Karen and I chose to do two cover songs on our new CD, “Lessons Learned”. Over the last year or so these two songs have come to mean so much to both of us.

Carrick-a rede

This song was written by: Cathie Ryan and John Doyle.

A friend of ours, Shelley Chase, had this song on a personal compilation CD that she made. One evening she played it for us in our car and told us it would be a great song for us to play. Over the next couple of months, we really started to fall in love with it.

At first I really didn’t understand what the song was about. Then I did a little research and realized that the song is about a woman crossing the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. Feeling her way across in the dark of night to meet her lover on the other side.

When I saw pictures of the actual rope bridge, I could feel her panic as she crossed. It’s a suspended bridge 30 meters above the rocks below. It links the mainland to the small Carrick Island. Though it is one of the things you must to do when you visit Northern Ireland, I don’t know if I could cross it on the calmest of sunny summer days. I don’t think there could be anything on the other side of that bridge to make me cross especially without even the light of the moon to guide me.

I know love makes you crazy but come on…I’m completely okay with living the experience through the woman in this beautiful piece of music.

Karen on the other hand would probably unicycle her way across …blindfolded in a hurricane.

Last Tears

This song was written by: Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls.

Mark introduced Karen and me to this song.

As soon as we heard it, we had to learn it.

It is a fantastic song for helping with the closer in a relationship.

It brings up those feelings of heartache for wishing things could be different, sadness for losing someone that’s been apart of your life, and most importantly strength to heal and move on.

The night before I had to go in and record my vocal on this track, a good friend of ours, Greg Hawko (he played percussion on a few of the tracks) had us all over for supper. I was hesitant to go because I knew another amazing friend of ours, Perry Chafe, was going to be there. He is probably the funniest person I know. He says the exact things that I find take-my-breath-away funny. I always laugh so hard at him that the next day my voice is raspy and hoarse. It happens every time without fail.

This is exactly what happened. We went, I roared with laughter for a few hours (even though PC promised to be good to me) and then had to get up the next day and sing my part. My voice was suffering from a wicked laughter hangover from which there is no cure except lots of fluids, rest and time.

At first, I thought I’d have to try again another day but when I heard my vocal back, I kind of liked the sound to my voice for this song.