Album Notes

The music of Brady's Leap has been described as "richly textured," in merry league with "a passion for the life of sound and word." Expect nothing less from this band of six poets and musicians who share their love of language and stories through music. Celtic ballads and snappy folk tunes, layered a cappella and instrumentals, from the eighth century to eight o'clock this morning--all of it fills the room and pulls each listener into every tune.

Heart of the Stranger, the second CD from the New-Celtic group Brady’s Leap, gathers from new and ancient sources a live and lively tradition.

You'll hear a blues-country quarrel between a hard-bitten medieval Welsh poet and the women of his parish. You’ll hear a young lover dreaming whisky by the ocean, and weeping families boarding the infamous ‘Famine Ships’ for America--sung and played with dynamic harmonies, electric and acoustic guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bass, banjo, tin whistle, bones and bodhran.

Needless to say, there's a fair dollop of drinking songs, but for those of you used to the old toora-loora-looras and diddly-eye-dies, be prepared, as Monty Python would say, for something completely different, because all these songs--drinking, drowned and dry--bear the mark of the poets and musicians of Brady’s Leap, who’ve gathered to voice a new kind of music altogether, Heart of the Stranger.