James Keelaghan

"Superb Interpertation of Traditional songs By one of canada's leading singer songwriters" - Maverick Magazine

James Keelaghan's style is direct and uncomplicated, but he is not one of those bog-standard folk bashers for whom simplicity is not only a virtue but a necessity......with the distinctly non-traditional aid of broadband, the backing musicians include the world's finest Irish band, Danu, and one of the best folk duos, Nancy Fagan and James Kerr, adding spice to a work of unassuming quality.

-THE TELEGRAPH - London Telegraph

James Keelaghan, renowned as a songwriter, turns his supple high baritone to nine traditional, or traditional sounding, songs on this new recording, plus one powerful original coauthored with Jez Lowe. Arguably, Keelaghan sings with one of the most glorious male voices in the folk community. It is not only a treat to the ear, but it's a voice that fully illuminates the songs it transmits. Furthermore, this recording focuses on Keelaghan's voice and guitar, with tasteful and subtle production on each track from a variety of talented musicians on a number of instruments, including vocal harmony from Stephen Fearing on Paul Metsers's "Farewell To The Gold." That's a hauntingly beautiful song often mistaken for a traditional piece and is about the playing out of the gold rush in New Zealand. Keelaghan displays sublime taste in material, even if two selections have to do with horse racing. "Jackson And Jane" purportedly tells the true story of a race and "Galway Races" paints a picture of race day excitement and the song could have used a bit more pep. "Harvest Train" relates the struggles of early farmers in Western Canada. The traditional "Bonnie Light Horseman," an often-recorded song about loss in war, specifically the Napoleonic wars, receives a particularly moving interpretation. Keelaghan paints a lovely watercolor of Ewan MacColl's romantic "Sweet Thames Flow Softly." I've heard several versions of the traditional "The Boston Burglar," but none as effective in telling the story and involving the listener with the protagonist as this version by Keelaghan. He concludes the CD with a frank and perceptive view of the Irish temperament that he wrote with Lowe, "My Blood." Lowe's mandola playing and vocal definitely adds to this bittersweet, sometimes humorous piece. (Lowe is not credited, but I assume it's him, although he sounds more Irish than on his own recordings.) This is the kind of recording that keeps traditional music vital and alive for coming generations, while it remains a pleasure to contemporary ears.
SING OUT
- Sing Out

“Canada’s finest singer songwriter.”
Dave Marsh, Rock critic, historian and author - Playboy

The latest offering from one of the most justly celebrated of Canada’s present-day songwriters is released to coincide with his latest UK tour (which began a few days ago and continues through into mid-October), on which he performs in trio mode along with David Woodhead (bass) and Zav Rokeby-Thomas (fiddle - or should I say "fiddola"?). The CD also adheres for the most part to a trusty trio format, although Zav’s place is taken on disc by Hugh McMillan (mando and lap steel); there’s also some occasional augmentation from a three-piece horn section (on the title song) and some string arrangements by and involving Zav.
House Of Cards (James’s first complete album of new original songs in some three or four years), is a typically sturdy collection without a significantly weak cut, hanging heavy with James’s trademark literacy, his keen sense of history and its import on the present. For standout songs, look no further than Medusa, with its dark, foreboding atmosphere of warmongering, contrasting powerfully with the delicate, intimate recollections of a local pub McConnville’s and its community’s response to tragedy, and the more personal memories of the timeless, quintessential Circle Of Stone that bring the album to its (premature) close. Further delights come with the simple joyful abandon of Leave Town and the controlled rhythmic impact of Twister.
... Performance-wise, James is as classy and compelling as ever, his gorgeously rich baritone voice and exemplary guitar work the hallmarks of an artist in full command of his material and his resources. And James and Hugh provide just the right level of sensitive accompaniment to match James’s songwriting vision.

- Netrhythms

James Keelaghan is that rare modern songwriter whose songs are better known than he is. For better or worse, the folk world these days is largely peopled with artists who sing only their own songs. But his career was launched in the mid-'80s, when Canadian folk-pop star Garnet Rogers recorded his achingly sweet Celticesque ballad, "Jenny Bryce," and then took the Alberta-born Keelaghan on tour with him throughout the States.

More recently, "Cold Missouri Waters," his gritty ballad about a Montana forest-fire tragedy, was recorded on the hit Razor & Tie CD "Cry, Cry, Cry," on which Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, and Richard Shindell sang songs by lesser-known writers -- in part to make the point that more of this should be happening in the folk scene. It should not be surprising that Keelaghan agrees. "I just think the narcissism in the singer-songwriter movement has gone way too far now," he said. "For the past couple of years, the whole singer-songwriter scene has been in serious danger of disappearing down its own navel. I don't know where this pressure started coming from originally, but the question started to be asked, `Do you do your own songs?' It seemed you were somehow not valid unless you were doing all your own original material, and I think there's been a backlash against the singer-songwriter for just that reason."

