Through Wind and Rain features Cathie's distinctive mix of original, traditional, and contemporary song. Her voice still rings with the crystalline purity of her earliest work, but as the old Irish proverb goes, 'Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir' - time is a good storyteller. And time has given Cathie’s story telling greater depth and maturity. Her delivery of these songs comes from a deeper, more knowing place. It is her most personal collection to date and promises to be her best.

For well over two decades Ryan has been redefining Irish American singing. Her choice of songs draws from the Irish tradition she was immersed in while growing up with Irish parents and also from the American tradition of her hometown, Detroit, Michigan. She once again combines these influences in an outstanding collection of songs. Ryan says, "I am an Irish and American singer. The roots to Ireland within me are very strong, but everything that has grown from them has mostly happened in America. So both forces flow through my singing and through every song I choose to sing."

Through Wind and Rain features original songs, some that Ryan co-wrote, old songs she unearthed from both the Irish and the American traditions, and songs by other writers she admires. She is excited that, this time out, those other writers are mostly women. "Before I realized it, I had chosen songs by women or songs co-written by women. Women have a hand in every single song on this CD. I love that."

When asked what inspired her to go in this direction, Ryan replies. “It was unconscious, but I think it has to do with the events in my life these past years. I lived in a community with loads of great women and they were a strong support system. And I needed that support. I have always been blessed with great female friends. Honestly, I don't know where I'd be without them. I wanted to honor that. And also, I think I didn't sing songs by other women singers I admired because I didn't want to invite comparison to them. It finally hit me that that was a load of old nonsense. After all, the song that inspired the whole recording is by Laura Smith. I wanted to sing the message of that song. And then I decided to record one of my favorite songs by Kate Rusby - and that's where the title of the CD comes from. Then Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh graciously allowed me to do a translation from the Irish of one of her songs, a lullaby. It came out beautifully. And on it went. I'm really happy with the feel of the whole CD. I had no idea it would come out so well. "

Recorded in both Ireland and America, the CD features 11 songs and an unusual bonus track. The bonus is a full on set of tunes played by her award winning band, featuring Patsy O'Brien on guitar, Matt Mancuso on fiddle, and Brian Melick on percussion. It is the first time Ryan has included the jigs and reels her band is renowned for at their live shows on one of her recordings. She says, "I love the way Patsy, Matt and Brian play tunes, they have such lift in their playing - fierce spirit. I thought it was high time to add their tunes to a CD. Our live shows mix tunes and songs so it seemed overdue."

Another first for this recording is that Ryan produced it herself. She chose her band to be at the core of it, and she once again called on friend and virtuoso guitarist John Doyle. "John plays guitar on 7 of the songs and adds harmonies too. I love working with him, writing songs, figuring out arrangements. He played on my last two CDs as well. And have to say, having him on board with Patsy, Matt and Brian was brilliant."

Other players who joined in on the recording are a veritable "who's who" of Irish music - Donogh Hennessy (two of the tracks were recorded at Donogh's studio in Dingle), Michelle Mulcahy, Joanie Madden, Seamus Egan, Pauline Scanlon, Éilís Kennedy, Fiona McBain, Aoife O'Donovan, Michael McGoldrick and more.

Click the link below to order your pre-release copy. We begin mailing on August 15, 2012. MP3 downloads will be available on the official release date, Sept 18, 2012.

The post Through Wind and Rain appeared first on Cathie Ryan.

Few performers straddle the worlds of “Irish traditional singer” and “singer-songwriter” as gracefully - or as successfully - as Irish-American singer Cathie Ryan.

As the Boston Globe recently wrote, "Cathie Ryan is a thrilling traditional vocalist, but her honey-pure soprano is equally at home on probing original ballads about a woman's place in the modern world."

Indeed, in the folk hive of Boston, Ryan has headlined Boston College's staunchly traditional Gaelic Roots Festival; but also the hip songwriter mecca Club Passim, where the legends of folk music all cut their teeth. In 2003 one of her songs was included in the famous Irish music collection, A Woman’s Heart – A Decade On placing her amongst Ireland’s finest female vocalists and songwriters. It was the first time Americans were featured in the series and she shared the honor with Allison Krauss, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. In recent years, her original songs have been recorded by such distinguished Irish vocalists as Frances Black and Mary Black among others. All of this inspired the LA Times to name her, “One of the leading voices in Celtic music.“

What is her secret?

