BRENDAN HENDRY & JONNY TOMAN – Living Roots (own label LR001)

Living RootsLiving Roots is a traditional and modern tunes album that sets the scene from the first track – ‘The Boyne Hunt’. Hornpipe and fiddle at its best! I was already hooked!

Track two – ‘The Crosses Of Annagh/Cousin Sally Brown’ is a melodic and haunting track to begin with – then in comes the fiddle, reels so off we go! Track four is a beautiful flowing acoustic guitar picking and into a jig.

The ten glorious tracks all have this type of mix, which doesn’t fail to uplift the spirits and draw you in as the listener, and keeps you wanting for more.

The last track has a song! ‘Where Is My Sailor Boy?’.  Fabulous banjo picking with guest vocals from Rachel Toman. Other guest musicians featuring on Living Roots are Alison Crossey on bodhran and Pete Toman on double bass.

Brendan Hendry won the Live Ireland’s Musician of the Year award in 2012 – his fiddle playing is something else as is Jonny Toman’s gift for playing a mean 5 string banjo. Multi-instrumentalist Jonny is also featuring on the album with textured acoustic guitars, bouzouki and Dobro, amongst other instruments. It should be noted that Living Roots is Live Ireland Album of the Year and rightly so. Well deserved.

For those of you who love Irish and Appalachian fiddle, jigs, reels and banjo – this is the album for you. For those of you who have yet to discover the delights of this foot tapping genre of music, prepare to be delighted!! Very refreshing. I love it! Lovely photography and design on the CD by Chris Brennan.

The album is being released on Friday 10th February.

Jean Camp

Artist Links: via Copperplate

‘The Crosses Of Annagh/Cousin Sally Brown’ – live session: