Just in case you haven’t seen this… I’ll put the link in the first comment, just to avoid Mod-related, er, ‘unpleasantness’…
Sarah McQuaid – GoFundMe
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Bert’s last song (maybe)…
‘Shine Your Light’, a Bert Jansch Christmas song known from one (mid-year) 2011 live performance that someone in the audience in Richmond, Virginia happened to record. I asked Sarah McQuaid to record it – just for this video / free sharing – during lockdown last December. It might well have been Bert’s last song – certainly, the last original that he debuted in concert, as far as one can tell. If so, it’s beautiful note to leave on.
Sarah McQuaid premieres a song from her lockdown concert film at St Buryan church
Last year, Covid was Buryan’ Sarah McQuaid’s career. She flipped that portent of doom over and ingeniously decided that, instead, her career was Buryan – St Buryan, the cloistered building thereto in the village down the road (just before the road runs out at Land’s End).
Sarah raised some cash from crowdfunding towards a live album and DVD / series of song films – filmed and recorded in rules-compliant conditions at the church. The first sample has just premiered online. Sarah still needs some cash to finish the DVD editing end of things. If you can help her, please do. If you can’t, just enjoy the music. It won’t necessarily cheer you up but it might reflect some muddling-through hopefulness. Any port in a storm…
Shine Your Light – a Christmas song
Woman from Cornwall completes 62-date tour this week
Regular Afterworders will know I’m a huge fan of smiley, deep-voiced troubadour Sarah McQuaid – who combines Chicago, Spanish, Irish and, some say, Polish ancestry with living a couple of miles from Land’s End.
Barring John O’Groats, it’s hard to imagine anywhere on mainland Great Britain less conducive to being a starting point for international touring. Nevertheless, McQuaid manages to create epic touring schedules, accompanied by trusty driver/sound engineering wizard/minder/manager Martin Sainsbury.
Her current three-month, 62-show international tour winds up this week. It’s incredible to me that anyone can pull such tours together on a one-person cottage industry basis. Hats’ off to her!
With some people, one can admire the effort but not be keen on the artistry. Luckily, I find Sarah’s artistry at least the equal of her industry!
Tonight, she’ll be at the old fire station in Carlisle, Thursday at Rothbury Roots in Northumberland, Friday at Armandaleg Music in the Old Baptist Chapel (John Moore Museum) in Tewkesbury, Saturday at South Devon Music in the Dolphin Hotel, Bovey Tracey, and Sunday at Old Bakery Studios in Truro, Cornwall.
Then I presume she goes home and hibernates for a week before creating similar epic tours for next year.
Sarah McQuaid UK Tour ahoy!
Plenty of notice – the ezquisite and perma-smiley Cornish-Chicagoan singer/songwriter tours the UK in April-May, from Penzance to Oban, in a more or less sensibly arranged south to north progression.
I never tire of her masterpiece ‘In Derby Cathedral’, with its mesmerising canon at the end. Someone has kindly uploaded a new live vid of it recently, wherein we not only hear but somehow see three Sarahs (Sarae?).
And for those who can’t get to any of the UK dates, there’s a month in Holland beforehand.
For the sake of a tenner, take a punt and go see her. You’ll not be disappointed!
