Sounds of Acůshla

The clips are optimized for a 28.8K or 56.6K connection, and are all fairly small in size. Just click on the link and your realplayer should start up automatically. They are optimized to be played on the RealplayerG2.

Technical note: The songs were all recorded between November 1998 and March 1999 to a Yamaha MT50 four-track recorder. The songs were then transferred to a desktop PC and processed as windows PCM (.wav) format, allowing them to be written to CD audio and converted to realaudio format. There was some dehissing and general cleaning up of the sound, but aside from that, the recording does a good job of representing our homemade sound. The songs are meant more as a demo of what we can achieve. Our goal is to record a "real" CD and give our internet vistors a real taste of what we sound like.

This is a tune that Craig wrote for the flute or whistle. We originally recorded it live to my hard disk via a crappy mic. The sample is only part of three parts. It sounds best accompanied by bodhran, guitar and several pints of Guinness.

A song about being born in Newfoundland, and living, working, and "weathering out the storm", to endure a hard life through being with people, playing music and preserving our culture. It was written by myself and our late friend and founding bandmate, Christopher Foley. This recording is from a live CD recording of an early (I do mean early) performance in summer 1996, for Peace-a-Chord '96 (cool youth-run music-love-peace festival in Bannerman Park, in the heart of old St.John's, when we still had a fiddler...

This is a song that Jocelyne, a part-time member of the band (when she can...), wrote it about Boudicca, one of the last Queen of the Celts, and her battles with the Roman legions invading Celtic Britain. I wrote the music... However, this song also marks the first time we ever used Uillean Pipes (without the drones... just a "practice" set, really) You will certainly hear more of this unique instrument....

A tune that Anerin and I made up just jamming around one day....Originally with just guitar and didgeridoo, we added the flute and bodhran to make it more fun....The name sums up what we have to share... One World, one music, one love....

The Sea giveth and the sea taketh.... so it has been for 500 years in Newfoundland... Men going to sea to fish and make a living... yet the sea is cruel and sometimes takes away from us...fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers...one puts in a long hard life at sea, only to have it taken away in a few short moments... If the sea doesn't get us, then the government will!

This song was composed by my friend Sarah Morgan and I in 1994. It's about how the Europeans came over to North America and bit by bit, took away the land and resources that rightfully belonged to the native peoples, leaving them with small bits of land and almost nothing else.

This was the only song which we managed to record while our bandmate Christopher was still with us... He passed away suddenly a few days before Christmas 1998... He was a founding member of Acushla with me, and together we wrote a lot of our current material... He wrote this acapella song afew years ago, and it reflects our past heritage and culture; that of the sea, of music, of strong will, of courage and of love... for our planet, our friends and family, and ourselves...

This is a trio of traditional Irish tunes learned and played by Craig and Llewellyn. We got the idea from Paddy Keenan, Ireland's renowned master Uillean piper, and former piper in the Bothy Band.

This song started out as purely acoustic in nature, but ended up adopting an electric guitar and 4 pc. drumkit. It's less traditonal sounding than the others, but the original idea is still there. It's about mothers, and how we underestimate and often forget them for everything they do, from birth to adulthood...

This tune, also written by Craig, kind of goes along with The Geezer....at least in energy and speed... He's actually playing two flutes (really, at the same time! Just joking! he is very gifted, our flute player) Really though, multi-tracking allows us to add more kinds of instruments and therefore diversify our sound...

The idea behind this was that (very briefly)...A dragon had kidnapped a princess as revenge for his mate's kidnapping by circus inividuals... so, the human prince goes on a search for his princess, finds and battles the dragon, compromises with dragon, finds and rescues female dragon, exchanges female dragon for human princess, and everyone is happy and partied until happily ever after... the end... The first mandolin tune I ever wrote... Craig breaks himself in half playing the Uillean pipes and the flute at the same time....my new explanation is that the mandolin is actually the lady and the Uillean pipes are the dragon... you decide!!!

As the name implies, yes, this song has to do with water... but not from the sky, and certainly not green... I was in the shower one day, and the melody just popped into my head... I was so into the tune, in my head, that the hot water ran out... When I dried off I transcribed it to my guitar, and finally saved it to my brain. When we added the didjeridoo, though, we had to bring the key up to C from Am (the didj resonates in C) by using a capo on the guitar... That's why there's a strange buzzing sound...