Concert Reviews
Here's just one of the many concert reviews that appear in every issue.

Eileen McGann
Johnny D's, Somerville, MA, May 15, 1997

Canadian singer/songwriter Eileen McGann's performances and recordings have always included music that reflects her Irish roots, so it's hardly out of character that her latest disk, Heritage, is devoted to traditional songs from the British Isles. A CD-release concert at Johnny D's was one of the last stops on a transcontinental tour highlighting that aspect of her repertoire.

McGann and longtime accompanist David Knutson (on bass, bouzouki, slide guitar, and harmony vocals) took the stage after a short opening set by singer/guitar maker/record company executive Grit Laskin, the highlight of which was a clever song about techno-gadget obsession that he sung into a cellular phone. McGann opened with the Irish love song "Blackwaterside," during which Knutson deftly switched in mid-song from bright bouzouki to resonant bass. She asked the audience how many knew that it was going to be a largely traditional concert — and being a typically knowledgeable Johnny D's crowd, most did — and then led a singalong on her own travelling song "I See My Journey" before going back to Ireland for a delicate a cappella Gaelic ballad. A highlight of the first set was four-part harmony on the slow, majestic sea chantey "Lowlands," during which McGann and Knutson were joined on the chorus by Laskin and his fellow Borealis Recordings musician/co-owner Bill Garrett. Another was "The Bell Tune," with words from an old English songbook that McGann set to a new melody, describing an amorous couple's encounter with fire-lit pagan rituals on the night of Beltane. ("How would you feel if you saw your relatives dancing in animal heads and sneakers, and nothing else?" she asked in a whimsical introduction.)

One of McGann's strengths as a traditional singer — aside from her fine alto voice and her engaging stage presence — are those introductions, which combine droll humor with contemporary references to make these ancient songs immediately accessible. She has fun with the music but at the same time points out its timeless themes. She introduced an attention-holding rendition of the lengthy adultery/class struggle/murder ballad "Little Musgrave" as something that should interest television viewers because it was "a high body count song, with sex, death, and even a chase scene," and recounted with a laugh her own experience with theatrical sword fights. The unrequited love song "Peggy Gordon," by contrast, was "not exactly a cheerful Celtic song, but at least nobody dies in it."

The second set opened with the seven-line English drinking song that McGann often performs that salutes the usefulness of the bendable human elbow, and then moved back to the serious with a "Lord Franklin," featuring Laskin weaving a delicate backdrop on concertina as McGann's warm voice captured the chill of the arctic ice that was Franklin's doom. There was a cheerful arrangement of "The Female Drummer," the old tale of the young woman gone to war to follow her true love I've never understood how the other guys didn't figure it out, and a compelling version of her own song lamenting the destruction of North America's old growth forests, "Requiem for the Giants." She finished with a trip around the British Isles that joined dour English and sprightly Scottish versions of "A Begging I Will Go" with the jumping Irish jig "Little Beggarman." The encore was McGann's own powerful song about a homeless man in Toronto, "Turn It Around," followed by a closing vocal duet with Knutson, a peaceful spiritual that promised "there'll be more joy, somewhere." Not a bad thought for the trip home. - Tom Nelligan (Waltham, MA)