Back There

Ta Da!!!   Big Drum Roll !!

It is here - at last.   Our new CD has been born.

It is entitled Back There and features 11 songs - some that we have written, and the rest from some of my favourite songwriters.

We are currently in the process of getting the album out into the wide world - radio and folk magazines and updating websites and so on.

To all our wonderful supporters from the Kickstarter campaign way back last Autumn I give you hearty thanks - by now you should have had your CDs or they're in the post to you if they haven't arrived yet.  I hope you enjoy it.

We played a set at the festival last month featuring the new songs and allowing Tom to get over his total panic at having his voice featured on record for the first time!  I swear he was hoping no-one would buy it!   But we're getting good feedback so far so the panic is over :)

Here's a video taken from the audience of the title track, Back There.  The song was written by an old friend of mine, Tony Kerr from Derry, who's now living and working in Nashville.  It's a gentle theme of looking back to childhood days and I love the sentiment in it.

I have been missing my visits to everyone's blogs in the past weeks - still haven't got my head into some sort of sane place, but it'll happen soon I know and I'm looking forward to catching up with what's going on in your lives.

I've been having fun playing with Lisa Sonora's Dreaming on Paper online workshop over the past few weeks - taking 10 minutes here and there to just splash paint about.   It has always been a secret dream of mine to play with paint, not necessarily to paint pictures but just to mess about with colour and this course is perfect. # lisasonora.com

Have a great weekend and I hope you're all enjoying the start of the turning seasons.

Grow Your Blog

Today I am taking part in the Grow Your Blog blog party which was initiated by Vicky at 2 Bags Full Blog.   Thank you so much Vicki for doing this as an opportunity to meet new bloggers and extend our reach a bit.   There are over 400 bloggers taking part, so if you have a bit of time spare today, follow the link and take a look at some of the others who are writing today.  

Hello and Welcome 

A glorious day during the week

If you are a newcomer to my page here, then you are very welcome to my little corner of Ireland, by the sea, on the East Coast.   My name is Fil Campbell.  Fil is pronounced Phil - long story - Phil is a common short name for women here, but abroad, people expected a man to walk out on stage ...  So one very smart (not) record company manager suggested this more Irish, and more feminine we thought, spelling... Now people ask: "How do you pronounce your name?"  and proceed to tell me all the naughty means of the word in various languages around the world!!   Not the best decision I ever made, but I'm living with it and now love it.

I'm a singer - full stop, or period, as you say across the pond.   I get very burned out listening to music sometimes, because my days are all about singing - if I'm not out touring with my husband Tom then I'm working with individual singers at home, or with my community choir in the village or with various senior groups in the area.   I also write music, put music to other people's words as well as sometimes writing my own, and  at the moment am setting some poetry to music for a show about Women's Emigration from Eastern Europe to Ireland.  In the past I've narrated TV documentaries about Irish women singers, and have also presented radio programmes on folk music, something which I would dearly love to get back into.

Already the first snowdrops are out for the first days of Spring
which is the 1st February in the Celtic Calendar

On blogging

I've been blogging on and off for a while and mostly write about my travels or about Irish folk music and singer songwriters in general.  I love the community that exists here and on a break from writing recently, I realised that this has become quite an important part of my life now and the people in it are in my thoughts often.   They have become friends in far flung places and I love reading about their day to day lives.

Crafting, particularly knitting, is my other big passion in life, which is how I first came to Vicky's blog.   It has interested me for a while, to be able to take my skills further than simply following a patterne.  Hence the reason for following so many crafty blogs.   I suppose crafts and folk music do tend to go hand in hand.

A little giveaway

So in honour of  today I am offering a prize of a bundle of my CDs - just leave a comment here and I will pick a name at random.   You don't have to have a blog to enter, and I'm happy to post to any place in the world.   Some of my CDs are of old Irish folk songs, and others are more contemporary folk - a mixture of my own songs and those of other writers.   The winner will be announced on February 15th along with all the other people who are offering prizes today as part of this Blog Party.

It's been lovely to meet you ...

Please leave me a comment to say hello and do tell me where you come from ... I inherited a love of maps from my father and to this day it's a delight to me having friends all around the world.  And if you have time, stay a while and look around.

