The 4th and last instalment of The Nomad Series is titled ‘The Wilderness’ 18 months ago when the project began, Michael Timmins said:

“This will be an album of new songs. Some of these songs (Angel In The Wilderness, Fairytale, The Confession of Georgie E, etc) we have been playing live for the past year or so and they are bound to find their way on to this volume. There is also a whole set of new songs (and more that are yet to be written) that we will be unveiling on stage over the coming year. We’re not quite sure how these will form themselves into a cohesive album, but these things always work themselves out.”

More recently he’s commented that the quasi-title track, ‘Angels In The Wilderness’ owes a huge debt to the Marilynne Robinson novel “Gilead” (as do many of the songs on “The Wilderness”).

“I have a habit of copying inspiring passages or lines in my notebook when I am reading. I often refer to these notes when I’m doing my own writing or when I’m stuck and looking for a direction. I think I could have copied half of this novel into my notebook. The novel takes the form of a letter written by an elderly, dying pastor to his seven year old son. It is a dense read and the type of book that you only want to undertake when you know you have a good stretch of time to devote to sitting, reading and thinking (such a luxury these days, eh?). Here is a sampling from the book…mull on these thoughts as you stand in line at Target, waiting to return Uncle Ernie’s holiday offerings…”A father must finally give his child up to the wilderness – trust that there will be angels in that wilderness.” …and as you inch closer to the cashier…”We fly forgotten as a dream, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.”

Danny & The Champions Of The World released their new album ‘Hearts & Arrows’ on CD through SO Recordings on 18th July 2010. The follow-up to 2009’s acclaimed ‘Streets Of Our Time’, the album was produced by Tony Poole and mixed by Ted Hutt (Gaslight Anthem, Lucero). The album features an entirely new Champs line-up. It will be released on 180g vinyl on 14th February 2012.

“On the back sleeve of the new record, I’m holding a Stratocaster,” grins Danny Wilson. “A friend saw it and said, ‘Woah, a Strat… Controversial!’ Yeah, too fuckin’ right! I wanna play a Strat, and I wanna plug it into a valve amp, and I wanna play music with my friends, and we’ve got a sax in the band, so let’s have a party. We can play all night, if you want. That’s what I love.”

The choice of this particular guitar is by no means random, and signals a number of profound changes for Danny and his Champions Of The World with their third album. First off, the current line-up of the Champs is very different from the line-up that recorded their 2008 eponymous debut album and its 2010 follow-up, ‘Streets Of Our Time’. Whereas the Champions Of The World were originally a loose and chaotic collective of like-minded souls – so loose and so chaotic that, at any given gig or session, you couldn’t accurately predict who exactly would be performing alongside Wilson – this new incarnation of the group is a proper rock’n’roll band, wholly and entirely committed to being the Champs.

“I love folk music, I always have,” Wilson says. “But I’m so fucking bored of ‘new folk’, and the trendiness that surrounds it, everyone pretending that it’s 1971 again. I wanted to make a totally un-bearded record. My reference points were Black Flag and Bad Brains, Tom Petty and Thin Lizzy, not Nick Drake and Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. Forget 1971, this is 1976: Dr Feelgood, Nick Lowe, just great rock’n’roll.”

Be assured, Hearts & Arrows sounds much more alike Tom Petty than Black Flag (who are name-checked on ‘Can’t Hold Back’), but it is also the rockingest waxing the Champs have thus far delivered: you can hear it in the hopeful pulse of opener ‘Ghosts In The Wire’ and the purposeful, melodic hurtle of its chorus, the chiming riffs of the title track and its infectious call to freedom, the urgent gospel-y overtones of ‘You Don’t Know (My Heart Is In the Right Place)’. The album also harbours some of Wilson’s trademark heartbreakers, ballads and laments… Some of his best, in fact, as the potent mourn of ‘Too Tough To Cry’, and his fair-minded, Guralnick-inspired meditation upon Elvis – ‘Colonel & The King’ – prove.

