies of familiar songs which are sometimes challenging to hear without adding the words in your head as you listen.

These are all tools of the artist, whether that artist is poet or songwriter or composer or all three. It is poetry month in the United States, which is what has this on my mind. Are song lyrics poetry set to music.? I get exasperated when people say this. They can be, certainly, but that’s not the way the making of a song works, even if it is a poem being set to music. There’s a connection between lyric and sound of lyric, note and sound of music, which makes the song a unique creation of its own, through alchemy which takes place in the ideas of the artist, and then is created anew each time a song is shared and heard.

To go along with these thoughts, the Irish band Altan offers Green Grow the Rashes O by Robert Burns. Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, who would usually have done the singing, was losing her voice that night, and so old friend Irish singer Mary Black stepped in -- and came in for a a bit of ragging from the Scottish crowd (this was a concert during Celtic Connections at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall) for having the lyrics on a paper to refer to. See what she does with them though.

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