Dig Where You Stand – by Aaron Jones
Folk duo Rachel Walker and Aaron Jones celebrate their roots with a stunning new album of traditional Gaelic, Scottish, English and Irish songs.
Amongst The Wild Rowans, is our second full album. It’s a celebration of our roots and an attempt to make an honest record that reflects where we came from, our influences and the songs that moved us at different times in our lives, whether through happiness, sadness or that sense of longing that great folk songs portray so well.
We first met back in 2007 when Rachel was producing the album Greisean Grèine by the gorgeous Gaelic singer James Graham. Producing an album is akin to herding cats and involves incredible feats of appeasing musical egos and remaining objective in the middle of subjectivity that can be poles apart amongst the musicians involved. You need to have a vision despite the peripheral noise associated with making the album and most importantly, you need to understand what the most important element of a traditional song album is. The songs themselves. You’re telling stories and, like all great novels, to do that effectively you need to grab the listener. You need them to invest in your characters. You need a beginning, a middle and an end and perhaps most critically, you need to make the listener feel something…anything.
That’s what we learned from singers around us. Whether it was delivered through the crackle of an LP on a parents record player, late night songs at family parties or through the voice of the singer who, entirely unaccompanied, hushed a noisy pub to breathless silence with tales of love lost, love found, despair and happiness.
Whatever the method of delivery to our ears, it was clear to me back then that Rachel and I shared that same profound love for good songs. We both felt the extraordinary power of a song, simply told, to move you, to change you to your very core, to teach you, and to help you understand.
We recorded our first album together as a result of a musical partnership that started when I recorded on Rachel's fabulous album Gaol and grew through lockdown. We both needed silver linings, everyone did, and we found ours in a shared passion for song. I had always wanted to write more. I had dabbled but Rachel had some previous experience with a gorgeous back catalogue of heartfelt songs in both Gaelic and English.
📷 Photo by Andrew King
At the start of 2022 we worked together to research and record Despite The Wind and Rain, an entirely self penned album which celebrated inspirational Scottish women. Through our research we tried to understand the women we sang about. We worked to find musical and lyrical ways to tell their stories and bring them to life. As we toured the album through Scotland, Ireland and Canada we sang their songs and, we hope, entered the stories of their lives into folklore. They became part of our traditional culture.
When we sat down to plan a new recording we decided that it was important to ‘dig where we stand’ and we began searching through songs we had collected over the years which held deep personal significance. Songs we had heard and learned at the beginning of our musical journeys, songs that were important at different times in our lives and the songs that inspired us, broke our hearts, raised a smile – made us feel something.
Amongst The Wild Rowans is an intimate collection of twelve of those traditional songs.
Our opening track Jimmy Mo Mhìle Stòr comes from the Irish tradition. I first heard the Delores Keane version in Irish Gaelic way back in the day. Years later and I heard the English version recorded by the brilliant Christy O’Leary. Beautiful and moving in either Gaelic or English we set about our own macaronic version and shared the lead vocal. Originally translated from Irish Gaelic to Scottish Gaelic by Gaelic broadcaster Seonag Monk, the song tells of a girl who is waiting for Jimmy to return from the sea. To escape her parents attempts to marry her off to someone else she goes to the woods to wait ‘amongst the wild rowans’ for her sweetheart to return.
In well-known folk ballad, Annan Water, the narrative was again shared between our two voices to try to create a more powerful sense of storytelling. I heard this version from wonderful English folk singer/songwriter, Kate Rusby. We both shared a love for Nic Jones who originally adapted the song and on the occasions that I got to perform it with Kate and the band, it never ever failed to moved me.
In I Am A Youth, I wanted to pay homage to Andy Irvine and Paul Brady, both of whom had a huge impact on the Irish folk scene and inspired me as a young singer and musician. A great song from Sam Henry’s incredible Songs of the People collection, I first heard this song performed by Paul Brady. I’ve been lucky enough to travel regularly to ‘seek my fortune’ in America since 1997 and, since I spend so much time on the road away from loved ones, the lyrics always struck a chord with me.
It was so satisfying to make an album of the songs we love. I was brought up in a family that always sang and since those early days I’ve always looked for new songs to sing. Whether learned from the music that surrounded me in my youth, from family sessions or from the many great singers I’ve had the good fortune to hear or work with over the years, these songs feel like the story of my life. We’ve tried to capture an honesty and sincerity in the arrangements which do justice to what these songs mean to us both.
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Amongst The Wild Rowans is now available from Bandcamp and on all platforms. Rachel Walker and Aaron Jones will take to the road in the UK and Germany in 2025 to promote the album.
Website: www.rachelwalkerandaaronjones.com
Instagram: @Rachel_Walker_And_Aaron_Jones
