No Simple Highway
Sleevenotes
“There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone”
- Robert Hunter
When you lose someone there is immediate pain, followed, if you’re lucky, by a merciful if transient numbness, followed by the well-intentioned advice of friends, wise old heads, and platitude purveyors alike that
“Time will heal”.
But the pain of loss turning to grief is an impossibility realized i.e. the perpetual emotion machine. Grief mutates and the original pain metastasizes like any cancer worth its bile. The original loss endures, even as you wait for that door to close and that person to be brought back into your life in the way you want to remember them – however inaccurate or delusional that memory may be.
You can lose someone in so many ways. It could be the death of a grandparent, parent, child, lover, or friend. These bring with them socially acceptable forms of grief. But the colour palette of loss is infinitely varied so alongside the blarney of 40 shades of green, or the poorly-written soft-porn of 50 shades of grey is the bondage and masochism of the minor chords of regret and ever-changing notes of blue.
Loss can be splitting with your partner, realizing that you’ve lost your vision of yourself, losing self-respect, being made and feeling redundant, or losing your mind.
One thing completely missing from the vision of continuous improvement and growth, be it personal, financial, or spiritual that is marketed to us via society is the fact that if we lose our way there is no fairy-tale trail of breadcrumbs or sat-nav to bring us back to the past so that can un-do that day, that month, that year or that lifetime and put things right.
SomeRiseSomeFall believes music is informative, transformative, healing and magic. We hope this album created with some of Ireland’s finest young talents and produced by BrianCasey at Wavefield Recording Studios brings some of that healing and magic to the listener.
On behalf of SomeRiseSomeFall, I would like to extend my gratitude to all the musicians involved in bringing their creativity and heart to re-inspire and find their new songs within the originals.
Gratitude to Anna Mitchell, Brian Casey, Brian Hassett, David Murphy, Davie Ryan, Dylan Howe, Hugh Dillon, Kealan Kenny, Kevin Herron, John Blek, Marlene Enright & Phillip Dunphy for playing and singing on the album. Gratitude to Brian Casey for ensuring that the eclective’s recordings had sonic integrity across the piece and Sarah O’Mahony at Wavefield Recordings for helping set the atmosphere and making everyone feel welcome. Gratitude to our project artist Riona O’Regan who designed this booklet and created all the images, to our project videographer Allie Glynn and our project dancer Kelly Justin.
The album was expertly mastered by Richard Dowling at Wav Mastering, Limerick.
Thanks, Richard.
Be kind to yourselves and to others. Look out for beauty and you will find it.
Michael Fitzgerald – Project Director for SomeRiseSomeFall and FITTZ Records