McQuaid to perform in Miltown

WITH Mother’s Day approaching this weekend, the thoughts of many turn to the importance of that maternal bond that ties mother and son, or mother and daughter together.

For singer Sarah McQuaid, reflections on a mother’s love are particularly poignant to her. Sarah became a mother herself in recent years but lost her own mother back in 2004.
Sarah has since dedicated her album I Won’t Go Home ‘til Morning to her late mother, Jane Addams Allen and will perform tracks from the album at Miltown Malbay’s The Market House Theatre on Friday, April 8.
“My mother never performed professionally but she had a lovely natural style of singing and playing guitar. She grew up in Chicago and as a teenager, she spent her summers volunteering at Quaker work camps run by the American Friends Service Committee in Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia. I believe that’s where she first became acquainted with the music of Jean Ritchie, Peggy Seeger and other folk singers and song collectors.”
Born in Spain, raised in Chicago and holding dual Irish and American citizenship, Sarah spent 13 years in Ireland before settling in Cornwall. She has been performing from an early age, embarking on tours of the USA and Canada with the Chicago Children’s Choir aged 12.
1994 saw her move to Ireland where she became a folk music columnist and author. Her debut solo album When Two Lovers Meet featured traditional tunes and songs along with an original number.
She took a break from the music scene, married Feargal Shiels and had two children, Eli and Lily Jane. The loss of Sarah’s mother prompted a move to the other side of the Irish Sea and a return to the songs of Sarah’s youth.
“I’ve developed the urge to revisit the songs she and I used to sing together when I was a child. When I discovered traditional Irish music at the age of 18, it had such a powerful impact on me that for many years, I had no interest in singing or playing anything else. My first album, When Two Lovers Meet, consisted entirely of traditional Irish material, bar one song that I wrote myself,” she explained.
“I still love Irish music but in recent years, I’ve been turning more and more to the Southern Appalachian songs and tunes I grew up with. I can’t help feeling this is part of a cathartic process that has to do with my mother’s death, the births of my son the year before she died and my daughter the year after and the fact that I’m now living, with my husband and children, in what was once my mother’s house.
“All the songs on this recording have powerful emotional resonances for me and all are connected one way or another to my mother, so it’s appropriate that I dedicate this album to her. I miss her more than I could ever express in words and it will always be a source of great sorrow and regret to me that she and her grandchildren never had the opportunity to get to know one another.”
Like its predecessor, I Won’t Go Home ’til Morning was recorded in Trevor Hutchinson’s Dublin studio and produced by Gerry O’Beirne. Both parties guest on the album, alongside percussionist Liam Bradley, Máire Breatnach, on fiddle and viola and Rosie Shipley on fiddle.
Crow Coyote Buffalo, an album of songs co-written by Sarah with fellow Penzance resident Zoë (author and performer of 1991 hit single Sunshine on a Rainy Day) under the band name Mama, has also been garnering rave reviews since its January 2009 release.
Now busy with upcoming tours and concerts in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA, Sarah is currently assembling material for her third solo album, provisionally titled The Plum Tree and The Rose, once again with Gerry O’Beirne producing and Trevor Hutchinson engineering.
Sarah is also slowly but surely working on a novel for which she’s received two Irish Arts Council Bursaries in Literature.
Sarah McQuaid will be performing in The Market House Theatre, Main Street, Miltown Malbay on Friday, April 8. For tickets, call 087 688 1650 or check www.tommalonespub.com.