Album Notes

Daisy Nell & Capt Stan, local folk favorites of the shipbuilding town of Essex, MA, have announced the release of their fourth CD, “Grist for The Mill”, created this spring with their band Crabgrass. This new disc reflects the songs and tunes they have been working on for the past few years, with some old favorites going back quite a few years. Lois Lyman’s Wiscasset Schooner song has been in Daisy & Stan’s repertoire for a decade or more, but has just now been recorded by the duo and their band, Pat Conlon of Gloucester and Steve Wainwright of Marblehead. The title track, "Grist for the Mill", is based on the story of the Gloucester Marine Railway’s origins at the site of the old Gloucester grist mill. For Daisy Nell, a life in music has been enriched by personal experiences and regional changes that have all been what she calls “grist for the mill”. Her husband Stan Collinson has crafted two songs on this album, one about his time as a farmer, “The Saga of Jerry Hayes”, and another about his sense of the family of mankind, “Behold the Family Circle”. A banjo tune from the minstrel show era of the mid-1800’s is introduced by a southern sea chantey called “Dance Galls, Gimme the Banjo”, while another rousing riverboat chantey was collected in Mississippi, called “Brother Noah Built the Ark”. A beautiful ballad from songwriter Dillon Bustin, “Yet My Life Needs You”, tells the tale of a captain’s wife who urges them to push on after their whaling ship is encased in the Arctic ice. For Daisy and Stan making an album is an opportunity to reflect on their music and their lives together, whether it’s performing their songs or, as “The Song of the Veery” suggests, sitting on the porch in the old green chair, pickin’ on the banjo, surrounded by the sounds of the woods, embraced by the morning air.