ALLISON LUPTON – Half My Heart (Learig LM003)

halfmyheartThere is refreshing sense of innocence about this album and I hope Allison won’t mind me saying so, given that she’s a seasoned professional, but Half My Heart charmed me from the start.

That start is ‘Bonnie & May’, written by Allison with Geoff Somers and Craig Werth. It’s an upbeat country song about a man who loves his plough horses and given that it’s an American music form written and performed by Canadians, it feels decidedly Scottish.

It may be of significance that her start in folk music came in a band called Killiecrankie and, sure enough, a little way down the line is ‘The Lichtbob’s Lassie’, a beautiful little traditional Scottish song. The other traditional song is the Irish ‘Sally Greer’ so there is no established pattern.

Allison is from Ontario and much honoured in her native land although this is only her third album in a fourteen year career. She is known as a songwriter but only five of the thirteen tracks here are written or co-written by her. The title track is based on the habit of mothers leaving babies at the 18th century London Foundling Hospital to give the child half of a piece of cloth – a sort of broken token – and keep half should future identification prove necessary. Given the subject matter the song is more pragmatic than sentimental suggesting that it was just the way things were.

It’s the borrowing of songs and tunes here that’s fascinating. Allison makes a medley of Oliver Schroer and Bill Pickell and places Gerry O’Beirne’s ‘The Isle Of Malachy’ next to Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Love Song’. The themes of travel and separation run through the album from ‘Half My Heart’ via ‘Wooden Ships’ to another of her own songs, ‘Over The Ocean To Canada’ (imaginatively melded with Irving Berlin’s ‘Always’). Perhaps that is inevitable in a country largely populated by immigrants and their descendants.

Musically, Shane Cook’s fiddle and the banjos of Ian Bell and Craig Werth are key elements, Allison plays flute on the instrumental tracks and guest musicians are used to great effect to augment the core band. As I said, Half My Heart is an album of great charm.

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: www.allisonlupton.com

‘Bonnie & May’ – official video:


We all give our spare time to run folking.com. Our aim has always been to keep folking a free service for our visitors, artists, PR agencies and tour promoters. If you wish help out and donate something (running costs currently funded by Paul Miles), please click the PayPal link below to send us a small one off payment or a monthly contribution.