It was answered best by Billy Collins when he was America's Poet Laureate: "There is a powerful sweetness in Cathie Ryan's voice, as well as a Celtic intensity that can be felt in all the songs she writes and sings -- songs of place, songs of memory, poignant songs of the heart."

And her heart can be found in every note, every carefully sculpted lyric, of her new CD, "The Farthest Wave" on Shanachie Records. It is her prettiest and gentlest recording, and yet also her boldest. More than any previous work, it feels less like a set of songs than one long, sweet, and deeply wise song; born of troubled times, but refusing to linger on them.

"This recording is about wanting to belong, about losing that sense of security and love; and what you do once that happens." Ryan says. "In the past two years, I've lost people I loved, lost the foundation of what my life was. That puts into very harsh relief who you really are, and how much you really have inside you."

As a result, this is not an album about loss, but about finding what you need inside your own spirit; not about falling, but of rising again.

Ryan was raised in Detroit, the daughter of Irish immigrants. They lived a hard scrabble life, but Irish music was always heard in her home, and she began singing as a child. She later studied under legendary sean nos singer Joe Heany, who urged her not to ignore the other music swirling inside her American head, and to find her own voice. She first became a star during her eight year tenure as lead singer of the influential women's ensemble Cherish the Ladies, from which she launched a career as one of Celtic music's most popular and enduring singer-songwriters.

Most of the songs on "The Farthest Wave" dance in the delicate ether between the anthem and the ballad, sketching vivid people and places; and yet leading us toward deeply felt spiritual themes about the powerful graces within the human heart.

In every breath she takes on this disc, her lifelong immersion in traditional Irish music, myth, and poetry is evident. The past melds with the present; old songs become new, and new songs seem instantly timeless. It is the work of a master vocalist and writer approaching the sure summit of her art.

In the opening track of "The Farthest Wave," she uses an old Irish saying - "What's closest to the heart comes out" - as a guiding metaphor for a decidedly modern meditation on what we really want -and need - from lasting love. The singing is emotionally eloquent, but then listen to the way she breathes out the final Gaelic phrase "A' dtiocfa' tu'" ("Will you come?"). Her intent is suddenly percussive, to launch guitarist John Doyle into a propulsive guitar solo, joined by producer John McCusker's frisky whistle playing.

Similarly, listen to the bewitching blend of world-weariness and sly serenity she pours into the old woman's sigh of "Glory-o, glory, glory" in "As the Evening Declines." Or to the vast and peaceful well of mother's love she breathes into the line "Don't my baby look the sweetest when he's in my arms asleep?" in the American folk song "Rough and Rocky."

However intimate her own songs are - and she is utterly unafraid to peer into the darkest corners of her life - she takes a crucial cue from the universality of traditional songs; using vivid images from nature - the sea, a welcoming fire, a setting sun - that always let us see our own lives reflected. Her songs succeed, because they are never just about her. They are about us.

"Every generation has their own way of looking at the world," she says, "and yet the old folk songs remain relevant, because they're not exact. They leave room for interpretation, and they have an emotional honesty that invites it. I also find them inspiring – out of pain comes understanding and deepening. There’s a lovely bit of comfort in that.“

In the title track, a meditation on longing, she suddenly, almost startlingly, asks the question, "Do you have all you need?" She makes it clear she is saying something very different about the longing that exists in all of us.

"I've always had longing in me," she says. "I think growing up in America with parents who long to be in Ireland creates a kind of psychology of longing. Where you are is never home. So to me, "My heart is on the farthest wave" is my heart being out to sea, moving toward what its longing for. I‘m coming to accept that the longing is always there. I think its just part of the human condition. Its given me humility to see that; I see how wisdom begins to come from accepting that I can't resolve everything."

For the second time, Ryan used brilliant fiddler John McCusker as her producer, and made the album in his cozy Yorkshire studio. She is also joined by Irish singing sensation Sean Keane, and rising Scottish star Karine Polwart, with whom she co-wrote the title cut.

Never does Ryan seem to be trying to convince us what a wonderful singer she is. Her artistry has grown beyond that now. Whether unwinding tongue-twisty Gaelic children's ditties into a doting homage to the unconditional love between parent and child; or turning an old American chestnut like "Home Sweet Home" into an urgent hymn to human resilience, her voice feels effortlessly beautiful, organic, and utterly focused on what each song has to tell us.

