Album Notes

The family band FiddleSticks and Lisa Arrington have combined their talents to present Farewell to Nauvoo, a new collection of hymns and songs from the Mormon Pioneers and from other hymn traditions of nineteenth-century America.

This Farewell to Nauvoo album is a sequel, in two ways. It is a kind of Volume Two in a Series, following up the FiddleSticks CD from 2004 called Return to Nauvoo. At the same time, many of the arrangements on this album appeared first on Lisa Arrington's 1992 solo recording Hidden Treasures. Lisa and the Davis family have been friends for many years and this long-awaited collaboration has produced some lovely new arrangements of favorite old melodies, fusing Lisa's vocals and imaginative piano arrangements with the eclectic FiddleSticks Celtic style.

Lisa Arrington is a storyteller. By giving these lovely old hymns and songs her colorful and personal perspective, she tells the stories in a way that brings to life the people we remember as the Mormon Pioneers.

Plus, the album includes a special archive track: Mormon Pioneer Margaret Boyle was recorded singing the "Handcart Song" in 1951 when she was 97 years old. If you want to hear a pioneer song performed by somebody who lived the story the rest of us can only sing about, you have to hear Margaret Boyle sing the Handcart Song.

Featured instruments: Fiddle, Cello, Piano, Flutes, Guitar, Bodhran, Accordion, Viola -- and of course, voice.