VARIOUS ARTISTS - My Grief On The Sea
Bring Your Own Hammer (BYOH) brings historians and composers together to create new song cycles based on historical sources and to reinterpret song material rooted in the history of 19th century Ireland and of the Irish diaspora. It is not a band, a group, an ensemble or even a collective. If anything, it is a faction, but unlike 19th century Irish factions, who met, armed with sticks and two-handed wattles in fairs and markets, it is armed with voices and instruments and dedicated, as no faction before, to the reinterpretation of historical material in song form.
‘My Grief On The Sea’ is the very first vinyl LP on BYOH. Issued in association with the Dimple Discs label, the album is brimming with superb contributions from Irish and international composers, musicians and singers that include Linda Buckley, Cathal Coughlan, Adrian Crowley, Eileen Gogan, Carol Keogh, Michelle O’Rourke, Brigid Mae Power, Michael J Sheehy, Mike Smalle and Jah Wobble.
The first in a series of major releases from BYOH, this is a collection of songs about the sea, sea journeys and migration to and from Ireland during the 1800s. It criss-crosses the Atlantic, following the remaining threads of lives shaped, in one way or another, by the sea.
There are echoes of words from a bog in Co. Roscommon, sung in grief for a lost lover who has departed overseas in the decades after the Famine (on the beautiful title track, sung by Michelle O’Rourke). There are lines written in the letters of migrants to North America, matched with beautiful melodies (‘Golden Streets, Bitter Tears’ - Adrian Crowley with Brigid Mae Power), while listeners can also imagine being on the quays of New Ross as a ship departs for New York (on the stunning ‘A Pair of Packed Valises (before the Dunbrody), 1849’ - Carol Keogh), and again three decades later (on the melancholy and haunting ‘Old Oak Road’ by Mike Smalle with Cathal Coughlan and Jah Wobble).
Meanwhile, Cathal Coughlan with Linda Buckley are on the roads of Co. Carlow during the 1832 cholera epidemic, as a man returns to Ireland after thirty years at sea (on the complex and poignant ‘The Man with Open Arms’). Back on the water, Eileen Gogan is disguised as a cabin boy as she performs with Neil Farrell (on the sad and beautiful ‘Female Cabin Boy’), while Agu and Tony Higgins are stood on the quays of Dublin as the multitudes depart during the Famine (on the vibrant yet melancholy ‘Embarkation’).
Elsewhere, Mike Smalle with Wally Nkikita trace a man's journey in the opposite direction in 1844 from the time he leaves his life of enslavement in Virginia to his departure from Baltimore (on the melodious and tragic ‘Over The Ghosts’), while Mike Smalle also contemplates the rumble and power of the ocean (on the sparkling ‘The Oscillating Sea’). Finally, Michael J. Sheehy recounts a pair of lovers swimming off the west coast of Ireland as the effects of the Famine drive people from the land and towards the sea (on the starkly beautiful ‘The Weight of Water’).