To best capture both sides of the Champs’ temperament, Wilson worked with two particularly adept studio magicians, men who know the ground upon which the Champs tread. The album was produced with Tony Poole, once guitarist with Starry Eyed And Laughing, mid-70s rockers of a kin with Nick Lowe and Brinsley Schwartz, and a man Wilson describes as “a genius guitarist, who comes from a time when the Hippy-ness of music was coming to an end and pub- and punk-rock was rising up. I went back to the source of the sound I was after with Tony.”

The album was mixed, meanwhile, by Ted Hutt, former member of Flogging Molly now better known as one of LA’s most in-demand producers, his CV including key releases by Lucero and Gaslight Anthem. “Ted’s a punk-rock guy who’s well into his Springsteen and his Tom Petty,” grins Danny. “He brought an edge, and an urgency, to the record.”

The lion’s share of the credit for Hearts & Arrows, however, belongs to Danny Wilson and his Champions Of The World, for their songs that wear your heart on their sleeves, for the timeless melodies played with a glorious desperation, like we’re only moments from the curfew, like this were the sweetest encore ever given. Cos Danny’s got a Strat, and he’s gonna plug it into a valve amp, and he’s got a sax in the band, so let’s have a party. They can play all night, if you want. That’s what they love.

The idea for volume 3 is to create an album of music based around the psychedelic, blues inspired forays that we are so fond of venturing off on, on stage. We are referencing Miles at the Isle of Wight deep in his Bitches Brew phase; Captain Beefheart and his Mirror Man psychoses; The Birthday Party live at the Electric Ballroom circa 1981; Neil and Crazy Horse in the back room at SIR….overdriven and thick with electricity.

When I started to work on the songs for Sing In My Meadow my initial ambition was to write four or five new songs, add a few covers to the mix and then re-work and re-energize a few songs from our catalogue with the spirit and attack that we use on a song like Hunted. But once I holed up at Margo’s farm with my newly refurbished Howard Roberts (thank you Tim), my faithful Princeton II, my awesome Fairfield Circuitry drive pedal, and then plugged in and started to wail, it was just too much fun to stop. I wasn’t too concerned about structure or the intricacy of the lyric. I just wanted attitude and something to drop in the lap of Al, Pete, Jeff and Margo. I knew if I brought them something with a spark to it, they would do the rest. I ended up writing eight new songs for the album.

I’ve been blasting my face with overdriven everything, trying to come up with a sound that is rude and ugly, but at the same time, is just plain fun to listen to. I’d send the days mixes off to Pete, Marg and Al every night and they’d get back to me with their comments and I’d adjust and tinker and tweak and try and see if I could get it all just a little bit louder, a little bit nastier, a little bit more gnarled and grouchy and crotchety in keeping with our age and temperaments. I think, I hope, we have succeeded. I want to make this the album that you put on when you’re trying to clear your living space of partygoers that have overstayed their welcome and you find your new BFF when that one person says, “hey, this is pretty cool…what is this?”.

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Cowboy Junkies : Sing In My Meadow

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180g Single LP.
24th October 2011

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We’ve loved Carrie Rodriguez for a while now, we went to see her in Texas at SxSW last year and started the ball rolling on getting this album on the label. The album in question is ‘Love and Circumstance’, an album of cover versions that show off Carrie’s influences and musical range.

Over the years, as part of a duo (with Chip Taylor), a side-woman (with Alejandro Escovedo), and solo artist, Carrie Rodriguez has dazzled critics and audiences alike with her prowess as a musician. And once again, Carrie delivers on Love & Circumstance, embracing twelve songs that have inspired, and influenced her life and music.

Carrie says, “In 2009, after a very busy few years, I felt like I should take a step back and assess the situation, the idea of doing a covers record had been developing for a while, and had been prompted by requests I get at every show for a recording of some of the covers I play live, especially ‘La Punalada Trapera.’ I stated to wonder what kind of album I could make that would be a fit for that song.”

