Americana Alt.Country CD Reviews

Sarah McQuaid
talks about
'Walking Into White'
(Waterbug Records, 2015)
www.sarahmcquaid.com

Sarah's BIO:

Rising star Sarah McQuaid’s voice has been likened to malt whiskey, melted chocolate and 'honey poured into wine' (Minor 7th). A captivating performer, she seduces her audience with cheeky banter and stories from the road, as well as with stunning musicianship; in her hands, the guitar becomes much more than merely an accompanying instrument.

Her musical output reflects her own eclectic background: Sarah was born in Madrid (to a Spanish father and an American mother), raised in Chicago, holds dual US and Irish citizenship, and now lives in rural England. Refusing to be pigeonholed, she spans the genres with both her beautifully crafted originals and her interpretations of material from around the globe and down the centuries.

Sarah was taught piano and guitar by her folksinging mother, and remembers being inspired by meeting her distant cousin, well-known singer/songwriter/storyteller Gamble Rogers, at her grandmother’s house in Indiana. From the age of twelve she was embarking on tours of the US and Canada with the Chicago Children’s Choir, and at eighteen she went to France for a year to study philosophy at the University of Strasbourg.

She moved to Ireland in 1994 and lived there for thirteen years, working as a music journalist, magazine editor and active member of Dublin’s arts community. In 2007, she re-released her critically acclaimed 1997 debut solo album, 'When Two Lovers Meet', and launched her solo career with a performance on Irish national television as the musical guest on John Kelly’s popular Friday evening arts show 'The View'.
The same year saw her moving to England and playing major festivals like Sidmouth and Trowbridge, and in 2008 she released her second album, 'I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning'. In contrast to the first album’s focus on Irish traditional songs and instrumentals, the follow-up was a celebration of old-time Appalachian folk, with Sarah’s arrangements punctuated by her own fine compositions and a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s classic “Ode To Billie Joe”.

Sarah’s first two solo albums were re-released as a double-CD set in North America in February 2010 and immediately went to No. 1 on both the album and artist Folk-DJ chart. At year’s end, she had the No. 6 album on the Folk-DJ chart for 2010 overall, and was offered an official showcase at 2011’s International Folk Alliance Conference.
Her third album, 'The Plum Tree And The Rose', was released in March 2012 on the Chicago-based Waterbug Records label. Like its predecessors, it was produced by Gerry O’Beirne (Midnight Well, Patrick Street, Sharon Shannon Band); recorded and engineered by Trevor Hutchinson (Waterboys, Lúnasa) in his Dublin studio.
'The Plum Tree And The Rose' represented a departure from Sarah’s previous albums, which focused on her arrangements of traditional material, in that nine of its thirteen tracks were originals. Although a thread of personal experience was woven into the material, Sarah truly shines as a teller of parables. Whether she’s recounting the life of 16th century businesswoman Bess of Hardwick or standing in a cathedral and pondering the immortality of the soul, the specific detail subtly manifests a universal truth. These are songs that linger in the listener’s imagination. Also featured were a 13th century 'alba' or dawn song sung in Old Occitan, two Elizabethan numbers and a cover of John Martyn's 'Solid Air'. The album drew critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

'Crow Coyote Buffalo', an album of songs co-written by Sarah with fellow Penzance resident Zoë (author and performer of 1991 hit single “Sunshine On A Rainy Day”), was released under the band name Mama in 2009 and garnered rave reviews: Spiral Earth described the pair as “Two pagan goddesses channelling the ghost of Jim Morrison,” while The Irish Times said they had “Janis Joplin’s freewheeling spirit crossed with Joni Mitchell’s lyrical density.”

Recently dubbed 'guitar queen' by one festival organiser, Sarah is also known for her use of the DADGAD tuning. She is the author of 'The Irish DADGAD Guitar Book', described by The Irish Times as “a godsend to aspiring traditional guitarists”, with a follow-up book on the way that will focus on DADGAD song accompaniment. She regularly presents workshops on the tuning (as well as on songwriting, tour booking and more) at festivals, music schools and venues around the globe.

Now living in Cornwall with her husband and their two children, Sarah currently spends six months of each year on the road in the UK, Ireland, Continental Europe and the USA, with ambitions to extend her range to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

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Sarah's ALBUM:

'Walking Into White' is the fourth solo album from Sarah McQuaid. To record it, she travelled from her adopted home in Cornwall, England, to the small town of Cornwall in New York state, in order to work with co-producers Jeremy Backofen (Felice Brothers, Frightened Rabbit) and Sarah’s cousin Adam Pierce (Mice Parade, Tom Brosseau, Múm).

Coming from outside the folk world and having never worked with Sarah before, Adam and Jeremy found and nurtured the raw edge and intensity that have always been present in her live performances, while their occasionally unorthodox recording methods (a mini-cassette recorder mounted on a microphone stand, for example) bring out a striking intimacy and immediacy in both her vocals and her guitar sound. Recorded and mixed in just under three weeks, 'Walking Into White' is by far the most personal and emotional album Sarah has made to date.

Three of the songs take their inspiration from Arthur Ransome’s classic 'Swallows and Amazons' series of children’s books. The title track uses the arresting image of two children lost in a moorland fog as an allegory for the sensation of stumbling blindly through life; in “The Tide”, a mud-bound sailboat becomes a portrait of a marriage, while “Where The Wind Decides To Blow” performs a similar transfiguration on a homemade sailing sled sent hurtling across a frozen lake by an unexpected blizzard. In “Yellowstone”, a young boy’s obsession with the spectre of volcanic apocalypse sparks a rumination on the buried terrors that haunt us all: “I know I’m not the only one / To fear the ground I tread upon / Volcanos of all kinds / Torment our minds,” Sarah sings almost meditatively over a samba rhythm delicately embellished by Adam’s cajón and Dan Lippel’s classical guitar.

“Jackdaws Rising” takes the form of a three-part round, with Sarah’s lyrics and vocal melodies overlapping in counterpoint to a guitar instrumental composed by her friends Pete Coleman and Clare Hines. The other two parts are sung by Adele Schulz (who also contributes beautiful harmonies on “The Tide”) and Sarah’s manager and touring sound engineer, Martin Stansbury. Sarah, Martin, Adam and Jeremy all supply the stomps and handclaps that punctuate this 4/4 song in 5/4 time - a brain-tickling polyrhythm that was one of many ideas introduced by Adam.

Other guest musicians include Gareth Flowers, whose soaring trumpet brings the upbeat single “The Silver Lining” to a stirring climax (he also duets with Sarah on the title song), cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman (“Where The Wind Decides To Blow” and Sarah’s evocative guitar instrumental “I Am Grateful For What I Have”), and pianist Rob King (“The Tide”). Jeremy plays bass on “The Silver Lining”, and Adam pitches in on a plethora of instruments. On the album opener “Low Winter Sun”, he uses an electric guitar and an early 1980s synthesizer to create a wash of sound that acts as foil and underpinning for Sarah’s acoustic guitar rendition of a church bell peal; elsewhere, he plays everything from the aforementioned cajón to drums, tambourine, bass, vibraphones and air organ (this last item is also played by Martin to fine effect on Sarah’s setting of the early 20th century hymn “Canticle Of The Sun/All Creatures Of Our God And King”).

Rounding out the album are “Leave It For Another Day”, co-written by Sarah with Gerry O’Beirne, who produced all three of her previous solo recordings; “Sweetness And Pain”, an a cappella song split into three parts that serve as brief interludes between the other tracks; and a cover of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”.

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