duggup

A few weeks ago I was having a coffee with a friend and the conversation turned to music (I dont do sport politics and religion can be “tricky”, so music is really about the only “safe” subject – besides I love finding out what people are listening to), and we discovered we were both fans [...]

One of the more amazing things that shows up every so often in the NPR RSS feed are there “Desk Concerts”. Basically it’s what the name implies, a performer comes in sits at a desk and then does three songs (sometimes more , sometimes less). NPR videos the performance and it goes up on the [...]

Wendy Ealey has a voice that takes me back to smoke filled folk venues of Melbourne 30 odd years ago. With good reason, she has been a performer on the folk scene both in Australia and in Britain since the 70′s.

Hers is a big beautiful voice that resonates with passion as she sings songs penned by herself and others accompanying herself on guitar. Political songs nestle comfortably with love songs to form a quilt of human experience.

A song written by Mary Caruana with Brent Parlane called “Bigger Than This” can be found on on her MySpace site, is a ballsy dig at the treatment of “illegal” immigrants. “Child of My Heart” is the story of grief felt by an infertile woman.

I’ve finally surfaced from my self imposed hibernation and for my first 2009 post, I’ve come across a wonderfully inspiring act called “Songs From the Blue House” hereinafter referred to as SftBH. Me, I love the Blue Oyster Cult and their song “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. Here that song is covered by SftBH. Described as [...]

Brian Gladstone is a singer /finger picking guitarist from Toronto. And why is he being featured today? Well head over to the MySpace site, and pick any song you like (it won’t matter- trust me), if you want my pick try “A Song For Everyone“. Now we are ’bout to have a slight digression (there’s [...]

I’ll be honest, I have always really enjoyed my time in Orkney (we’ve been there twice now). Sadly we didn’t catch Saltfishforty, quite a pity. They are really engaging, I suggest you have  a listen to “The Burray Strathspey and Reel” over at Myspace, and then have a listen to the live recordings they have there [...]

I found Cara Dillon while chasing up Kate Rusby’s old band “Equation” (who we must talk about one day soon). Cara has one of those wonderful Irish voices. Which makes a lot of sense, she was born in County Derry and won the All Ireland Traditional Singing Trophy aged only 14 and then went on [...]