“It was very important for me to go back to my roots with this record and concentrate on what was important to me,” Rodriguez explains, “songwriters like Richard Thompson, Townes, Hank, they’re the ones who initially inspired me.”

Love & Circumstance was produced by Lee Townsend (Bill Frisell, etc), and was recorded with Hans Holzen (guitar), Kyle Kegerreis (bass) and Eric Platz (drums). As might be expected from her and Townsend’s A-list connections, the list of players on Love & Circumstance includes a sterling roster of music greats including Bill Frisell (guitars), Greg Leisz (pedal steel & slide guitars), Aoife O’Donovan (background vocals), and Buddy Miller (background vocals).

“Greg Leisz is the greatest pedal steel player in the world, and for someone with a Bill Frisell record collection getting to play with him is a dream,” gushes Rodriguez, reminding us that despite a decade and a half in the trenches she’s still a young (31) and impassioned music fan.

Those who have been following Carrie Rodriguez throughout her career will find Love & Circumstance an exciting addition to her oeuvre, new fans will get a glimpse of the rising star’s influences; both will revel in the sterling musicianship and heartfelt interpretations of new and classic songs.

“This is a really important record for me,’ says Rodriguez, ‘not just because it gave me the chance to go back to my roots, but also because it celebrates my family.”

Carrie wraps herself around songs from influences and peers such as John Hiatt/Nick Lowe/Ry Cooder/Jim Keltner (aka Little Village), Buddy Miller & Julie Miller, David Rodriguez, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Richard Thompson, Townes Van Zandt, M. Ward, Merle Haggard & Bonnie Owens, Hank Williams, Lucinda Williams, and others. She even pays homage to her family heritage with the soulful Spanish ballad ““La Puñalada Trapera,” popularized in the 1950s by her great-aunt, famed Mexican bolero balladeer Eva Garza.

Flattered by the notion, singer-songwriter Richard Thompson explains, “It is always a thrill to write a song and have someone else take it to unexpected places. “Waltzing’s For Dreamers” was conceived as something rather Celtic, and I’m delighted that Carrie could pull it into another genre. Thank you for the heartfelt and impassioned performance.”

David Rodriguez affirms the sentiment, “Your song is like your child. Nothing is more pleasing to its composer than to see it, like this one here – warmly nestled in a place called ‘home’.”

It’ll be released on vinyl this autumn and include a download code for this album and also a code for Carrie’s follow up mini-album ‘We Still Love Our Country’, information on this can be found here.

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Carrie Rodriguez : Love And Circumstance

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180g Single LP, Gatefold Sleeve.
10th November 2011

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First released in 1992, Play Me Backwards holds a very special place in the rich 50-year recording history of Joan Baez. The album’s sessions brought her back to Nashville for the first time since the series of four albums she had recorded in Music City between 1968 and 1971. Returning to Nashville’s familiar environment two decades later and collaborating with producers Wally Wilson and Kenny Greenberg proved to be a perfect fit. Joan reaffirmed her unique ability to identify and interpret successive generations of songwriters whose music had the ability to speak to her: Mary Chapin Carpenter (“Stones In the Road”), John Stewart (“Strange Rivers”), John Hiatt (“Through Your Hands”), the duo of Janis Ian and Buddy Mondlock (“Amsterdam”), and Ron Davies (“Steal Across the Border” and “The Dream Song,” co-written with Joan). Play Me Backwards also contains four songs that Joan co-wrote with her two producers (“Play Me Backwards,” “Isaac and Abraham,” “I’m With You,” and “Edge Of Glory,” one of the last occasions on which she contributed to an album as a songwriter.

