Darrell Scott, Paul Brady, Jerry Douglas - Shattered Cross

Squonk

Some serious musicians. Actually a bit of homage to Stuart Adamson the Big Country guitarist

Darrell Scott -- vocals & guitar
Paul Brady -- vocals
Jerry Douglas - dobro
Ronan Browne - uilleann pipes
Donald Shaw -- piano accordion
Aly Bain - fiddle
Russ Barenberg - mandolin
James Mackintosh -- percussion
Todd Parks - bass

Bob-Dubery

Great song, with the early verses full of imagery from cowboy movies: "You don't mess around with a man in black...." "You never make deals with a guy named Doc..." and then the change of mood & focus in the last verse.

I thought this was a Big Country song, but it isn't. Adamson had often tried for a Celtic sound with Big Country, it's certainly right there in this song.

This from series 3 of Transatlantic Sessions.

FatBoy

Wow, this is so kief! I'm starting to believe that I really need to get my hands on them Transatlantic Sessions thingies

Bob-Dubery

Fritz Brand wrote: Wow, this is so kief! I'm starting to believe that I really need to get my hands on them Transatlantic Sessions thingies

Seasons 1, 3 and 4 are available on DVD. Season 2 is tangled up in various bits of copyright red tape. What I've seen of TA 2 has been fab.

It's quite wide ranging. So before you go and splash out the tom, head over to YouTube and search for "Transatlantic Sessions". Not all clips are tagged with the relevant series number. In particular there are some marvellous John Martyn numbers from the first two series. The series 1 disc has some lovely performances on it but picture quality is not great and the sound could do with a bit of turning up (I believe the master tapes are long since destroyed, so they couldn't do everything they wanted with this series). Three & Four are very good quality.

Squonk

This is a definate for my collection.

Doing some investigation and it seems as though it's about 10 pounds per disc and about 3 volumes per series.
Is this what you paid Bob?

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote: This is a definate for my collection.

Doing some investigation and it seems as though it's about 10 pounds per disc and about 3 volumes per series.
Is this what you paid Bob?

Are you looking at CD or DVD? I only have the DVDs. Can't remember the pricing, and I got one of them when I was on holiday and bought it back in the luggage.

IMO the DVDs are a better buy, especially series 3 & 4 which were always planned as DVD releases and so the DVDs were produced from the original master recordings.

Bob-Dubery

The DVDs appear to not be zoned - so it may be a better bet to source them in the USA with the exchange rates as they are at the moment.

If you know anybody living in or visiting Scotland then they will be able to get the discs dead easy. I remember asking around shops in London for Transatlantic Sessions and getting weird looks. Later on the same trip I walked into what used to be Virgin Records in Edinburgh and they had WALLS of it. Aly Bain, regarded as the reigning king of Shetland fiddle playing, is one of the initiators of Transatlantic Sessions and he is huge in Scotland. The Scots revere their folk musicians in a way that the English don't. I remember missing a free show by Aly Bain's heir apparent Jenna Reid by about two hours on that holiday - had to catch a train and move on. Blast!

The same holiday, and a few days earlier, I got roped into a jam session in a pub in Catacol (actually THE pub in Catacol) which is on the island of Arran. They were amazed to find that somebody from south of the equator knew who Aly Bain was (most people from south of the wall have little idea). I know of him from guest appearances on several Richard Thompson albums. I played Thompson's "Waltzing's For Dreamers" which they all knew backwards because "oor ALy" had played the fiddle solo.

I also found out on the same holiday that "Gordon Broon" is not exactly popular in Glasgow. At one point I found myself in a pub getting cross words from a drunk local whose elbow I had jostled thus causing him to spill a drop of two of beer. The pub was pretty crowded. Anyways.... my brain kicked into survival mode and I blurted out "that Gordon Broon's a right s*** house." He slapped me on the back and told me I was alright. He didn't buy me a drink though.