"I end with 'Home Sweet Home,'" she says, "because I've come to understand that home has to be a place you build within yourself. That is the journey, to learn to go through life with the safe place within you. With that confidence and security deep inside, nothing outside can shake you to the core. It's taken me a long time to understand that. And I’ll be building a little house now and singing as I go!"

The post The Farthest Wave appeared first on Cathie Ryan.

The difference between having a great voice and being a great singer is roughly the same as the difference between having a good guitar and being a good guitarist. Great vocalists are often judged less by the quality of their tools than by how they use them, and Irish-American singer-songwriter Cathie Ryan has always known the difference. Perhaps because she is herself blessed with a mezzo soprano of shimmering purity, she has never been content to rest on the natural beauty of her voice. As she proves on Somewhere Along the Road, her third and finest CD for Shanachie Records, she can rightly take her place among the finest vocalists of her generation, not just in the Celtic realm, but anywhere in popular music.

There is always a guiding theme that binds her recordings, since she writes from within her own life journey with such uncompromising, almost journalistic honesty. When it's time to record, she steps back, charts that journey through her recent songs, then decides which traditional and cover songs to add to connect the emotional dots.

This time, that theme centers on the title cut, songwriter Rick Kemp's deeply felt meditation on life's impermanence.

"Somewhere Along the Road is to me a song of faith," says Ryan. "Now more than ever, with what our nation and the world has suffered with the World Trade Center and Pentagon tragedies, I find myself holding onto the song that way. It's a song of hope, of holding on and believing things will get better. It's also about how we all choose our roads in life, come upon forks in that road and have to make choices. Some people just sit down in the road and let life happen to them. But most of us are always journeying out of ourselves as a way of trying to find what is essential about us."

"It's a lesson that I have to relearn quite regularly," she added with a deep, easy laugh that often sprinkles her speech, and never more loudly than when she feels the joke's on her.

Since bursting on the Celtic scene in the mid-80s, during a seven-year stint as lead singer of the Irish supergroup Cherish the Ladies, the Detroit-born Ryan has earned raves not only for the beauty of her voice, but for her insightful songwriting and intelligent vocal styling. Jon Pareles, starmaking critic of the New York Times praised her "richly sympathetic voice," evoking her rare ability to become one with whatever she is sings. The Boston Globe's Scott Alarik called her singing simply "sublime." United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins marveled at the "powerful sweetness" of her voice and the poignancy of her original and traditonal songs. The Irish American News named her Irish Traditional Female Vocalist of the Decade, and Irish America Magazine ranked her among the Top 100 Irish Americans of our time.

Spencer Tracy used to say the secret to acting was to never get caught at it. Ryan sings like that; her three-octave range and awesome technical skills tethered to a fluid, spare style always in sweet service to the song.

Like the greatest vocal stylists, from Billie Holiday to Patsy Cline to June Tabor, Ryan is as mindful of the spaces between the notes as of the notes themselves. Listen to the roominess she breathes into the title cut, both with artful pauses and gentle mid-line trills, and to the way her voice seems to lift as she sings the key line, "a spirit that soars over the mountain." Even her quick-tongued Gaelic singing on the pub song O Boro, Braindi Braindi is elegantly spacious. Fast, yes; hurried, never.

"When I'm vocally arranging a song," Ryan says, "I think first of the lyric and the mood of the melody; the feeling the character in the story has. And I find myself more and more wanting to leave some space for the thinking, feeling part of the story. I also love the idea of space because then the listener can be more in the song with me. It's their space, too."

That tender empathy gives her singing an uncommon emotional resonance. Ryan never needs to shout or strut to let you know how a song feels. Hear the mixed emotions she conveys in So Here's to You, modern version of the "parting glass" farewell songs. In her hushed vocal, it becomes more a hymn of gratitude for good friends than a lament for their parting.

She adds a Gaelic wistfulness to legendary Appalachian folk singer Olabelle Reed's lonely High on a Mountain. Where so many would render this purely as a lament, Ryan also feels the life-affirming resilience that Reed placed between the lines of her song.