Adding historic provenance to this reissue is a second disc containing previously unreleased demos of 10 songs which were contemplated by Joan and her producers, heard here for the first time. Some of the songwriters are not widely known, such as the late Mark Heard (“Rise From the Ruins,” “Lonely Moon”), John Hadley (“The Last Day”) or Gary Nicholson (“Trouble With the Truth”); and one writer is not known at all (“Medicine Wheel”). On the other hand, there are additional songs from Janis Ian (“We Endure”) and Ron Davies (“Dark Eyed Man,” originally recorded by Kevin Welch as “Dark Eyed Gal”); and one that Joan wrote with reenberg’s wife, the respected Christian artist Ashley Cleveland (“In My Day”). Fans will be immediately drawn to Joan’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Seven Curses” (his adaptation of the traditional Child ballad “The Maid Freed From the Gallows” aka “Anathea”), the only one of these songs previously recorded by Joan (on the live album Bowery Songs in 2005).

By all accounts, Play Me Backwards is said to be the album that began the renaissance of Joan Baez’s career that has continued through 2008’s Grammy-nominated Day After Tomorrow. Play Me Backwards is an album whose impact will continue to reverberate for decades to come.

Original release date: October 1992
Produced by: Wally Wilson and Kenny Greenberg
Album cover design by: Tom Dolan
Album cover art direction by: Mick Haggerty
Album cover photography by: Melanie Nissen
Additional musicians and vocalists: Greg Barnhill, Richard Bennett, Ashley Cleveland, Chad Cromwell, Jerry Douglas, Carl Gorodetzky, Kenny Greenberg, Vicki Hampton, Mike Lawler, Bob Mason, Edgar Meyer, Jonell Mosser, Steve Nathan, Cyndi Richardson, Tom Roady, Chris Rodriguez, Pam Sixfin, James Stroud, Marcos Suzano, Willie Weeks, Kristen Wilkenson, Wally Wilson, Glen Worf
Issued on cassette tape: Virgin Records 86458-4
Issued on CD: Virgin Records 86458-2
Re-issued in 1996 on CD: Guardian Records 54615

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Joan Baez : Play Me Backwards

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180g Double LP, Gatefold Sleeve.
26rd May 2011

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At the tail-end of the Summer, just before work began on her second album, Laura Marling sat down with producer Ethan Johns to discuss her ambitions for the record. She gave Johns just two instructions: “This is very much my stepping stone,” she told him. “And this is England.”

I Speak Because I Can is indeed a coming of age, its 10 songs imbued with a richness and a ripeness and a sophistication. It is also an album marked by its quintessential Englishness. For all its American instrumentation, its shades of Crosby Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, these songs are no pale Americana interpretation; rather they are tales of snow-covered England, of blackberries and cold noses, songs that are deeply rooted in place. It is as if in the months since we saw her last, Marling has sought out her own identity, and found herself to be thoroughly English, unapologetically female, and a fully-fledged musician in her own right.

Marling was, after all, just 17 when her debut Alas, I Cannot Swim was released in the Winter of 2008. Alive with stories of past lovers, night terrors and hearts that tick away like hourglasses, Alas was an exceptional record, revealing Marling to be in possession of not only a voice that was pure and bright and uncommonly beautiful, but also a remarkable songwriting talent that belied her years. Its successor, recorded during Summer 2009 at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios near Bath and Eastcote Studios in London, revels in a new maturity, at points, Marling’s voice sounds a little harder, a little world-wearied, alongside a lyrical bluntness, a thematic darkness, a realisation that, as Marling puts it: “I’m not good all the time, but I try to be.”

Marling, credits many of Johns’ earlier records (among them Ray LaMontagne, Kings of Leon, Emmylou Harris, Sarabeth Tucek) with kindling her interest in music, had long admired his way of working, his use of reels, his quiet, traditional methods of production. Recorded live, I Speak Because I Can , Hero includes contributions from many of Marling’s peers — among them Pete Roe, Marcus Mumford, Ted Dwane, Tom Fiddle and Winston Marshall, who provide a robust musical counterpoint to Marling’s lyrical introspection. “As much as I love those boys, I’m not in control of them; they want to play fast and hard,” she says. “But I think that’s what’s nice about the record: I have my bit of incredible self-indulgence and then they kick it back into real time.”
Perhaps it is a sign of Marling’s growing maturity that there is a strand of womanliness that runs throughout this album: “I think it was feeling the weight of womanhood, or the greatness of it, coming to terms with it is something that I thought was quite interesting,” she explains. She was inspired, she says, by “the changing role an idea of Women throughout history.”

