2009 Compass Records Round-Up
Despite the challenges in the industry this year, the Compass Records Group bucked the trend with a robust selection of new releases from across our catalogs. Last week, we got news that 2 of our albums have been nominated for 2009 Grammy Awards: Liz Carroll and John Doyle for Double Play in the Traditional World Music category and Compass co-founder Alison Brown for the track "Under The (Five) Wire" from her release The Company You Keep for Best Country Instrumental Performance. Our congratulations to all! As the year draws to a close, we are grateful for the chance to continue to support outstanding independent artists and are very appreciate of you for your support throughout the year. Here’s a brief synopsis of our year in music.
Celtic: In addition to the Grammy nominated album Double Play from John Doyle and Liz Carroll, we released new albums from several of our favorite Celtic artists including guitar whiz Tony McManus with The Maker’s Mark [winner of the Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Instrumental Album], Northern Ireland’s Beoga (called by The Wall Street Journal the most exiciting new traditional band to emerge from Ireland this century) with The Incident, accordionist extraordinare Sharon Shannon’s latest effort Saints and Scoundrels (featuring the radio favorite "Mama Lou" with guest vocals by Imelda May) and celebrated musician and educator Mick Moloney’s If it Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews, a tribute to the early Tin Pan alley collaborations between Irish and Jewish composers and lyricists. In August we debuted New York based sensation The Pride of New York, a collaboration between Joanie Madden, Brendan Dolan, Billy McComiskey and Brian Conway, that received a 4 star review from the Irish Times, as well as the String Sisters, a collaboration of the world’s top female Celtic fiddlers including Annbjorg Lien, Catriona MacDonald, Liz Carroll, Liz Knowles, Mairead ni Mhoanaigh and Emma Hardelin. We wrapped up the year with another first class collaboration called The Unwanted featuring music from the Atlantic fringe with Cathy Jordan (of Dervish), Rick Epping and Seamie O’Dowd dubbed by Folkworld “the best of the barley from both the Old World and the New.”
Bluegrass/Americana: It was a big year in bluegrass, with new albums from old favorites as well as new albums from new members of the Compass roster. Banjoist and Compass co-founder Alison Brown delivered the GRAMMY-nominated The Company You Keep with a tip of the hat to her 17-year partnership with her touring band and also produced vocalist Dale Ann Bradley’s album Don’t Turn Your Back; this fall Dale Ann Bradley won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s award for Female Vocalist of the Year for the third straight year. Seven time IBMA Bass Player of the Year Missy Raines and her band The New Hip delivered a grooving set of bluegrass virtuosity flavored by jazz-tinged grooves on their debut album Inside Out and the Matt Flinner Trio offered an amazingly played set of new acoustic instrumentals on Music du Jour. This year also marked Compass debuts from the New England-based brother duo The Gibson Brothers with Ring the Bell, recorded at Compass Sound Studio and which has spent months on the bluegrass chart as of this writing, and Bearfoot, a group which got its start on the bluegrass festival circuit in Alaska, and whose release Doors and Windows debuted at #1 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart.
Folk: We started off 2009 with two albums recorded at Compass Sound Studio and produced by Compass co-founder Garry West: That Kind of Love from storied Southern singer/songwriter Pierce Pettis and a stripped down acoustic recording of fan favorites from Boston icon Catie Curtis entitled Hello Stranger (featuring a duet with Mary Gauthier on the title track). We also released From The Union Of Soul by Australian folk rockers The Waifs, recorded during their 2008 tour of Australia and featuring guest appearances from John Butler and Clare Bowditch. Kieran Kane, one of Nashville’s most revered songwriters, released Somewhere Beyond The Roses, an evocative and relevant set of new compositions, and we ended the year with a remarkable new project from the UK’s legendary Martin Simpson called True Stories which just received a record 6 nominations at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Pop/Rock, Adult Alternative: We were very pleased to make more of Colin Hay’s music available this year. In addition to releasing the former Men at Work front man’s new studio project American Sunshine, marked by Hay’s own sideways glance at the American dream set to some of the purest pop, hardest rock and most emotionally bare acoustic balladry Hay has yet laid down, we also re-released several of Colin’s catalog titles, including Topanga, Transcendental Highway and Peaks and Valleys. (The fourth of his catalog titles, Company of Strangers, will be re-released in January 2010.) We also discovered the wonderful music of French songstress Coralie Clement and released her project Toystore in conjunction with her appearance at Central Stage in Central Park in June.
World: In June we made a foray into the world of salsa with the debut recording A Gozar from Latin SalSoul Queen Cecilia Noel. In late summer, we were very pleased to re-issue Bloodwood, the seminal recording from the late didjeridu master Alan Dargin, as a tribute to the life and music of this very inspirational musician. This instrumental masterpiece was the album with which we launched our company 17 years ago and the re-release contains a rare bonus track and expanded liner notes from his musical collaborator and producer Michael Atherton.
Tayberry Music: This summer we launched the Tayberry Records imprint with the release of two outstanding records. Renowned for his work as the composer of Riverdance, Bill Whelan delivered the gorgeous The Connemara Suite, performed by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, which beautifully accomplishes the composer’s goal of writing for traditional musicians within the framework of a chamber orchestra. Also in the classical vein, The Celtic Tenors album Hard Times offers a collection of harmony rich arrangements of well-known songs that demonstrate why these vocalists have established themselves as the most successful classical crossover artists ever to emerge from Ireland.
Reissues: We have continued our goal of bringing classic recordings back into print with the reissue of albums from the Green Linnet and Xenophile. Below is a list of the albums reissued in 2009.
Celtophile Collections
The Dance Music of Ireland: Jigs and Reels
The Voice of Celtic Woman: There was a Lady
A Collection of Celtic Moods: Season of Mists
Piping Hot
Traditional Music of Scotland
Traditional Music of Ireland
Xenophile:
Tarika Son Egal
Tarika Bibiango
Thank you for voting in our Best of 2009 poll. All voters will be entered into a drawing to win a free one year membership to the Compass Records CD of the Month Club. One entry per person please. The lucky winner will be announced in our January newsletter.
Don’t forget to tell your friends about the contest as well! (Click here to send to a friend)
