Chronologically, this album is a pair of bookends: The first two tracks encompass material I first began playing back in the late 1970s/early '80s; the other three reflect work from the last couple of years. That leaves a goodly amount of space in between for future endeavors, I reckon.
I started planning and practicing for the album in the summer of 2019, but most of the final recordings took place in the spring of 2020. I was probably going to call it "Some Time I Stood Still" anyway, but given the sequence of events then I suppose the title is appropriate. I greatly anticipate moving forward at some point.

ABOUT THE TRACKS

•GOOD MORNING, PRETTY MAID—
I got this song via the William Barrett collection of English folk songs. It's from Gloucestershire, and according to Barrett could be traced through one family as far back as 1750 -- "and it may be still older." My association with it began during my freshman year of college, when I was first beginning to learn and play folk music in earnest. However, the song never did find a place in my repertoire until 2019, when I found an accompaniment and arrangement I liked. There are innumerable stories like it throughout folk tradition, of course -- love at first sight, random encounters of the romantic kind, etc. -- but I appreciated that this one was told, literally, through a he-said/she-said dialogue. I did feel it ended rather abruptly, so I cobbled together a fifth verse, but tried to leave open the question of who's singing it; perhaps it's the Charming Maiden, or could it be a chastened, contrite Boasting Stranger?

•A SCOTTISH TRIO—Three Scottish tunes: "Nellie's Strathspey," "Malcolm the Tailor," and "The Train Journey North," the latter by Tom Anderson -- the Scottish Tom Anderson, not the Shetland Tom Anderson. I learned these through my bagpiper friends Mark Cushing and Donald Lindsay when we were part of a sadly short-lived band in 1980. All three tunes appear on the album "Land of My Youth: American Piping in the Scottish Tradition" they recorded for Front Hall Records (I appear on three tracks).

•THE BLIGHTED LOVER—Recorded by Paddy Tunney (1921-2002), Northern Ireland's "Man of Songs," for his album "The Flowery Vale." Paddy had quite a few talents, among them writing prose and poetry, and he translated a number of songs from Gaelic to English. There seems to be a possibility that "Blighted Lover" was in fact a poem in Gaelic rather than a traditional song, but in any case, I was struck by the dark yet compelling lyrics, and how they are complemented by the haunting melody.

•BESSIE THE BEAUTY OF ROSSINURE HILL—Another love-at-first-sight, romantic-encounters-of-the-random-kind tale, along the lines of "Good Morning, Pretty Maid." Except that this one is from the subset of Irish traditional songs marked by hyperbolic language and playful, even outrageous rhymes, all delivered with a quite obvious wink of the eye. "Bessie the Beauty of Rossinure Hill" (sometimes given as "Rossimore Hill") is thought to be from Co. Fermanagh; the melody is often played as a slow air. I got it from a recording of Jim MacFarland of Derry via the online Irish Traditional Music Archive. There's also a lengthier version sung by Gabriel McArdle of Fermanagh.

•ON THE BROOMIELAW PIER—Found this song in "The First Book of Irish Ballads," published by Daniel D. O'Keefe in 1955. He didn't include any source information or credit a writer, so I'm more than willing to affix the "traditional" tag to it. Whatever its origins, there's a fascinating story in here, and a window on one of the less-explored aspects of shared Irish-Scottish history: the men who journeyed back and forth from Ireland across the Sea of Moyle to Scotland so they could get work harvesting crops -- usually landing at and disembarking from the wharf on Glasgow's famous Broomielaw. We can only guess why the song's narrator is seemingly exiled from his home (apparently in Donegal), and it's unclear if he himself is or was one of "the harvesters," but his existential pain is touchingly evident.
There was no melody given for the words, so I concocted one by making some alterations to a Scottish air, "The Mermaid's Song (Oran na Maighdinn Mara)." Part of the reworked tune forms the basis for the instrumental at the end of the song.
(Also, I indulged my latent progressive-rock tendencies by using a synthesizer to evoke a nighttime seascape.)