Accordingly the album’s penultimate track, the exquisite title track I Speak Because I Can, is in part rooted in the story of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. She says “the idea of her waiting for him to come home, and the very old-fashioned sense of man and woman, and monogamy, that’s quite amazing and truly fascinating. That is probably the most pretentious thing I can say about the album.” In What He Wrote, we find a song inspired in part by a series of wartime love-letters and diary entries Marling saw published in a newspaper: “The writing that they did, I love that, the way their passion is expressed. And you could feel in their letters, a longing to be with each other.” There was one diary passage in particular that stood out to Marling: “It was about letting him go, physically letting go, how you can’t let go, and about turning to stone. And I suppose it’s like what a break-up is — you just can’t let go of it, no matter how much you want to. And I thought it was such a beautiful thing, as a metaphor for forgiveness, and letting go of things that you need to, or confronting things that you need to.”

Alongside these broader themes, I Speak Because I Can also addresses more intimate subjects; the intriguingly-named Alpha Shallows, for instance, Marling explains as “Kind of a codename, because this was kind of personal. And not that I don’t write personally, it’s just that I do it mostly at arm’s length. I think when I wrote it I was worried that perhaps it was almost a bit too pathetic. And so in my diary I was referring to people as Alpha Shallows and stupid codenames and… God forbid anyone ever read my diary.” She says she has “forgiven” her younger self for writing the more obviously personal songs that appeared on her first EPs and even her first album: “the first songs you write are always going to be about yourself. It’s about finding the right balance of experience and turning that into something that’s very much meaningful to you but not too blood guts and hearts.”

One of the album’s undoubted highlights, however, is also one of its most intimate songs, Goodbye England, a rumination on love and independence and also a wistful tribute to the English countryside that seems to hinge upon the line: “And I never love England more than when covered in snow.” “All of this album is a lot about my childhood,” Marling says, “and I grew up in the countryside and you can hear a lot of the countryside in this album. I feel very English. And I obviously look bloody English. And I’m away on tour a lot and sometimes, especially in the Winter, I want to be at home, and I want to live in the house that I want to live in when I grow up, with a fireplace on a farm.” She has, she says, a very vivid memory of walking near her childhood home up to the local church, “When I remember my Dad saying ‘Please bring me back here before I die.’ I was probably about 9 when he said this to me and I remember thinking ‘What an horrific thing to say!’. But I hope I go back there before I die. I’ve got quite long roots in England, and because I grew up here, the beauty of England resonates with me more than any other kind of beauty. And I think that ends up defining you as a person, where you’re from, and you can acclimatise to anything, but the wind of England shakes my bones.”

A couple of years ago, Marling recalls, she was gripped by a quite crippling fear of death, a subject that surfaces subtly throughout this record. “I don’t think you ever get over that fear of death, but it was causing me panic attacks which became uncontrollable, so I had to face it,” she explains. “With a fear of death comes a fear of insignificance, and I thought well, whatever happens I’m going to be ok because I’ve done some things. It’s not about being something as in being famous; it’s being something as in being something to someone. And for me, the idea of being something is actively doing something with your life that positively impacts other people. If you can make people’s day a bit better. You don’t have to fix their problems, but you just have to make them feel a little more secure.”

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Laura Marling : I Speak Because I Can

DIV028LP
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180g Single LP, Gatefold Sleeve.
23rd March 2011

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Our brief journey with Vic Chesnutt began in the mid-90’s when we stumbled upon his album, West Of Rome. We had just begun work on the songs that would become Lay It Down and decided to throw the title track of Vic’s album into the mix. We worked on the song for weeks but were never able to match its wistfulness, its forlornness or its honesty. We were never able to replicate the way the song just simply and effortlessly existed as recorded by Vic.

