Beyond The Bog Road

– General Description
The title “Beyond the Bog Road” comes from emigrating to try to find a better life. Irish music thus integrated with the folk music of Canada and America creating rich cross-fertilizations of folk music styles. Some of the tunes are sad and others are uplifting; some are hundreds of years old and others are recently composed. This is a showcase uniting rhythms and sounds from Irish, African, and Spanish cultures, as well as Choctaw, bluegrass, French Canadian, Cajun, Appalachian, blues, rock and New Orleans musical styles. Whew.

Eileen Ivers is considered one of the world’s top Celtic fiddle players, an innovator in Irish music. She plays the fiddle, octave violin, banjo and mandolin with her ensemble, Immigrant Soul, whose various members sing and also play: acoustic guitar, dobro (wood-bodied, single cone resonator guitar) and Irish bouzouki (Irish version of a Greek musical instrument reminiscent of a mandolin); tin whistles, harmonica and Uilleann pipes (national bagpipe of Ireland); bodrhan (an Irish frame drum), djembe (a rope-tuned skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa), congas and your basic Western drum kit; upright bass and electric bass; button accordion and electric keyboards. Double-whew.

Recorded both in New York and Dublin with American and Irish musicians. (A bog road is wet, soggy and filled with peat moss which was used by many for fuel in Ireland.)

This CD is great. PLAY IT.

– FCC Compliant: YES
– Recommended Tracks: 4, 6, 7, 9, 11
– Track Reviews:
1. (4:08) Walk On - vocals by bluegrass singer Tim Shelton; upbeat, very Appalachian sounding, walk to your destiny with God
2. (3:53) Kitty's Wedding - instrumental; good dancin’ music with Irish fiddlin’
3. (4:02) Farewell My Love And Remember Me - voices of Tim Shelton and Niamh Parsons; sweet song
4. (4:00) Canbrack Girls - instrumental; very easy and Irish; Canbrack is County Mayo, Ireland
5. (3:18) Crossroads - instrumental; sad and calling; Uilleaan pipes and low whistle
6. (5:18) Mackerel Sky - instrumental; moderate then goes into double-time; NO SOUND after 5:13
7. (5:03) Linin' Track - rockin’; Deidre Brennan and Tommy McDonnell vocals; Irish immigrants worked for the railroads along with African Americans; blends the 6/8 rhythm of Irish jig “Paddy on the Railway” with the 4/4 beat of African American work song “Linin’ Track,” a tune popularized the black bluesman Lead Belly
8. (7:05) Green Fields of America - Niamh Parsons vocals; very melancholy, a song of farewell
9. (3:17) Le Reve Du Queteux Tremblay - “the dream of the beggar Tremblay”; lively jig; French Canadian
10. (3:44) Irish Black Bottom - Tommy McDonnell vocals; modern tap dancing evolved from traditional Irish dance mixed with shuffling and brushing foot movements that African Americans used to beat out rhythms in songs
11. (2:40) Coming Home - instrumental; longing and smooth