It is all the more intriguing -- and revealing -- that Keelaghan would say this now, as his new Hightone CD, "Road," is by far his most personal and introspective. In his alluringly reedy and clean baritone -- the sort of voice that instantly makes you think this is a person you would like -- he opens the CD with the wistful "Love What a Road." At first, it seems just like the myopic woe-is-me songs he criticized, one likely to annoy audiences for whom a life of airplane trips, hotels, and room service might not seem such a sad exile.

But slowly, masterfully, Keelaghan widens the focus. By the end, he could be singing of romantic love but is also examining what truly constitutes home, family, roots: "Love, I am a compass," he concludes, "you are magnetic north / All lines converge upon you, a beacon shining forth." A glance at the liner notes reveals that he wrote the song for his father.

Keelaghan's specialty is the epic ballad, songs telling mighty stories, often true, about mine disasters, fires, and bloody labor strikes. But in the last two years, he saw his marriage disintegrate, his record label drop him, his father nearly die; and then felt his life swirl suddenly upward with a new deal on Canada's powerful indie label Festival, and in this country with the savvy Hightone, home of such eternally hip songwriting stars as Dave Alvin, Chris Smither, Katy Moffat, and Tom Russell.

He simply couldn't avoid writing about this tumult and remain, to his standards, an honest writer. But he was determined to approach these songs the same way he would a historical ballad.

"I've always shied away from writing personal stuff, because I didn't want to get into that navel-gazing point of view," he said. "But when I looked at the lives of my friends, everybody seemed to be going through a turbulent time, so I realized there was stuff going on in my life that was actually relevant to other people. I think my ballad experience allowed me to continue thinking about these personal songs as stories, and it helped in terms of finding and maintaining simple melodies for them. I've just got so much of the ballad in me now that I constantly look towards the universal in whatever I'm writing."

There are plenty of Keelaghan's trademark epics here, too. As always, he displays a genius for finding his way deep inside big stories, building them outward from palpably intimate moments. In the brilliantly sculpted "Captain Torres," he sings of the 1989 sinking of a freighter in the Cabot Strait that left no survivors. As his stark melody rises and falls, like night waves bursting over cold decks, he focuses on the crew, quietly lining up by the ship-to-shore phone to call home and say goodbye: "How strange this world of wonder, ships sailing, planes flying, sound sent at speed of light, phone calls from young men dying."

Keelaghan is no hypocrite when he criticizes writers who sing only their own songs. He always includes some covers, this time Ewan MacColl's classic "My Old Man" and Canadian writer Sam Laskin's hypnotically abstract "Mirabeau Bridge." He believes that writing historical ballads and singing other people's songs enhance his own artistic vision.

"From writing narrative ballads, you learn the discipline and freedom that comes from an established rhyming structure, the value of a good story, and to look at life from a perspective you might not have seen before. And I always learn things from other people's songs. I never want to start thinking of myself as a great singer-songwriter; I want to think I'm a good singer-songwriter who could be better. There's nothing like pla - Boston Globe Scott Alarick

The greatest thing about James Keelaghan is that he is a sort of trinity: indeed to secular characters like me, one can almost give that word a capital T and stick the word HOLY in front.
By this I mean that for many of us he's always incorporated the COMMAND of a Stan Rogers with the RAW ENERGY of a young Gordon Lightfoot. And then he has added a large dollop of HIMSELF to provide us with a heady brew.
The Living Tradition - The Living Tradition

James Keelaghan returns to his British Isles roots on this elegantly rendered set of mostly traditional songs. Is clear the songs were chosen for their exceptionally high quality, their compelling stories and melodies and for their suitability to Keelaghan's beautiful and expressive tenor

Greg Quill- Toronto Star - Toronto Star

Keelaghan who sings in a a strong melodic style that gives depth to the stories he tells opens the album with a road song " Safe Home" and a love song framed i a road song, "next to you". Inspiration and wisdom are wrapped in laughter in Since You Asked," a theme that's echoed in another co-write with Francey and Polwart. "What;s for you Won't go by you". In "McConnville's" Keelaghan shows his skill at making a timeless tale that is set in specific place and time, and his ability to leave things unsaid in "Circle of Stones". There are 10 cuts on the album, and all are strong. Though the stories and melodies are not directly related, they resonate with and illuminate each other.
Kerry Dexter, Dirty Linen Magazine - Dirty Linen

The FolkWax Staff and Friends
Pick Their Personal Favorites From 2009

By FolkWax Staff


Paul Hartman
Editor, Dirty Linen
1. House of Cards, James Keelaghan
2. Seya, Oumou Sangare
3. Tournament of Shadows, Little Johnny England
4. Blood and Candle Smoke, Tom Russell
5. Goldrush, Putnam Smith
6. Väsen Stree, Väsen
7. High Wide & Handsome - The Charlie Pool Project, Loudon Wainwright III
8. Havin' the Last Word, Saffire The Uppity Blues Women
9. True Stories, Martin Simpson
10. So Dark You See, John Gorka - Folkwax ezine