Several months later, when our album was released, we invited Vic to join us on a leg of our North American tour. Throughout that tour, we watched Vic every night as he stymied, infuriated, intentionally pissed-off and then subtly disarmed and won over audiences across the US and Canada. There was no secret to his game – just him, his guitar, and his uncanny voice, which could be grating and beautiful in the same breath, and the flat out honesty of his songs.
After that tour we would cross paths occasionally out on the road, or when he came through Toronto, but mainly we kept in touch through his music. Our last get together with Vic was in 2007 when he came to Toronto to help us with our Trinity Revisited project. During the taping of Trinity we had an opportunity to do a bit of playing together and we came up with the idea of doing a Chesnutt/Junkies album, featuring his songs with us as the band. The last time that we talked he said that he was working on a song cycle centered around his childhood in Georgia and maybe it would become the album we would record together. I was on a cell phone in a parking lot outside a gig in Maine and he was in a van driving on the QEW heading to a gig in Toronto. And that was all.

We tried to approach Demons with the same sense of adventure that Vic undertook in all of his projects (or at least that is the way his recordings sound). We let happy accidents happen; we tried to invest his songs with the same spirit and the adventure with which they were written, at the same time investing them with our own Northern spin. Exploring his songs and delving deeper and deeper into them has been an intense, moving and joyous experience. I don’t think Vic would have wanted it any other way.

Michael Timmins
July 2010

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Cowboy Junkies : Demons

DIV027LP
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180g Single LP, Embossed Sleeve.
2nd February 2011

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It’s been an interesting couple of years for Fionn Regan. Never one to take the easy route, Fionn could easily have made a safe and predictable follow-up to “The End Of History”, his 2007 Mercury-nominated and critically lauded debut. He could have simply recorded another collection of beguiling acoustic beauties. He could have made The End Of History part Two. But that would have been too easy. Instead Fionn has returned with a very different second album bursting with ideas and a set of dazzling new tunes which are sure to reaffirm his reputation as both maverick genius and one of the most talented contemporary singer-songwriters around. If The End of History was the sound of the countryside and woodland lanes The Shadow Of An Empire is the sound of towns and dimly lit streets; heartfelt and with a ragged edge. Regan has ploughed himself a new furrow.

It was during a period of great global upheaval, whilst touring his debut album for two years worldwide, and in particular across the US, as Fionn puts it – “seeing the world, the bone structure, the pulp” – that he began work on its follow up. It seems natural that his response was to become more outward looking and in The Shadow of an Empire this manifests itself in a collection of songs that are peopled with characters and conversational dialogue. The often witty vignettes are used to facilitate more complex soul-searching.

Fionn again produced the album himself but the journey to this end wasn’t as straightforward this time around. Fionn parted company with Lost Highway last year when it became apparent that they had different ideas for the album. Fionn bought himself a trident desk and a tape machine, set up in a small, disused factory space in Co. Wicklow, Ireland and set about making the album without interference. Never short of champions, Jeff Barrett was bowled over by the results and quickly signed him up for what was Heavenly Recordings first release of 2010 and Diverse Record’s first of 2011!

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Fionn Regan : The Shadow Of An Empire

DIV026LP
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180g Single LP.
2nd February 2011

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In late 2008, my family and I were given an opportunity to spend three months in China. We were boarded at an elementary/middle school in the small town of Jingjiang, situated on the Yangtze River about two hours from Shanghai. My wife taught English at the school, my three young kids attended a few classes and I spent my days exploring. We also did as much travelling as my wife’s schedule would allow. On one massively intense trip, we journeyed to the birth villages of each of my daughters (two of my three children were adopted from China). But, mostly, we inserted ourselves into the day to day life of Jingjiang.

