Cowboy Ceilidh

1. Cowboy Ceilidh / High Noon  3:25
(D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN / Dimitri Tiomkin, N. Washington P. Washington Music, ASCAP )

In the Celtic world, a ceilidh is a party with song, drink, dancing and good times. We've been at ceilidhs in Canada, Ireland and Scotland, and at cowboy poetry gatherings in the U.S. and Canada. In my mind, a cowboy gathering can well be described as a Cowboy Ceilidh. If you're looking for a Celtic connection in High Noon, however, there isn't one.

It was written by Dimitri Tiomkin, the Russian film director responsible for the Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly western movie classic and it won the Oscar in 1953 for best song. I just thought it would be fun to give it a Celtic touch.

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2. The Cowboy's Lament (The Bard of Armagh) / Kean O'Hara, 1st Air  6:02
(Trad. / Turlough O'Carolan, both songs arranged by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

The melody of the song that became The Cowboy's Lament and The Streets of Laredo is known in Scotland as The Unfortunate Rake and in Ireland as The Bard of Armagh. Michael Martin Murphey supplies the wonderful vocal.

Michael shares my love of cowboy music with Celtic connections and is one of the foremost authorities on American cowboy music and history. Originally, our version was to be The Bard of Armagh, which is about an aging harper, and which Michael sang with us a few times at the Spanish Peaks Cowboy Poetry Gathering in La Veta, Colorado a while back. When Michael graciously agreed to sing it on this album, he combined The Cowboy's Lament and The Bard of Armagh. The Irish verse includes the lyric, "But Ireland's my home. . . ", and evokes the image of the sad Irish cowboy dying far from his home across the ocean. Bloody brill, Michael!

It seemed like a good idea  to tag on Kean O'Hara, a 17th century tune composed by the great Irish harper Turlough Carolan. The blind O'Carolan travelled the Irish and Scottish countrysides exchanging personalized musical compositions for food, lodging and, of course, whisky.

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3. The Water is Wide / O Waly Waly  3:21
(Trad. Arr. by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

The Water is Wide comes from Scotland and first showed up in print in 1725 as O Waly Waly. The songs speaks of Lady Barbara Erskine, daughter of the 9th Earl of Mar, who married James, second Marquis of Douglas in 1670. The lament tells of her being falsely accused of adultery and how the scandal has ruined her life. In The Water is Wide, the cowgirl sings of unrequited love and betrayal. Phil Cunningham provides the haunting whistle solo on this song.

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4. Bucking Bronco (My Love Is A Rider) 2:45
(Trad. Arr. by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

I don't know who would be collecting her royalties these days, but rumour has it that the notorious Belle Starr composed Bucking Bronco. There really isn't any evidence to back this up, but I'd like to believe it's true. The song was considered quite racy at the end of the 19th century. Phil Cunningham's accordian and whistle make it feel like Saturday night in Portree, on the Isle of Skye.

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5. Buffalo Gals / The Old Chisholm Trail / The Blacksmith's Reel  3:16
(Trad. Arr. by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

A country dance in the wilds of Wyoming was similar in many ways to the Celtic Ceilidh, and Buffalo Gals sets the mood. As for The Old Chisholm Trail, the Chisholms were well known cattlemen in the Scottish highlands before the clearances, so it should come as no surprise that one of the foremost cattle drover roads in North America was blazed by Jesse Chisholm, and was named for him. The Blacksmith's Reel ends this set and was suggested by Matt Cranitch and Johnny McCarthy at the Ballyvourney recording sessions.

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6. The Wind in the Wire  3:51
(D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN, and Stewart MacDougall, Trouble Clef Music, SOCAN)

Angus MacDonald, a Scottish Highlander from Wester Ross, worked as a Hudson Bay Company clerk and married a woman from the Nez Perce tribe. His stories, published in Montana newspapers, told the Nez Perce version of their troubles with the U.S. government, especially their unsuccessful flight to Canada. The Wind in the Wire was inspired by a 1988 visit to the Big Hole battleground, where Chief Joseph and his people were attacked by Col. John Gibbon's Cavalry on their journey north. It was an eerie morning at the historic site, and the wind was making the barbed wire fences sing.

WIND IN THE WIRE
David Wilkie and Stewart MacDougall

I'd been ridin' fence all day,
Way up on the summer range'
Found a place to make my bed
As the evening shadows spread.

Beyond the campfire light
Through the stillness of the night
Came the call of the coyote choir
And the song of the wind in the wire.