Ryan learned much of her austere mastery as a lean and hungry young singer spending time with Irish sean nos legend Joe Heaney, then in his 70s.

"I don't like to show off," she says. "I like to sing the song whatever way it wants to be sung. Joe believed in courting a song, and I love that whole notion. I believe that a song is a real entity that must be courted and loved; that you have to find a place for it in your own center, and bring it up from there when you sing it."

Ryan wanted what she calls a "back-to-the-basics" sound for this CD, one that would focus all the attention on the songs. In short, to make a true singer's album. To that end, she enlisted as producer former Battlefield Band's brilliant young fiddler-flutist John McCusker, who has produced British folk stars Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby (also his wife).

"I love how he leaves space in songs," Ryan says. "There's nothing extraneous, nothing done for gimmickry; it's all about the song."

The convivial warmth that permeates the CD was not achieved by pushing buttons at a mixing board. The small cast of players -- which includes singer Karine Polwart and piper Iain MacDonald, also of Battlefield Band fame; brilliant Scottish keyboardist Phil Cunningham; and a lovely guest appearance by Rusby -- all huddled together in McCusker's Yorkshire home throughout the 10-day marathon recording session, walking each day to the nearby studio after McCusker cooked them breakfast, earning him the moniker "Breakfast King."

The result is a warm ensemble sound perfectly suited to Ryan's own carefully sculpted songs. She is remarkably able to probe emotionally complex themes in spare, melodic songs that seem familiar on first hearing.

In My Tribe was inspired by a desert journey she took with a Native American guide, exchanging songs and stories from their different cultures until she saw how their devotion to those cultures connected them as fellow travelers upon the same ancient, human road.

Ryan continues her celebrated quest for strong, self-sufficient female heroes in Celtic myth and Irish history with several old and new songs about resolute women; and with her own fiery ode to 16th-century Irish pirate Grace O'Malley.

"My interest in singing about these women - and my delight at finding how many of them there are in our music and history - helps me understand myself as a woman in the world," she says. Asked what she hopes women will draw from these songs, her warm laugh immediately begins to bubble. "What would I like for women in particular to get?" She says. "Why, that we're terrific, of course!" And with that, her laugh fills the room; rafter-raising, sweet, strong and utterly honest - just like her singing.

The post Somewhere Along the Road appeared first on Cathie Ryan.

A labor of love for singer-songwriters Cathie Ryan, Susan McKeown, and pianist-songwriter Robin Speilberg, 'Mother' is a collection of songs that will resonate deeply with anyone who has ever had a mother, is a mother, or is likely to become a mother! The CD features 14 songs, including beautiful traditional Celtic lullabies and new original songs that explore the mother-child relationship.

Special guests on the recording include Johnny Cunningham on fiddle, Joanie Madden and Cillian Vallely on whistles, Áine Minogue on harp and Gerry O'Beirne and Gerry Leonard on guitars, to name but a few.

The post Mother appeared first on Cathie Ryan.

There is an old folk tale from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology in which the Fianna-Finn are talking of music. "What is the finest music in the world?" asked Fionn of his son Oisín. "The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," he answered. They went around the room and each told what music they believed to be finest. One said the belling of a stag across the water, another the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, and others believed the finest music to be the song of a lark, the laughter of a happy girl, or the whisper of a moved one.

"They are good sounds all," said Fionn

"Tell us," one of them asked him, "What do you think?"

"The music of what happens," said Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."

With her second Shanachie recording, The Music of What Happens, Irish American singer Cathie Ryan emerges from the shadows of all she has been, offering a spellbinding set of original and traditional songs. The title of Ryan's CD, based on a story from the Fenian cycle of ancient Irish legend, displays her gift for plumbing ancient tradition for things it can say to us in our noisome, quick, and stressful times. "The songs represent the music of what happens to all of us," she said, "from great happiness to great loss and everything in between. Just the way we experience our lives."

The Music of What Happens begins with Ryan's bold, windswept journey to the top of Knocknarea, a mountain in Sligo said to hold the tomb of legendary warrior queen Maeve. For centuries, people have taken a stone from the bottom of Knocknarea and carried it to the top to place on Maeve's cairn, in the belief it would lessen their troubles. As she made the climb herself, Ryan said she felt the old power.

"Anytime I've been up to the top of Knocknarea, the wind has been blustery and wild; and I always feel Maeve is up there with her indomitable spirit. It can be a source of strength to think about her."