Jingjiang is a small town in relative terms. Its official population is 650,000, but its actual population is closer to 1,000,000, a mere speck on the Chinese demographic landscape. We were welcomed with open arms by anyone in the town who could put three English words together. Homes were opened to us, we were feted at every possible occasion and in every possible style, we created friendships that are only possible under such intense and foreign conditions and had adventures that have already become part of our family lore. It was a storybook experience, overwhelming to say the least, perhaps even life altering for my daughters.

Most of the music that I heard in Jingjiang was uninspired Taiwanese pop and Euro-pop, blaring from tinny speakers in every shop and out of every taxicab window. The most interesting music was found in the parks, where the traditional music was played. On most Sundays, I would head down to Renmin Park and sit in a tiny pavilion that was home to a music club performing music from the Beijing opera. Every city, town and village in China has a Renmin Park. Translated, it means People’s Park and it is in the park where the community’s social life is conducted.

Depending on the time of day, different musicians would be gathered with their erhus, pipas, shangxians and various percussion instruments. There was never any shortage of singers. Each would wait their turn and then stand up and belt out a song written long ago about love lost, stolen or betrayed. Most of the players were great, most of the singers were not so great, but they all approached the music with passion. I was always welcomed with much fanfare. No one in the “club” spoke any English and all I could master in mandarin was “happy new year”, so no words were exchanged, but none of that mattered. I recorded dozens of performances.

About half way through our stay I caught a lucky break. I was introduced to young man by the name of Eric Chen. He spoke excellent English (he learned it by watching American movies) and he was a music freak. He was also desperate to talk to someone about music, because, as he told me on our first meeting, he was “not only the only person in Jingjiang who had ever heard the music of Radiohead, but the only person who had ever even heard the name Radiohead.” We quickly became friends and we spent a lot of time together. One day there was a knock on the door and it was Chen carrying an almost portable stereo system and dozens of CDs. My introduction to the Chinese rock scene began in earnest. Chen introduced me to the ground-breaking, emotionally gut wrenching music of He Yong; the dour, introspective sounds of the brilliant Dou Wei; the prog-rock tinged musings of The Tang Dynasty; the melodic Cure-meets-Steve Earle pop of Xu Wei and the inspired innovative sounds of Zuoxiao Zuzhou (ZXZZ). He introduced me to dozens more artists who had sprung up on the Chinese rock scene since the ‘new openness’ of the mid -1980’s. He showed me videos of legendary concerts in which some of these artists had performed and cemented their reputations. It was a great awakening for me. Two of the artists that I really became attached to were Xu Wei (but only his first album, as all of us hipsters know full well) and ZXZZ. There was something about Xu Wei’s guttural voice and simple, haunting melodies that really attracted me and the breadth and unusualness of ZXZZ’s work still fascinates me today (sort of a Leonard Cohen meets Nick Cave by way of Tom Waits). We decided to cover a song by each of these artists on Renmin Park (ZXZZ’s “I Cannot Sit Sadly By Your Side” and Xu Wei’s “My Fall”). Chen translated the lyrics and then I turned those translations into song lyrics. We also asked ZXZZ to contribute an original lyric and vocal performance to “A Walk In The Park,” a track we had recorded.
When we first arrived in China, one of the things that struck me immediately, aside from the poor air quality, were the sounds. Not only was it loud and unrelenting, but there were so many textures to the sounds that were completely foreign to my Western ears. So I wrote back home and asked brother Pete (Timmins) to pick me up a high-end portable digital recorder and carried it along with my camera wherever I went. I’d spend hours in the park walking around and recording music and conversations, exercise classes and badminton games; in the streets I’d record the intense sound of the traffic; at the school I’d wander the halls and sit in on some classes and record the students chanting their lessons or capture them at their morning calisthenics. Even the calls of various hawkers, selling everything from vegetables to propane drifting by our apartment window – I recorded it all.

