The Cottars “Feast” Released Today on Rounder
Fans of THE COTTARS can ‘Feast’ on group’s new CD:
LAURA JEAN GRANT
–The Cape Breton Post
SYDNEY — It’s been four years since The Cottars’ last album and much has
changed for the group that rose to fame in Celtic music circles almost a
decade ago.
For one, there’s two new faces in the Cape Breton group: Bruce Timmons and
Clair Pettit joined original members Ciarán MacGillivray and his sister
Fiona MacGillivray more than three years ago after they parted ways with
fellow founding members, Rose and Jim MacKenzie in 2006.
“It’s been as smooth sailing as we could have ever hoped it could have
been,” said Ciarán. “We knew Clair for a couple years before the transition
and she’s a wonderful person to be around and a very talented musician as
well– and my parents actually had been friends with Bruce before I was
born, so it was quite convenient and it all fell together very, very
smoothly.”
The quartet are now ready to showcase their sound in the form of an album,
“Feast”, set to be released today in stores and online, on Rounder Records.
Ciarán said “Feast” is not a big departure from what fans heard from The
Cottars on three previous, critically acclaimed albums — 2002’s “Made in
Cape Breton”, 2004’s “On Fire”, and “Forerunner” in 2006 — with a mix of
vocals, piano, guitar, fiddle, Gaelic song, tin whistle, Irish bouzouki,
Irish flute, bodhrán and Celtic harp on the new CD. But, they have also
definitely introduced some new sounds and style.
“We feel like we’ve kind of broadened our horizons a little bit in that
we’ve taken the folk music and we’ve occasionally twisted it a little bit
and allowed certain other things to get in,” said Ciarán. “For example, one
of the tracks, that’s called “Fare Thee Well, Northumberland”, is very much
a folk-bluegrass kind of thing with a little bit of freedom for Fiona to
explore the vocal ranges of bluegrass,” he said.
Ciarán said the group sought out material that they thought would appeal to
fans, but also songs and tunes that they themselves felt very passionate
about and loved to play.
“This album was quite a lot of fun to put together, as a matter of fact, and
there was a great deal of fun involved in the studio. And we, for the first
time, have two original songs (“On a Pier” and “Hymn for N”) by my sister
Fiona, and we also tackled a Gordon Lightfoot song (“Song for Stephen
Foster”), which most people aren’t familiar with– not one of his big hits
but one that’s kind of been swept under the carpet a bit and we did our own
arrangement of that,” he said.
Local fans of The Cottars will be able to catch the foursome on stage during
the East Coast Music Awards, Festival and Conference, taking place in Sydney
March 4-7. The Cottars are scheduled to perform March 5 at the Joan Harris
Cruise Pavilion as part of the ECMA Concert Series.