December 2008
Album review – I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning. “There’s no need to be an Appalachian song lover to enjoy McQuaid’s velvet voice and all around musicality, it speaks for itself.”
Sarah McQuaid
I Won’t Go Home ’Til Morning
One look at the track listing and I started to feel happy. The bulk of the songs are of the kind that got me into this music in the first place and which I still love half a century later. Songs like ‘Wagoner’s Lad’, ‘Wondrous Love’, ‘In The Pines’ and ‘The Chickens They Are Crowing’ are a few of the delights to be heard here.
The titles may be familiar but the songs get a personal treatment from Ms McQuaid, which is as it should be. ‘Chickens’ for instance gets a lovely, wistful treatment backed by a gently supportive guitar, joined later by fiddle, 12-string and percussion to take the tune out as an instrumental. ‘Shady Grove’ and ‘Cluck Old Hen’, two tunes that exemplify Appalachian music, are led by Sarah’s guitar, along with Gerry O’Beirne’s guitars and tiple, after which the changes are rung once again with a performance of ‘Ode To Billie Joe’ that would gain praise from Bobbie Gentry herself.
There’s no need to be an Appalachian song lover to enjoy McQuaid’s velvet voice and all around musicality, it speaks for itself.