New Music 2018 - Part 11 - Midnight Skyracer - Fire

Even in this somewhat enlightened age all-female professional bluegrass bands are something of a rarity.
In so as far as I am aware the very first was New York based five-piece 'Buffalo Gals'. In 1974 it released an album 'First Born(e)' - the actual spelling depends on whether you are looking at the front or reverse of the album sleeve(!) - on Revonah Records as 12" vinyl RS-913 and that I have. It cost more to transport and import than its purchase price but I knew that would be the case. It was well worth it.

Fast-forward forty-four years and become acquainted with Midnight Skyracer. Five young women none of whom call the USA home; four are from England and the other from Ireland. Bluegrass has blossomed far and wide these last few years.

Charlotte Carrivick - guitars
Eleanor Wilkie - upright bass
Laura Carrivick - fiddle
Leanne Thorose - mandolin
Tabitha Agnew - banjo

All of them contribute vocals on the album.

Midnight Skyracer - Fire (SKY001, 2 February 2018).

Midnight Skyracer - Fire:

• Fuel to My Fire
• Susan Anna Gal
• Working Girl Blues
• Virginia Rose
• So Long, Goodbye, We're Through
• They Want to Go
• Spinous Shark
• A Little Luck
• Sitting Alone in the Moonlight
• High and Dry

The covers are handled beautifully; Hazel Dickens' composition Working Girl Blues being a splendid case in point, but the original songs and their tunes certainly live up to the company in which they find themselves.

To give you an idea of what to expect should you see them live here is a song that isn't actually on the album at all. 

It is a cover of 'I'm Just Here to Ride The Train' by Mountain Heart from that band's 2006 album 'Wide Open'.

Other acts that feature these artists (an incomplete list):
Cardboard Fox

Carrivick Sisters
Cup O'Joe
Kieran Towers and Charlotte Carrivick

Just today, this:
https://www.facebook.com/midnightskyracer/videos/2004970373056156/

The song 'Virginia Rose' is a co-write by Tabitha Agnew and Laura Carrivick.

New Music 2017 - Part 3 - Cup O'Joe - Bluebirds

I can't tell you how many bands I have mentioned in recent years that include the participation of siblings but it is considerable. It's a theme of kinds and I see no reason to discontinue it. 
Here is another - three siblings in this case - that were you not to know otherwise might be imagined to hail from the far side of the Atlantic. That isn't the case at all and this is their first EP.

Bluebirds EP - Cup O'Joe (self-released, 2016).

Cup O'Joe is Benjamin (upright bass), Reuben (guitar, mandolin) and Tabitha (banjo, fiddle) Agnew and they actually call Armagh, Northern Ireland's smallest city, home. The EP has six tracks:

• Bluebirds
• Pretty Fair Maiden
• Blackwaterfoot
• Homesick
• Tell Me Darling
• Black Coffee

They play predominantly self-written material that crosses the range from bluegrass and gypsy to old-time, western and jazz and all three contribute vocals. Definitely another band that I want to see live in 2017.
If you have a little while to spare for listening then there is this.

Cup O'Joe, Coastline Bluegrass Festival, Llangollen, North Wales, June 2016.