I'm off now to have a look around some of the other people in this years Grow Your Blog challenge.  Have a lovely week.

Oh by the way this is me at a recent songwriting retreat ... getting to play this most beautiful grand piano.

The Spinning Wheel

For quite a while I've been wanting to write blogs about well known women's Irish songs and here's No. 1 in what will hopefully become a series.

The Spinning Wheel (John Frances Waller)

Listen to : Fil Campbell – The Spinning Wheel
From the TV series - Songbirds - the First Ladies of Irish Song

Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning
Close by the window young Eileen is spinning
Bent o’er the fire her blind grandmother sitting
Is crooning and moaning and drowsily knitting

When I first learned this as a little girl I pictured this beautiful young girl gazing longingly out of the window, dressed of course in a perfect long skirt, with long hair and an angelic face!!   The old lady was knowingly sitting in the corner  ....   

I can still see the sash window, the moon shining, the wood outside where the young lovers ended up walking ...  Isn't it funny the pictures that stay in  your head with a song:))

Delia Murphy

The Spinning Wheel is one of the most famous Irish folksongs  and was one of the first songs I learned as a child.

The Spinning Wheel was written in the late 1800s by John Frances Waller (1909-1894) and it's said that the melody is actually French, although it quickly became known as an Irish song.   Really, it was a parlour song that was part of the Anglo Irish tradition, nothing at all to do with traditional Irish music, but more to do with an idealised quaint way of life.  It quickly became a favourite for young girls to sing and instantly brings back memories of a gentler way of life.

Well known singers of the song
It was one of the songs recorded by Delia Murphy in her first recording session in 1936, one of the songs that made her a star and she in turn was the person who made the song popular.

Later, it became the first international hit for Mary O'Hara, although she didn't even want to record it.   Delia sang it at her husband's inauguration as the first Irish Ambassador to Australia and she said that if it's sung correctly you should feel the spinning wheel turning.  In our TV series - Songbirds, the First Ladies of Irish Song - it was the only song that we found that had been recorded by all the featured ladies - Ruby Murray, Margaret Barry, Bridie Gallagher, Delia Murphy and Mary O'Hara - and they all sang it in very different styles.

Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning
Close by the window young Eileen is spinning
Bent o’er the fire her blind grandmother sitting
Is crooning and moaning and drowsily knitting

Eileen a chara I hear someone tapping
Tis the ivy dear mother against the glass flapping
Eily I surely hear someone sighing
Tis the sound mother dear of the autumn winds dying

Merrily cheerily noiselessly whirring
Swings the wheel spins the reel while the foot’s stirring
Sprightly and brightly and airily ringing
Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing

There’s a form at the casement the form of her true love
And he whispers with face bent “I’m waiting for you love
Get up on the stool through the lattice step lightly
And we’ll rove in the grove with the moon shining brightly”

The maid shakes her head on her lip lays her fingers
Steals up from the seat, longs to go and yet lingers
A frightened glance turned on her drowsy grandmother
Puts one foot on the stool spins the wheel with the other

Lazily, easily swings now the wheel round
Slowly and lowly is heard now the reel sound
Noiseless and light through the lattice above her
The maid creeps then leaps to the arms of her lover

Slower and slower and slower the wheel spins
Lower and lower and lower the reel rings
E’er the reel and the wheel stop their ringing and moving
Through the grove the young lovers by moonlight are roving

******
The songwriter: 
John Francis Waller (1810 - 1894) was born in Limerick, educated at Trinity College, Dublin and was called to the Irish Bar in 1833. He became a contributor to and ultimately editor of the Dublin University Magazine, usually writing under the pseudonym of "Jonathan Freke Slingsby"

He published several volumes of poems and also wrote popular songs, including Cushla Ma Chree, The Spinning Wheel and Song of the Glass. He was responsible for the explanatory notes and a life of the author in a new edition of "Gulliver's Travels" written by Dean Jonathan Swift. 

Connected
If you're interested in spinning as an art I found this fascinating blog from a lady in Scotland.

Have you any memories of the song?