Thinking Of Home

By Gwen Orel

Cathy Jordan's "All the Way Home" is a trip back to the Irish childhood you never had. It's her first solo album and it's a departure from the style she employs as lead singer and bodhrán player with Dervish and as a singer in The Unwanted. She's always been an expressive singer with a very distinctive voice, kind of a cross between Stevie Nicks and Mary Black. Here she's particularly sensitive and delicate.

The eleven songs on "All the Way Home" are all favorites from Cathy's Roscommon childhood. She learned them from parents, siblings, uncles and cousins - except for one or two she penned herself. She told me when she was thinking about creating a solo album she didn't know what she would do, but then the songs from childhood got louder and louder in her head, and she wanted to put them down before this kind of life vanished altogether. Listening to this quiet, soothing CD one can picture a young Cathy frolicking in the fields around her house, with her six older siblings. Actually, you don't have to work hard to picture her: there's a school picture of her in the booklet. For lyrics and pictures, visit her website.

With the advent of the Internet and all the distractions that make gathering around the hearth for a sing-song not the only entertainment available people worry that the tradition will vanish, although I suspect that in large musical families music will always take precedence over an episode of "The X Factor."

Included on the album are such well loved songs as "The Bold Fenian Men," "Sliabh Gallion Braes" and "Eileen Mc Mahon" - here somehow made strange and fresh by the production given to them by Swedish musican Roger Tallroth, who plays with the band Väsen. Jordan told me that she chose Tallroth in part because the songs were new to him and that while his tradition is a first cousin to the Irish tradition, it is removed enough so that Tallroth would find his own approach to the tunes. It works beautifully. The arrangement of "The Bold Fenian Men" has a spare, melancholy feel that sets off Jordan's voice like a gem. It's as if you're hearing "glory-o, glory-o" for the first time. The banjo comes in and gives it a pulse to set it moving but the lyrics hang in the air against the rhythm, keeping the song's tragedy foremost.

"Eileen McMahon," a song about a young man dreaming about a lovely girl, captures the feel of a vision. Jordan writes "it was a party piece of my father's," and its oddness and mystery show its odd charm. The sound is of something adrift on a glassy sea. It's almost a lullaby, and it's a standout. Another is Cathy's simple rendition of the traditional "The Lark in the Clear Air."

While many of the songs are well known, "In Curraghroe" is an excerpt from a poem found in a neighbor's house, which moved her because its story of leaving was one she could relate to. She's set it in a minor key, with a pensive tone. The well known "Sliabh Gallion Braes" gets a quiet setting too; sometimes sung as an upbeat anthem, here it speaks of yearning. "Ould Ballymoe" is a bit peppier; a comic song about a man meeting the girl of his dreams, who turns out to be married with children. That's a nice twist on the usual comic songs about men deceiving women.

There are two instrumentals, a sweet one called "The River Field Waltz," written by Jordan to honor how "every field barn, road, and bridge has a name around home," and meant for a particular field, and "The Jordan Jig," an upbeat tune written by Roger for the CD.

Both original songs on the CD are about home. "The Road I Go" is a sweet hymn that Jordan co-wrote with Brendan Graham: "I'll miss it here, but I won't fear the road I go," she sings, which could be a pep talk for any young Irish person planning to leave home for awhile. On "All the Way Home," co-written with Enda Cullen and Ian Smith, she sings "Maybe it's the long road that winds around, maybe it's the sunbeams that kiss the water, maybe it's you that keeps calling me home..." and who the "you" is could be family, country, or anyone.

Tallroth plays guitars and sings on the album, and there are a host of great musicians contributing, including former Dervish band-mate, now The Unwanted Rick Epping on concertina/harmonica, The Unwanted's Seamie O'Dowd on fiddle, Andy Irvine on mandocello/bouzouki, Scottish singer Eddi Reader joins on vocals on "Eileen McMahaon," and many more. Gustaf Lyjunggren from Sweeden plays lap steel/banjo/piano and Norway's Lars Andreas Haug plays tuba. And Michael McGoldrick, one of the best Irish uillean pipers out there (Capercaillie, formerly Lúnasa) appears as well.

"All the Way Home" is a CD that grows on you. Its quiet appeal is almost retiring. If this were a houseparty, you'd be waiting for the fiddlers to come liven things up a bit.

There isn't a lot of variety in mood, but on repeated listening its consistency becomes a strength. Finally, the CD spirits you away to a place that's nice to visit - even if you can't live there.

Gwen Orel runs the blog and podcast New York Irish Arts