 As it strummed the rusted strings
It sang of long-forgotten things
Many moons and many suns
Of the real Americans

When the arrow and the bow
Stalked the range of the buffalo.
The call of the coyote choir
Knew no song of the wind in the wire.

As the ghostly balladeer
Hypnotized me I could hear
Bugle calls and battle cries
Broken promises and lies.

The spirits of the plain
Still sing their sad refrain
In the call of the coyote choir
And the song of the wind in the wire.

Spirits of the plain
Still sing their sad refrain
In the call of the coyote choir
And the song of the wind in the wire.

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7. Buffalo Skinners / Jig / Polka  3:13
(Trad. Arr. by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

Sea captains and pirates would comb the seaside pubs in olden days to shanghai sailors to work on their vessels.  Similarly, the boss man Crego of The Buffalo Skinners would advertise in northern Montana and Dakota saloons for men to go out onto the range of the buffalo to kill and skin the mighty beasts, or as Crego put it, "to spend the summer pleasantly on the Range of the Buffalo." Johnny McCarthy suggested the ___________________ polka upon hearing the previous melody.

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 8. The Ballad of Nate Champion / The Black Nag  3:17
(D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

Nate Champion wanted to become an independent rancher in the State of Wyoming in 1872. The powerful Wyoming Stock-Growers Association in Cheyenne frowned upon such activity and took themselves and 24 hired gunmen to deal with Nate. Nate and his friend Nick Ray were gunned down in cold blood, and although Sheriff Red Angus (how's that for a Celtic connection?) captured the assassins, they were saved by the cavalry and never brought to justice. President Harrison was said to have been involved in their rescue and release. Edmonton fiddler Amelia Kaminski suggested The Black Nag for us.

The Ballad of Nate Champion
David Wilkie

Nate Champion was a cowhand who rode against the flow
In a corner of Wyoming near the town of Buffalo
He ran his own outfit and did not affiliate
With the cattle barons who monopolized the state.

So the cattle kings came callin' with twenty hired guns
On a train from Cheyenne they snuck in before the sun
They called Nate a nester, and they called him worse
A cattle thievin' cowboy with his hand inside their purse.

Nick Ray was the first to fall and then they pinned Nate down
In a cabin at the KC 'bout fifty miles from town
Then with the cabin blazin', he had to force his hand
When twenty-seven bullets sent him to the promised land.

Sheriff Angus and his posse rushed from the county seat
Surrounding the attackers and blocking their retreat
Days later in the standoff, the cavalry saved the day
Liberating the conspirators and hustling them away.

Harrison himself, they say, had surely pulled the strings
That untied the murderers, the justice power brings
So here's to Wyomin', and here's to Buffalo
And here's one for Nate Champion, may the good Lord rest his soul.

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9. N'il Se' Na La / The Border Affair  2:59
(Trad. Arr. by D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN / Badger Clark, lyrics)

An interesting thing happened while we were working up Badger Clark's Border Affair with Laoise and Johnny at Sulan Studios. They recognized the melody as N'il Se'Na La, an old Irish song of drinking 'til the light of dawn. In North America the melody has always been attributed to Arizona cowboy Bill Simon.

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 10. Buccaneer  Buckaroo / Johnny's Waltz  5:35
(D. Wilkie, Ghostwriters in Disguise, SOCAN)

Buccaneer Buckaroo tells of two Newfoundland brothers, one who follows the family tradition to become a fisherman and the other who heads west to Alberta, following his dream to be a cowboy. Johnny McCarthy wrote Johnny's Waltz to complete the set.

BUCCANEER / BUCKAROO
David Wilkie

The family has always lived on the north coast
Where for centuries the great whales have given the ghost
Life father and grandfather, and his before
We pull up our living from off this wild shore.

My brother, he had no taste for the sea
Away out west is where he wanted to be
When we were pretending and playing at games
I'd be Long John Silver and he, Jesse James.

CHORUS

Waddie and whaler
Cowboy and sailor
Ever inseparable two
Buccaneer / buckaroo.

So the folks took it hard when he went away
But when a boy gets to dreaming nothing gets in his way
We stood on the pier and we said goodbye
With never a word or a tear in our eye.

So I'm pulling my nets on the Newfoundland main
He's punchin' cows on the Alberta plain
Stars on the prairie, stars on the sea
I wonder if anyone's thinkin' 'bout me.

CHORUS

Now and then he sends a letter my way
Still me and my brother ain't got much to say
Though distance and circumstance keep us apart
We're swashbucklin' outlaws still in our hearts.

