Listen to tunes from "Playing Favorites."
Playing Favorites contains just what the title suggests: some of the music we most enjoy. Maybe some of these tunes will become your favorites, too. May the ballads and airs transport you, and may the jigs and reels energize you and bring you to your feet dancing!
We have come upon these favorites accidentally, or rather, "organically" -- not in any formalized process, but by collecting and learning music that speaks to us, to our hearts. Our whole FiddleSticks experience is a very organic thing. We are an organic grouping, a family! What could be more natural than that? Our music evolves as we perform it, and our band and family evolve as we work through the challenges of family life, and the additional challenge of performing with a band. We are a work in progress, so this album is a still-frame in our musical evolution. Folk music, as a rule, is flexible -- so we have taken liberties with the arrangements, words, melodies and moods of the music we play. Again, it is a growing, changing, and organic process. Some of the music we learned from friends, favorite bands, or ancient books -- other tunes were composed by Elizabeth and Kathryn. We hope the joy we have in performing together comes across in this recording.
Tune List for Playing Favorites:
- Cranking Out/Mutts Favorite/Lively Steps
- Mary Do It Again (Scottish trad.)/ Cross Roads (Scottish trad.)/ Jig in A (Scottish trad.)
- The Star of County Down-If You Could Hie to Kolob (Irish trad.)/The Rights of Man (Scots/Irish trad.)
- Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair (Scottish/American trad.)
- The Mist Covered Mountains of Home (Scottish trad.)/ Are Ye Sleeping Maggie? (Scottish trad.)/ Sleepy Maggie (Scottish trad.)
- Colonel McBain (Irish trad.)/ Miss Patterson (Irish trad.)/ Man of the House (Irish trad.)/ Pretty Blue Seagull (Irish trad.)
- Glen Rinnes (Irish Trad.)/ Silver Water Tower (Kathryn Davis)
- Shule Aroon (Irish trad.)
- Anne Arundel Fair (Elizabeth Davis)/ The Noisy Kitchen (Kathryn Davis)
- Grandma Great's (Kathryn Davis)/ Drowsy Maggie (Irish trad.)/ Sam's Unnamed Reel (Sam Bigney)/ Becca's Reel (Kathryn Davis)
- Plain Girl's Lament (Connie McKenna)
- Ashokan Farewell (Jay Ungar ©1983 by Swinging Door Music-BMI)
- Boo Baby's Lullaby (Jerry Holland ©1997-SOCAN)
- Who May Yon Strange One Be? (Welsh trad.)
- Remembering Hiroko (Kathryn Davis/Irish trad.)
- Bedlam (English trad.)
- General Cooley's (Trad.)