I knew that I wanted to incorporate these recordings into the album we were creating, but I really wasn’t sure how to go about it. Eventually I bundled them up and sent them to our friend Joby Baker in Victoria, BC, who along with Alan (Anton) proceeded to build musical structures with some of the field recordings as the foundation, after which Pete and I began to work on them in our studio, taking out elements that didn’t work for us and adding our own elements. And then I sat with them and wrote melodies and lyrics. Finally Margo (Timmins) came in and transformed them into Cowboy Junkies songs.

Renmin Park is a reflection of my family’s adventure in China. It’s a fictional love story about two people whose two worlds will forever keep them apart. It’s a thank-you letter to an obscure city and the people who opened up their lives to five very strange strangers. It’s a document about a bewilderingly complex culture that is, once again, experiencing a massive upheaval. It’s another chapter in a band’s ongoing twenty-five year journey.

Michael Timmins (March 2010)

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Cowboy Junkies : Renmin Park

DIV025LP
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180g Single LP, Embossed Sleeve.
15th November 2010

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“I’d Rather Go Blonde” is the eighth the eighth album in a twenty year career that has seen McEvoy establish herself as one of Ireland’s most accomplished singer / songwriters. Never one to shy away from the big issues, this album sees McEvoy tackling themes such as alienation, hypocrisy, recent Irish history and romance. The songs are typified by a lyrical élan and often leavened with a touch of humour – “For Avoidance Of Any Doubt” features a plaintive soul using her solicitor to berate an absent lover for not returning calls, and the title track is built around a phrase that just made McEvoy laugh!

As she says herself, “I always try to express myself clearly and honestly. I was the odd one, the tubby girl with glasses who had to go to violin lessons after school. The ray of sunlight was the radio with its music. The escape was learning to sing and play instruments and play with others and write and just get out there. Anyway this album is all me, and I am very proud of it.”

Her music has evolved and developed over her career and this album is a confident statement. Her continuing absorption and influence by other forms of music continues to delight and confound any listener who may attempt to pigeon-hole her simply with reference to the winsome ‘Only A Woman’s Heart’ which appeared on the massively popular album “A Woman’s Heart” back in 1992. That was then, this is now! “I’d Rather Go Blonde” has been mixed by Ruadhri Cushnan’ who did the breakthrough Mumford & Sons record of this year and has a wilfully contemporary relevance.

Throughout her career, McEvoy has earned accolades and picked up various awards – not just for her work but also for the super high-end audio approach she has taken on various albums.

I’D RATHER GO BLONDE

Eleanor McEvoy

Recorded at Westland Studios, the team, of Eleanor McEvoy, Mick O’Gorman, Peter Beckett (co producers of LOVE MUST BE TOUGH) and Ciaran Byrne Engineer, has expanded with the addition Gavin Fox (Ex Idlewild), Ross Turner (Cathy Davey, Jape) and the Mixing skills of Ruadhri Cushnan (Mumford and Sons)

All Arrangements Eleanor McEvoy
Line-Up:
ELEANOR McEVOY – Vocals, Guitars, Violins, Violas, Piano, Hammond Organ, Keyboards
PETER BECKETT – Piano, Keyboards, Harmony Vocals
GAVIN FOX – Bass
ROSS TURNER – Drums, Percussion
Plus
GERRY O’CONNOR – Banjo (Deliver me, Away From You)
PAT BURKE – Gregorian Chant (Deliver Me)
CIARAN BYRNE – Harmony Vocals (Deliver Me)

Produced by Mick O’Gorman, Eleanor McEvoy and Peter Beckett; recorded by Ciaran Byrne; mixed by Ruadhri Cushnan; mastered by Ian Cooper; mastered for vinyl by Miles Showell

Available to buy

Eleanor McEvoy : I'd Rather Go Blonde

DIV023LP
Album Information
180g Single LP, Gatefold Sleeve.
25th September 2010

£21.00Price:
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Eleanor McEvoy : Love Must Be Tough

DIV012LP
Album Information
180g Single LP

£17.00Price:
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