After fifteen years of touring and recording, James Keelaghan knows where to find home. "Home is a place that of necessity I carry around in my head," says Keelaghan, the Canadian native who has established an international following with his five previous solo albums and a collaborative release. "Home" is also Keelaghan's latest CD, a return to his folk roots and spare instrumentation after the preceding "Road" (Hightone, 1999), which employed a Canadian all-star backing band.
The ten songs on "Home" show that Keelaghan's location of "home" covers not just his own state of mind but the lives and situations of many other people today and in the past. Historically themed songs have been the backbone of Keelaghan's repertoire, and "Home" blends personal and international history, imagination, and memories into a spectrum of experience.
Keelaghan, a three-time nominee for the Juno award (Canada's Grammys) and a Juno winner for his 1993 album, "My Skies," as "Best Roots Traditional Recording," has attracted myriad listeners through the scope and storytelling of his compositions and cover versions, and the glories of his resonant baritone voice. On "Home," Keelaghan's subject matter ranges from the plight of a young British convict sent to work in Tasmania in the 1820s (the traditional "Henry's Downfall") to the World War I-interrupted reconstruction of Canada's Parliament buildings in the late 1900s ("Stonecutter") to separatist terrorism in Quebec ("October 70") only a few decades ago. Then there are tributes to nature (David Francey's "Red-Winged Blackbird," the traditional "The Flower of Magherally"), love ("You Know Me") and longing ("Sing My Heart Home," "Woodsmoke and Oranges"), a wonderful tale of a musician and his blue-eyed dog ("Sinatra and I"), and a scornful backhand to politicians and media ("Nothing").
Keelaghan's intimate renderings of these diverse stories are accompanied mostly by his own guitar and by multi-instrumentalists Oliver Schroer and Hugh McMillan (of Spirit of the West); the latter's pedal steel guitar-playing is particularly noteworthy, an indefinable and mysterious presence that varies from flute-like to fuzz-toned.
A compelling singer, performer and storyteller, Keelaghan has long been heralded as "a national treasure." Expand that definition to "global talent" and you're home.
Bio:
Born in Canada to an Irish father and English mother, James Keelaghan explains, "I grew up in a place where 'folk' wasn't a dirty word. Folk music is what I do." Coming of age in Calgary, which he says "probably has the best folk scene of any place on the continent," Keelaghan visited the local folk clubs, where he saw June Tabor, Martin Simpson, Eric Bogle, Stan Rogers, American expatriate Jesse Winchester and many others perform. "By the time I was 17, I'd decided that that was the music I was going to play," he told Toronto's Globe & Mail. "I basically put myself through university by playing the coffeehouses and pubs around town."
Hedging his bets, Keelaghan did study history at the University of Calgary, and later worked as a historical researcher. It is this background that helped mold his songwriting, is strongly based on events from the past. One of his first compositions, "Jenny Bryce," concerned the conditions of women under the reign of Peter the Great; recorded by Garnet Rogers and published in Sing Out! magazine, the song helped establish Keelaghan as a world-class folk musician in the making.
Keelaghan's first album, the appropriately titled "Timelines" (1987), was comprised exclusively of historically themed ballads spanning the early days of the Canadian Pacific Railroad to the Second World War. With the release of his third record, "My Skies," in 1993, Keelaghan was recognized with a Juno Award (Canada's Grammy) for "Best Roots Traditional Recording (solo)," his first of three Juno nominations.
As his popularity grew, so did his travels. Following in the footsteps of fellow Canadians Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Cockburn, Keelaghan established himself outside of his home country through steady and far-flung touring. Over the years, he has nurtured an ever-growing audience in the U.S., Europe and Australia through regular visits. In 1995, the year his Juno-nominated fourth album "A Recent Future" was released, he became the first Canadian to perform at the Hong Kong Folk Festival.
Among the honors Keelaghan has reaped over the years are the Global Visions Artist of the Year award in 1996 for his work on the Unitarian Service Committee documentary "Feeding the Future: The Roots of Survival," and he also became one of the first Board members of the North American Folk Alliance. For the last two years, he has been a winner of the USA Songwriting Competition. He has performed in clubs, concert halls and folk festivals from Denmark to America to Scotland, appeared on the syndicated "Mountain Stage," "World Café," "Weekend Edition" and "Acoustic Café" radio shows in the U.S., narrated and composed the music for two films, and has hosted several Canadian radio series. One of his best-known songs, "Cold Missouri Waters," was recorded a few years ago by the folk supergroup Cry Cry Cry (Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell).
In 1997, Keelaghan teamed up with flamenco/jazz guitarist Oscar Lopez in a fusion of Latin and Celtic styles they called "celtino." Their collaboration yielded another Juno-nominated album, "Compadres" (on Canada's Jericho Beach Music label) and a well-received North American tour that included a performance at Lincoln Center in New York.
Keelaghan expanded his artistic palette with the release of 1999's "Road" CD, which featured wider instrumentation and more personal songs than his previous releases. The artistic change was celebrated in a concert that presented Keelaghan backed by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
Yet another collaboration hatched several years ago when Keelaghan and English singer-songwriter Jez Lowe, who shares Keelaghan's Celtic roots, toured North America.
And now Keelaghan has brought us all "Home" - a place where we can share his compelling voice, inclusive songwriting and boundless talent.
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