Songs from Home | ||||||||||||||
My first solo album was released by Greentrax Recordings on February 1st 2006. This recording achieved a long-held ambition of recording songs and poems put to music from my home region of Angus, alongside other songs composed in my local dialect, inspired by the culture and heritage of the region. Some of the poets featured in the project include Violet Jacob, Marion Angus and George W. Donald. The latter is a less well-known writer who lived and worked for many years in my home town of Arbroath in the 19th century. I began recording at the beginning of April 2005 on a track called Rose Song, which is an old traditional Norwegian song I learned from a great singer called Jon Anders Halvorsen and I translated it into Angus dialect. The theme of the song seemed to fit really well with the other material featured in the project. I recorded my version with Jon Anders’ guitarist partner Tore Bruvoll at Pier House Studios in Granton, north Edinburgh. Tore also features on a couple of other songs. (visit www.bruvoll-halvorsen.no) Recording took place over several months, finally winding up around Christmas 2005 with my 'holidays' taken up with mixing and mastering! The album was self-produced, and as well as singing, I play guitar, bouzouki, cittern and bodhrán. MORE ABOUT THE POETS: MARION ANGUS & VIOLET JACOB Katy Gordon's book on Marion and Violet is the one of the first studies on the poets in over 50 years. I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Katy during The Howe festival in the Mearns in 2006. Buy it here   Aimee Chalmers' book is the first full biography of Marion Angus to my knowledge, and is a fantastic book detailing a lot of her life in my home town of Arbroath, as well as a selection of her poems printed for the first time in a collection since 1950. Well worth having. Buy it here < BACK | ||||||||||||||