So for the man on the ocean, please say a prayer
Hope his skies are uncloudy and the waters are fair
And one for the cowboy who rides in the night
Hope his bedroll is dry and his cinches are tight.

CHORUS

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11. Bridget Cruise / Doney Gal / Give Me Your Hand (Tabhair Dom Do Lamh)  5:57
(T. O'Carolan / Trad. / O Cathain)

The beautiful melody of O'Carolan's Bridget Cruise (First Air) blends perfectly with the wonderful cowboy song Doney Gal. It has long been thought that the name of this song came from Spain as Dona, meaning sweetheart, and were brought here by English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh sailors and applied to a cowboy's favourite pony. I would like to suggest the perhaps the song comes from Ireland, County Donnegal,, and speaks of a horse of Irish breeding. Food for thought. This set closes with the magnificent Give Me Your Hand (Tabhair Dom Do Lamh), composed by blind Derry harper, Rory Dall O'Cathain, and popularized by Balleyvourney legend Sean O'Riada.

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 12. Farewell to Coigach  5:11
(Murdo Maclean)

Edmonton, Alberta journalist Rod Campbell brought me Farewell to Coigach several years back, saying it might be the only surviving cowboy song written in North America - in Gaelic. The song was collected and published by Val and Tom Bryan from Strathkanaird near Ullapool, in the western Highlands of Scotland. This version is taken from the singing of the late Sandie Fraser of Achiltibuie, and was written in Montana before the First World War by a Coigach man, Murdo Maclean, who, along with many Highland men, came to the American West to work as cattlemen, shepherds and cowboys. The Gaelic language was common out west (it was spoken at the Alamo) and this heartfelt song conveys the feelings of a man in a strange and lonely land yearning for the beautiful mountains, rivers and people from his home. One only has to visit the Ullapool area to understand how hard it must have been to leave such a place, some forever. One of Scotland's premier Gaelic singers, Arthur Cormack from Portree on the Isle of Skye, captures this mood perfectly. For several hundred years, the drovers, (Highland cowboys) would trail their herds southward to the market or tryst near the Highland/Lowland border at Creif. Creif is certainly the Scots version of Abilene or Dodge City, and the drover heritage and experience show strongly in the building of the cattle industry in the western and southwestern states in the mid and late nineteenth century United States. The famous Matador Ranch in Texas, for instance, was founded by Dundee men in the 1880's and was run from Dundee until the 1950s.

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Thanks -

Tadgh Kellcher at Sulan Studio, Phil and Donna Cunningham, Arthur Cormack for driving down from Skye, Michael Martin and Mary Murphey for their warm hospitality in Taos, Dwain Sands at The Loft in Turner Valley, Rob Bartlett at Sundae Sound, Matt, Johnny and Laoise in Ireland, Frankie Kelly for accommodation in Balleyvourney, Rod Campbell for Farewell to Coigach, Val and Tom Bryan for preserving such precious music and putting it on paper, Tom Gamm in Bend, Oregon for believing in us, Sonny, Jesse, Colen, Ken, Leon, Buck and all the cowboy poets for inspiration along the trail, R.W. Hampton for allowing us to share the stage with him, Colin, John and Amelia for crossing the ocean for little more than a Guinness and some fish and chips, Rob Gibson, Willie Morrison, Bruce MacGregor, Anton Jarvis, Thomas Vukovich. It's one think on a cold Alberta winter night with a few whiskies under your belt to say, "Let's do the new CD in Ireland and Scotland", and then quite another to find and hire the right musicians, book the studios and accommodations, arrange flights around busy schedules and play guitar and sing on top of it all. These daunting duties fell upon The Lovely Denise, who can never be compensated or thanked enough for all her long hours on the phone and on the trail. Finally, thanks to Dennis and Glynis MacLeod and their wonderful little girls Ceilidh and Kirstin, for not only putting us up in their beautiful home, Scatwell  House, but for showing us the real Scotland, the true history of the Highlands, and for making the connection real between the Highlanders, their music and their lifestyle and the people of the wild west. We could not have gone very far without them They are incredibly busy people, but always found the time to drive us around, feed us and show us the sights.

In Canada, thanks to Scott, Nathan M., and Buffalo Gal Christine for the magic they bring to the studio, son Wyatt for not letting my mandolin instruction mess him up too badly, and Bob (who I met in the A to K line during high school registration) for his nifty harmony on Buccaneer Buckaroo and his long-time support.

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