CDREVIEW Judith Weikle ‘Pirates, Poets and Patriots’ judithweikle@yahoo.com One reason Celtic music is so popular is because it is so powerfully evocative. One strum of the harp, one toot of the whistle is enough to transport a listener back to the Emerald Island – even if he’s never been there in the first place. Jackson Hole resident Judith Weikle’s debut CD, “Pirates, Poets and Patriots,” certainly succeeds in that department. The 10-track, 41-minute project – recorded and mixed at Annex Recording in Draper, Utah – is an instant vacation to the land of leprechauns and James Joyce. Weikle has a strong and haunting voice, and she has assembled a crack squad of like-minded Eire-philes. In particular, Kate MacLeod’s fiddle sounds like something right out of the pub, and Gael Shults plays a mean bodhran and hammered dulcimer. When I think of Celtic music, I generally think of drunkenly joyous jigs or heartwrenching tales of suffering, loss and separation. Weikle and company lean toward the latter in this set, with a lovely but almost dirge-like “Lament for Norman MacLeod,” a meditative “Blackbird of Sweet Avondale” and a version of the traditional “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” that brings to mind the soundtrack from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” more than “The Secret of Roan Inish.” “Farewell to Tarwathie,” “Kilcash” and “Bonnie Portmore” are only slightly less sad but they are songs of deep yearning written on tear-stained parchment and engineered to stimulate the lachrymal glands. “Wine of the Gauls” and “Man of the House,” recorded as a short medley, are the most upbeat tracks of the lot, but they have the mad glint of an Irishman deep in his cups. It all adds up to a deeply felt recording,c one that bears the evidence of Weikle’s great respect and careful research. If you’re not feeling up to feeling down, you might think twice about putting this disc on, because it’ll have you weeping in your beer, missing your poor, dear mum, and pining for Tipperary in no time. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. — Richard Anderson