This recording performed by Cilla Leigh and Hank Secord and featuring songs by Bob MacKenzie should be played on a quiet night in a room painted by candlelight. The opening track,  Some Times of Night, sung by Cilla Leigh,  features soaring vocals and a simple arrangement that is reminiscent  of a medieval bard roaming the countryside, singing songs of travel and travails.

The tracks sung by Secord sound as if they were recorded on an Appalachian mountain top. Glad For This Love I’ve Found and Fast Moving Blues invoke memories of Hank Williams.

All of the songs on this album are written by Bob MacKenzie. A gifted writer and poet, he has obviously immersed himself in the works of the seminal folk and mountain songwriters of the 1920s and 30s and writes with a love of this musical genre. If you enjoy simple, old-time country/folk music, you’ll enjoy this album.
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Can you imagine Judy Collins and Johnny Cash on the same album?

If so, “Rough Cuts & Square Songs” by Cilla & Hank Secord is a disc you’ll appreciate. The first four tracks feature the delicate soprano and classical- tinged folk acoustic guitar of Cilla Leigh, a fine musician whose talents have remained, sadly, for the most part undiscovered. These are followed by a trilogy of Rockabilly-laced tracks recorded by Hank Secord in the tradition of Hank Williams Jr. and Johnny Cash. All seven songs are tied together by the poetry and lyrics of Bob MacKenzie, a Canadian poet with as much to offer the literary world as Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton. Two seemingly different musical styles come together flawlessly on this honest and down-to-earth recording.
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