Link to Living Tradition Homepage

REVIEW FROM www.livingtradition.co.uk

 


 

 

 
ED MILLER & RICH BROTHERTON - Follow The Music 

ED MILLER & RICH BROTHERTON - Follow The Music 
Wellfield WELLFIELDCD029 

Ed Miller makes a welcome return here with his first new recording in six years. He is joined by arranger and multi-instrumentalist accompanist Rich Brotherton, by fiddler Iain Fraser, piper EJ Jones and Ed’s daughter Maggie on harmony vocals. Plus a cameo appearance by famed Irish fiddler Kevin Burke. With that cast of performers, the album could not go wrong, surely? And by and large, it doesn’t.

That said, it took till track four for the CD to catch fire. Ed does a lovely job on Barney Rushe’s stirring song Aisling: and Rich’s glorious mandolin makes this my favourite cut. Ed follows this with a charming Texan variant of One Morning In May, and then we come to a rousing version of the much-covered Uist Tramping Song, with Maggie playing Moira Anderson to Ed’s Kenneth McKellar (both having versions in my record collection). And they performed this great hiking song with all the brio of the Alexander Brothers in their pomp.

Likewise, he nails The D-Day Dodgers, with a harmonica from Rich that neither Lale Andersen nor Marlene Dietrich would have turned up their noses at. Of the remaining five songs, two stand out. Freedom Come All Ye for obvious reasons: it’s a song that lifts almost every singer. But more impressive was Ed’s delivery of Colum Sands’ Buskers: even if Ed had the bravery (chutzpah?) to replace the Margaret Barry verse with one about her fellow Traveller, Davy Stewart. It still worked for me. As does the album.

www.songsofscotland.com

Dai Woosnam

 

This review appeared in Issue 129 of The Living Tradition magazine