While her climb to the summit of Knocknarea is an ancient ritual, her song about it examines very modern themes, the struggles many women have reconciling the fierce pull between family and career, mother and woman. "I didn't learn about Maeve as a young girl," she said, "She wasn't held out to me as a role model; she was too hungry, had too much appetite. And that wasn't seen as a good thing. I was taught to care for others first, to put them before myself. Caring for others is important, and I don't want to lose that, but too much of it makes for a very unbalanced woman. For me, it 's been a wondrous thing to re-discover these women characters of ancient Irish myth and see the legacies they left behind, legacies of strength and wisdom and passion. It's been a great inspiration to me in my writing and thinking as an Irish American woman."

Ryan's self-titled first solo CD on Shanachie firmly established her as a singular writing and singing talent. With The Music of What Happens, she presents herself as wife, mother and career woman, struggling with the old expectations and modern conflicts. In the winsomely reflective "I'm Going Back," she recalls girlhood memories of visiting Ireland. It is at once personal memoir and universal reflection; sweetly and wisely considering the mystical place Ireland occupies in the consciousness of Irish emigrants and Irish Americans.

"Ireland is often an idealized place in the psyche of the Irish American and the Irish immigrant," she said. "It is a multi-dimensional country with real problems and real people. But because of the Irish diaspora, this other Ireland, this idealized, magical place that has been created in our heads, sometimes keeps us from seeing the real place and the real history of how we got here."

Ryan pays wrenching tribute to that history in her brilliantly austere singing of the traditional lament "Erin's Lovely Home," which tells of the terrible poverty and famine that forced families apart in the 1800's, and of the "cofffin ships" that carried the unfortunate emigrants to Canda and America.

Spencer Tracey liked to say the secret of great acting was to never get caught at it. Ryan sings like that. As she tells the sad emigrant's tale, her voice seems almost conversational; yet listen closer, and you'll hear a vast command of both modern and sean nos vocal techniques. Her voice softly ornaments the spare melody, with subtle dips and trills lifting it the way slow winds fill a slack sail.

"I try to think about the song, not about how I want my voice to sound," she said. "I hold tight to the voice of the song. With the ornaments, I want to give the lyrical line a pulse. That's essentially what sean nos ornamentation was for, to give the melody motion and variety, because it was an unaccompanied style." Always her singing technique is brought to the service of the song. Never does her voice sound showy or strained, whether on impossibly quick, tongue-twisty Gaelic children's songs like the merry "A Mhaithrin A' Leigfa 'Un An Aonaigh Me?" or sweet old love songs like "We Dreamed Our Dreams" and the mischevious "Home by Bearna."

Even in her traditional arrangements, her modern poet's heart is evident. In "Coaineadh na dTri Muire (Lament of the Three Marys)," she combines verses from two ancient laments to create a tender epic that speaks to the sad beauty of the Biblical story of the Virgin Mary.

"I chose to end the song with Mary wanting to help or save her son from the pain he was going through, and him telling her, "You can't. This is my cross." There is great wisdom in this ancient verse for all of us parents today, mothers and fathers alike. We're raised to believe that our kids are a reflection of us; that they are who they are because of us. As a mother I have learned that I don't have that kind of power. Children have their own spirit and fate."

Her writing, like her singing, follows the best instincts of tradition: the desire to create songs with enough room inside for listeners to find their lives reflected. In the deceptively simple "Understanding Love," Ryan turns personal loss into an anthem for all of us in troubled times.

In this era of crafty songs, of disposable hooks meant to tweak but not to enrich, to tease but not teach, Ryan's songs are carved from firmer stuff; as timeless and sturdy as the stones she carried to the top of Knocknarea. She draws from the ancient culture of Ireland the interior culture of her own experience to tell stories of strong women, hard times, and human joys.

The post The Music Of What Happens appeared first on Cathie Ryan.

Cathie Ryan's debut solo album including songs of love, loss, history and friendship is regarded as one of the most beautifully performed collections of the 90's, and continues build on its acclaim today. Listening to Ryan's sublime singling in English and Gaelic, accompanied by masterful instrumentalists, will introduce you to the world of this profoundly gifted Irish-American.

The post Cathie Ryan appeared first on Cathie Ryan.