David Ferrard's background means he is uniquely placed to draw from folk traditions from both the Old and the New World. His father is Scottish and Ferrard was born and raised in Edinburgh, while is mother is American so he spent his summers in Philadelphia. As he says in the album's liner notes: "I grew up with two distinct identities and a transatlantic twang".
On this record he interprets thirteen of his favourite Scottish and American folk songs. The album is produced by multi-instrumentalist bluegrass and old time player Josh Gosforth who also arranged many of the tunes and plays on all of them. It was recorded in a small studio in the Blue Ridge Mountains, an area where many Scottish emigrants settled.
The project is clearly a labour of love and the CD is elegantly packaged to include a handsome booklet containing all the lyrics together with notes explaining the origin and significance of each of the tunes and how Ferrard came to choose them.
The album title derives from a line on the closing track, 'Hard Time Come Again No More' by Stephen Collins Foster, who Ferrard admires for "his empathy with the poor, the enslaved and the downtrodden".
There are two contemporay songs about Scottish history by Kenny Brill. Gilmartin is a lilting Scottish ballad about the land clearances of 1814, which Ferrard refers to as an early from of ethic cleansing. SO9 Monktonhall has a more recent topic of the demise of the mining industry. Its title comes from the last deep mine in the Lochians which closed in 1998.
Another song from the modern Scottish Folk scene is Mary Brooksbank's 'The Jute Mill Song' about the struggle of working in Dundee's fibre manufacturing industry - jute is used to make hessian (burlap).
On a more historic note, 'The Slave's Lament' is a 1792 song by Robbie Burns about the burden of a slave labourer from Senegal.
'Once I Knew A Pretty Girl' is a traditional song of unrequited love popularised by Joan Baez, one of three songs on the album which were collected by Cecil Sharp in his English Folk Songs From The Southern Apalachians (1917) - the others being an capella love song 'My Dearest Dear' and Pretty Saro.
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The bland, easy listening style of this record means that a line like "get your arses down here" from SO9 Monktonhall is delivered too politely and the Scots language of Mary Brooksbank - "runnin' up and doon the pass is nae fun" - is barely noticable. The effect of this a form of gentifrication of the rebellious spirit. If you didn't read the background to the songs you would not immediately hear them as being born of struggle and hardship.
Ferrard's gentle voice is more suited to songs about love and family relationships than it is to songs about hard working lives. This is why a traditional song which follows an arrangement by Doc Watson (A-Rovin' On A Winter's Night) and 'Calling My Children Home' about parental fears for the safety of their offspring ("I'm lonesome for my precious children, they live so far way") are the most effective.
People from countries like Scotland with a long folk history often associate traditional songs with stability and continuity and these are the values that are strongly represented on this record. The more radical American folk of individuals protesting injustice and demanding social change can be heard between the lines, but this is a record where a more conservative spirit holds sway. Nice enough in its own way but lacking the punch and passion these songs deserve.
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